2,489 Quotes About Language

I refuse to be linguistically constrained by dictionary writers.

What is at work in this report is the reduction of language to code. Cliches, coined by the state, become the only acceptable vocabulary. Everyone knows what to say and how to respond. It is scripted. Vocabulary shrinks so that the tyranny of nationalist rhetoric leaves people sputtering state-sanctioned slogans.

At the end of the second week they were still working and Arretapec, Conway and their patient were being talked, whistled, cheeped and grunted about in every language in use at the hospital.

Those who live only in the universal temporality can make their voices heard by the world. Those who simultaneously live in the universal and particular temporalities may hear voices from the other side, but they cannot make their own voices heard.

All human behaviour, language, thoughts, feelings, actions, and consciousness emerge from this massively interconnected network of neurons. Each neuron is pretty dumb; it either fires in a certain situation or it doesn’t, but out of this mass dumbness comes great cleverness.

The ultimate goal of this book is to present fragments from an epic about an animal that evolved, started talking, started talking about the fact that it was talking, and then paused briefly before asking itself how it started talking in the first place.

Since language produces meaning within an enclosed system, there is always a built-in untranslatability, which national languages began to deliberately pursue. The process added to the creation of an untranslatable "reality" that can be expresses only in a particular language. It also added to the discovery of untranslatable "truths.

Siarad Cymraeg?" said Old Shacob."He wants to know if you speak Welsh," said the surveyor."NO!" yelled the official at the old man before him."Tamn it all; his language, man!" shouted Dan. "What you expect in Wales - Chinese, or what?!

Your language looks like a treasure map,' she said, 'if you forget all the rest of the letters and focus in on the x, it looks as if you could find out where the treasure is.