123 Quotes About Languages

Il aime que les langues se parlent en sous-main, qu'elles tissent des dialogues impalpables, invisibles à l'oeil qui ne les traduit pas. Qu'on ne distingue plus les affluents du fleuve principal.

Orcen vocabulary was not particularly large or sophisticated. They did not have a word for patience, for example. Their closest equivalent was the word “B’arrr’Kek” which meant, literally, ‘to delay violence due to inconvenient circumstances.

❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞

❝One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.❞

أتكلم أربع لغات بطلاقة، أفضلها عندي هي العربية، لغة القرآن والحديث، التي أعتز بها وأتمسك بحروفها مهما قيل عني

He had realised that it was Clara he loved, and that he loved her in many different ways. (Because there are even more ways of loving than there are ways of being happy, but it would take another book to explain them all.)

'Banished men should never speak their native tongue; it comes bitter from their mouth. And this language suits a traitor better, I think; drips off one's teeth like sugar-syrup.'

La idea de no tener una lengua materna me preocupa. ¿Es como sentirte un nómada dentro de tu propia cabeza? no me puedo imaginar no tener palabras en las que refugiarme. Ser huérfana de lengua.

My motivation for learning Japanese was to translate a chemical patent, a job that I had heroically (i.e., rashly) taken on.