183 Quotes About Linguistics

He mentally perceived words as having various sizes, densities, depths; words were dark stars, some small and dull and solid, some immense, complex, subtle, with a powerful gravity-field that attracted infinite meanings to them. Freedom was the biggest of the dark stars.

With that question, the two of us had a long conversation about whether language is a tool in our hands or we in its hands.

The less articulate person may have an awareness that 'something is not quite right', but will not be able to make that awareness concrete without having his or her consciousness 'raised' through the provision of finer and more sensitive (linguistic) concepts. (This is one of the ways in which the more educated exercise dominion over the lesser.)

All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.

Of all the words that exist in any language only a bare minority are pure, unadulterated, original roots. The majority are "coined" words, forms that have been in one way or another created, augmented, cut down, combined, and recombined to convey new needed meanings, The language mint is more than a mint; it is a great manufacturing center, where all sorts of productive activities go on unceasingly.

Das mine!' protested Ava, Bennie's daughter, affirming Alex's recent theory that language acquisition involved a phase of speaking German. She snatched a plastic skillet away from his own daughter, Cara-Ann, who lurched after it, roaring, 'Mine pot! Mine pot!

Trying to take away someone’s language is usually the first step in trying to change them.

I met a girl named Shelby once or twice. For some reason, the image of a car sprung to mind. After some liquid courage, I asked her. How she would like to make my babies. She blocked me on that one social media network. I was expecting a business plan. See, her father tricked me. He made me believe I was dealing with a rational human being. But, hey, maybe we all learned something... didn't we?

Do you know the German word, sehnsucht," he asked."Yes," I answered. "The idea of an inconsolable longing for what we don't understand. You believe that longing is for God. Or heaven. And that we can confuse it with longing for someone or something else.