quotations about language
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
Languages are the key or entry to the sciences and nothing more; contempt for the one redounds on the other. The question is not whether the languages be ancient of modern, dead or living; but whether they be rude or polished, whether the books found in them show a good or a bad taste.
BRUYERE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Elegant language may make darkness appear like light.
AL-IRAKI
attributed, Day's Collacon
The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
None of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to inspire pity in the stars.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous.
MARIA EDGEWORTH
Angelina
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.
JACK GILBERT
"The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart"
I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.
JANE WAGNER
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
Language provides a crucial means of reinforcing cultural and political hegemony. English in America and elsewhere is a linguistic placeholder for colonialism: an invasive species that stood the test of time.
JORDAN MACKENZIE
"English is not the American national language", The Independent Florida Alligator, March 8, 2016
Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.
ELIZABETH KOSTOVA
The Historian
No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
"English and Welsh", The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
We might knit that knot with our tongues that we shall never undo with our teeth.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
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
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims
A hallmark feature of human intelligence is its adaptability, the ability to invent and rearrange conceptions of the world to suit changing goals and environments. One consequence of this flexibility is the great diversity of languages that have emerged around the globe. Each provides its own cognitive toolkit and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture. Each contains a way of perceiving, categorizing and making meaning in the world, an invaluable guidebook developed and honed by our ancestors.
LERA BORODITSKY
"How Language Shapes Thought", Scientific American, Feb. 2011
There is every reason in the world to be bilingual. Those who learn a second language become less likely to get Alzheimer's, are better at multitasking, more employable, smarter, more interesting people. The problem is that most students don't actually learn a second language. They take several years of Spanish and learn how to ask where a bathroom is.
DANNY BUGINGO
"Trying to learn a second language is a waste of time", Argonaut, March 31, 2016
Speech is the small change of Silence.
GEORGE MEREDITH
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
There is a tradition of writers trying to escape their language and render their art in a foreign tongue. Some do it because they are intoxicated by the possibilities offered in a new language--the words and turns of phrase for which their own language doesn't have any equivalents, the strange new rhythms and patterns of sound.
E. W.
"Why do writers abandon their native language?", The Economist, March 14, 2016
Language is a mirror of the mind.
J. CORNWELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.
NELSON MANDELA
Long Walk to Freedom