2,489 Quotes About Language

I needed words, lots of words to think about while I was going about the rest of the day. And I didn't want anything affected. I wanted nothing to do with those Romance languages. I wanted clipped words, full of common sense. Thoughts to wear beneath my thoughts. Allow, express, oath, vow, dismay, matter, splash, mollify. I liked those words. I liked saying them. I still do.

In my opinion, the largest spoken language in the world is love irrespective of the largest spoken language in India, Hindi or Telugu or Tamil

It wasn’t story (good or bad) that pulled me in; it was English itself, the way it felt in my braces-caged mouth and rattled around my adolescent head.

The vocabulary of flattery and insult is continually enlarged at the expense of the vocabulary of definition. As old horses go to the knacker's yard, or old ships to the breakers, so words in their last decay go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad. And as long as most people are more anxious to express their likes and dislikes than to describe facts, this must remain a universal truth about language.

Hata wamisionari, hasa wamisionari wa Kiprotestanti, hawakukitumia Kiingereza katika kueneza dini kwa sababu hadhira yao isingewaelewa. Badala yake walitumia lugha za makabila ya Kiswahili, hivyo kujikuta wakieneza zaidi utamaduni wa Kiswahili kuliko wa Kiingereza au Kijerumani.

I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number.

English, although the official language of Nigeria, was a formal language with which strangers and non-relatives addressed you. It had the potency of digging craters between you and your friends or relatives if one of you switched to using it.

I'm a writer to the bone. I love this language you and I read, write and speak. It's called English. And I'm seriously doubting that it's known to some of the unseen people who write the news.

If Bengali is my mother, then English is my father and friend.