LANGUAGE QUOTES III
quotations about language
Consider: you're inventing language and you come on an object for the first time, so you name it 'tree.' Then you go on and you find another object. You have the choice of calling it tree-only-with-special-properties, such as squat, hard, gray, leafless, and branchless, for instance -- or you can name it a completely different object, say: 'rock.' And then the next object you encounter you may decide is a 'big rock,' or a 'boulder,' or a 'bush,' or 'a small, squat tree,' and so on. Now two languages will not only have different words for the same things, but they will end up having divided those same things up into categories and properties along completely different lines. And that division, as much or more than the different words themselves, will naturally mold all the thinking of the people who use that language.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Neveryon
It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.
NOAH WEBSTER
preface, Dictionary
Language is the source of misunderstandings.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
attributed, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Great Quotes for All Occasions
Learning a language is the making of shared semantic agreements with others.
PHIL BAINES & ANDREW HASLAM
Type and Typography
A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
Thought is not language. Thought is not based on language. Thought does not depend on language; language is not a condition for thought. There is no essential connection between language and thinking except in two senses: that language is a translating device for the imperfect expression of thought or of the awareness of experience; and without thinking humans could not produce language.
AMOREY GETHIN
Language and Thought: A Rational Enquiry Into Their Nature and Relationship
The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence.
GAO XINGJIAN
"An Interview with Gao Xingjian", BookBrowse
The most difficult step in the study of language is the first step.
LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
Language
Language is a virus from outer space.
WILLIAM DUCKWORTH
Twenty/Twenty
One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain stationary; it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
attributed, Many Thoughts of Many Minds: Selections from the Writings of the Most Celebrated Authors from the Earliest to the Present Time
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Morning Yet on Creation Day
At the end of the day, good language is bold language.
FRANCESCO CLEMENTE
"Pamela Love and Francesco Clemente Reflect on Decades of Collaboration", Vogue, April 4, 2016
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
Speech is the best show a man puts on.
BENJAMIN LEE WHORF
Language, Thought and Reality
Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.
PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE
Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son
for many people, language is inseparable from cultural identity since it is the means by which members of communities communicate with one another, and how individuals establish that they are, in fact, members of the same cultural community.
LILY WONG FILLMORE
"What Happens When Languages Are Lost? An Essay on Language Assimilation and Cultural Identity", Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language
The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
"On Language", The American Democrat
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.
JOHN DRYDEN
Works of John Dryden