language quotes

When I was a college student and I got interested in linguistics the concern among students was, this is a lot of fun, but after we have done a structural analysis of every language in the world what’s left? It was assumed there were basically no puzzles.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

If you can talk, you can write.

Finality is not the language of politics.

I will meet my countrymen. I understand only one language: that they are my countrymen, they are my brothers. You may see with whatever colour you want; Modi will not go into that colour.

I ain’t never called nobody no redskin. I’ve never been mad, like, ‚Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.‘

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Money has a language of its own.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn’t have connectives like ‚and‘ that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

Language is one component of the human cognitive capacity which happens to be fairly amenable to enquiry. So we know a good deal about that.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

Obscenity comes from grime.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

‚No comment‘ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

I am not going to be a mouthpiece for language that I detest.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time – for 40 years – and they’re started by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

The pace at which people are taking to digital technology defies our stereotypes of age, education, language and income.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

When a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

Being politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.

Syllables govern the world.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

Coffee is a language in itself.

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.