Language Quotes

Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.

Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.

Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.

I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with.

Music is the soul of language.

Basketball, in America, is like a culture. It is like a foreigner learning a new language. It is difficult to learn foreign languages and it will also be difficult for me to learn the culture for basketball here.

The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing.

I didn't work hard to make Ruby perfect for everyone, because you feel differently from me. No language can be perfect for everyone. I tried to make Ruby perfect for me, but maybe it's not perfect for you. The perfect language for Guido van Rossum is probably Python.

It's always better to speak the language of the team. Not only for the direct contact with everyone - sometimes it also helps you to understand the mentality of the people in the team a bit better.

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

I think foreign countries really do like it when American artists sing in their language. And when you go over there and say, 'Hi, how are you?' in their language, they love it. It makes them feel like you're doing it just for them. We in America take so much for granted.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of somebody who creates a new language in film by what he was able to accomplish with art direction, photography, lighting, etc., it is still a gold standard for science fiction.

Music is not supposed to be nationalist. It is supposed to surpass language barriers. It is about generations communicating with each other.

Travel provided many interesting experiences, but perhaps the most useful lesson I learned was that I really had no proficiency for learning the thousands of characters of the written Chinese language.

Its language is as bare as a monk's cell, and as uninviting.

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

I'm not any good at foul language or anything like that.

For us chess players the language of artist is something natural.

There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty.

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.