2,489 Quotes About Language

The language of nature is comparable to a secret password that each sentry passes to the next in his own language, but the meaning of the password is the sentry’s language itself.

We humans speak ten thousand languages - a little eye contact must ripple through them all

Conventional languages. . . lack the power to express concepts that I need, and even in their own domain, they're imprecise and unwieldy. They're hardly fit for speech, let alone thought.

Put yourself in the booties of a child who is in the midst of figuring out how to speak the language as it is spoken by parents, friends, and siblings.

Sometimes they accuse her in Latin and she looks at them, baffled by a language that she has only ever heard spoken in church, in the Mass that she loves. How could these very sounds, these familiar beloved tones, so solemn and musical to her, now be the voice of accusation ?

Poetry was the wrong art for people who love justice. It was not like dance music. Painting is the wrong art for people who love justice. It is not like science fiction. Epics are the dance music of the people who love war. Movies are the justice of the people who love war. Information is the poetry of the people who love war.You should know this: that feed is your poem.

English is a language that lives in the middle of the mouth, but Tagalog is more of an open throat song that dances between the tip of the tongue and the teeth. My mouth feels too heavy, too thick, too slow to produce the light, rapid syllables Filipinos spit with such ease. I curse my parents for not teaching me the language when I was young, when the struggle would have seemed more like a fun game than an identity crisis.

Our language is shaped by the context in which we are communicating: we select the words that fit our function.

The old man rubbed his hands: ‘Ah! A meta-subject! Using language to discuss language, there’s nothing better. I adore that’.