2,489 Quotes About Language

Listen:my father speaks Urdulanguage of dancing peacocksrosewater fountainseven its curses are beautiful.He speaks Hindisuave and melodicearthy Punjabisalty rich as saag paneercoastal Kiswahililaced with Arabic,he speaks Gujaratisolid ancestral pride.Five languagesfive different worldsyet Englishshrinkshimdownbefore white menwho think their flat cold spiky wordsmake the only reality.

Det var som om jag hade fått den magiska förmågan att tyda fågelsång, att förstå något som jag instinktivt kände att jag inte kunde.

Well, we were here, first-generation Americans, our language was English and a language is a spiritual mansion from which no one can evict us.

I want you in ridiculous Russian,I want you, dressed only in that little expression,which you made so sparklingly literal,and which is just soundsplash to you....We are even: we made for each otherthis language, without translation.

There are vastly limited such people who also understand the language of the heart beside the body language. They are the genius ones.

I only understand life sensually. It’s the only language that makes perfect sense to me.

Language's only known predator is other people: many languages have been stamped out or imposed on others through war or conquest.

Studied erosion of the boundary between figurative and literal is a common device in symbolic language. And, since it is usually the common word that has the long history and the great range of uses, this kind of symbolic language can use vocabulary that is apparently very simple and innocuous, but conceals a tracery of fly-overs from literal to metaphorical terrain.

If the power of a language to endure through time and change depends on its power to convert old apparatus to new uses, we should regard the poet not only as a source of poems but also as one who does something of incalculable importance for the future of the language.