quotations about language
Language is easy for us to learn and use because language, like a living organism, has evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans. Language has adapted to what our brains can do, rather than the other way around.
LINDA B. GLASER
"New book reintegrates the science of language", Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2016
Since individuals think in the language in which they speak, thought processes are limited to words and concepts within that language. If a word for a concept doesn't exist in that language, it cannot be thought. Because language is the cornerstone of thinking and culture, as the languages around the world die out, ways of thinking become restricted.
JORDAN RYDER
"Native American Student Association to Stage Screening of Language Loss Documentary", Daily Iowan, March 29, 2016
Men are apt to overvalue the tongues, and to think they have made considerable progress in learning when they have once overcome these; yet in reality there is no internal worth in them, and men may understand a thousand languages without being the wiser.
E. D. BAKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.
STEPHEN FRY
A Bit of Fry and Laurie
Language, which is the uniting bond and very medium of communion between men, is at the same time by the great variety of tongues, the means of severing and estranging nations more than anything else.
HORACE SMITH
The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails, for the Wise and Waggish
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
GEORGE ORWELL
1984
A country without a language is a country without a soul.
ELIZABETH GREIWE
"The luck of the Irish language student", Chicago Tribune, March 16, 2016
In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.
EDMUND BURKE
Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
MARK TWAIN
Innocents Abroad
Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.
GENE WOLFE
"The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?
Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the nuisance of communicating in a different language?... Within a decade or so, we'll be able to communicate with one another via small earpieces with built-in microphones. No more trying to remember your high school French when checking into a hotel in Paris. Your earpiece will automatically translate "Good evening, I have a reservation" to Bon soir, j'ai une réservation -- while immediately translating the receptionist's unintelligible babble to "I am sorry, Sir, but your credit card has been declined."
DAVID ARBESÚ
"Could the language barrier actually fall within the next 10 years?", The Conversation, March 28, 2016
Language was invented for one reason, boys -- to woo women.
N. H. KLEINBAUM
Dead Poets Society
I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.
KATHERINE DUNN
attributed, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series
Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
GEORGE ORWELL
The English People
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
Language is an art, and a glorious one, whose influence extends over all others, and in which all science whatever must center; but an art springing from necessity, and originally invented by artless men.
J. H. TOOKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
To clothe low-creeping matter with high-flown language is not fine fancy but flat foolery; it rather loads than raises a wren, to fasten the feathers of an ostrich to her wings.
THOMAS FULLER
The Holy State and the Profane State