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Linguistics Quotes

“Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it.”

LinguisticsWord PlayStephen Fry
Book:The Liar
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“Finally, I would like to point out that now in the age of English, choosing a language policy is not the exclusive concern of non-English-speaking nations. It is also a concern for English-speaking nations, where, to realize the world’s diversity and gain the humility that is proper to any human being, people need to learn a foreign language as a matter of course. Acquiring a foreign language should be a universal requirement of compulsory education. Furthermore, English expressions used in international conferences should be regulated and standardized to some extent. Native English speakers need to know that to foreigners, Latinate vocabulary is easier to understand than what to the native speakers is easy, child-friendly language. At international conferences, telling jokes that none but native speakers can comprehend is inappropriate, even if fun. If native speakers of English – those who enjoy the privilege of having their mother tongue as the universal language – would not wait for others to protest but would take steps to regulate themselves, what respect they would earn from the rest of the world! If that is too much to ask, the rest of the world would appreciate it if they would at least be aware of their privileged position – and more important, be aware that the privilege is unwarranted. In this age of global communication, some language or other was bound to be come a universal language used in every corner of the world English became that language not because it is intrinsically more universal than other languages, but because through a series of historical coincidences it came to circulate ever more widely until it reached the tipping point. That’s all there is to it. English is an accidental universal language. If more English native speakers walked through the doors of other languages, they would discover undreamed-of landscapes. Perhaps some of them might then begin to think that the truly blessed are not they themselves, but those who are eternally condemned to reflect on language, eternally condemned to marvel at the richness of the world.”

LanguageEnglish LanguageEnglishLinguisticsUniversal LanguageGlobal LanguageEnglish Language ImperialismLinguistic Imperialism
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds. What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.”

LinguisticsDouglas AdamsGin And TonicStructural Linguistics
Book:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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“I don't need to write in all these languages of the world - those who care, will find a way. I write in more than one language because I want to. I want to leave at least something extremely personal for every culture in the world - that is, for as many cultures as I humanly can.”

LanguageOnenessInclusionMulticulturalismLinguisticsCultural IntegrationPolyglotLanguages And CultureMulticultural PoetLinguistic Diversity
Book:Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch
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“Linguistic diversity is integral to the cultural diversity that ensures some humans will survive in the event of one of the periodic global catastrophes. Local indigenous languages hold the keys to to survival because they contain the nouns, the names of the plants, insects, birds and mammals important locally to human survival.”

KnowledgeSurvivalLinguisticsCultural DiversityLanguagesLinguistic DiversityHuman SurvivalIndigenous Languages
Book:The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir
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“Min Herres behagelige Sendebrev af 27de Dag udi Glugmaanet, (a) haver jeg den anden Dag af Blidemaaned (b) bekommet. Min Herre forlanger at vide hvordan Tilstanden nu omstunder er ved Academiet, om man tilkommende Sommer kand vente, at see nogen, at blive ophøyed paa Doctor-Trappen, (c) enten udi den Guddommelige Kundskab (d), udi de verdslige Love, (e) eller udi Lægekunsten (f). Min Herre ønsker ogsaa at vide, hvor mange Mestere af Verdens Viisdom (g) i Fior bleve skabte (h), hvor mange Laurbærkronede Personer (i), Item, hvo dette Aar er Rector og Decanus, det er den høye Skoles Forstander og den verdslige Viisdoms Høvidsmand, iligemaade, hvad Nyt som ellers er forefaldet udi den lærde Fristad (k). (a) Januario.(b) Februario.(c) Doctor-Graden.(d) Theologien.(e) Injure.(f) Medicinen.(g) Magistri Philosophiae.(h) Creerede.(i) Baccalaurei.(k) Republica literaria.”

FoolishIronyMeaninglessExcessLinguisticsKeep It SimpleBad WritingLaconicScholarsPseudo IntellectualsPompRhetoricsPoor Understanding
Book:Epistler
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“The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.”

LanguageBeautyWordsGrammarLinguisticsBeautiful WordsPhilologyPhonicsLinguistic BeautyLanguage Structure
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
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“I was thinking,' said Crusher dreamily [...] 'about LANGUAGE and how in English two negatives make a positive, but in spriteish, a double negative is still a negative. However there is NO language in which two positives make a negative ...' 'Yeah right, like THAT'S the problem,' said Xar, sarcastically. 'I hadn't thought of that!' said Crusher in gentle surprise [...]. 'You're correct, Car. "Yeah, right" IS a statement in English where two positives make a negative...”

GiantsLinguisticsYeah RightDouble Negatives
Book:Twice Magic
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“The scientific descriptions of ethnology that we find in books are inevitably dry and do not give the least impression of the mysterious world of the Achumawi, whose life is so inextricably mixed in with the animals, the trees, the plants. But without forming some mental picture of that life, it is, I believe, almost impossible to understand how and to what extent the Achumawi Indian finds himself in a state of direct mystical connection with the universe that surrounds him. Now that is precisely his religion, and his entire religion.” — Jaime de Angulo from "Tracks Along the Left Coast" by Andrew Schelling”

IndigenousAnthropologyLinguisticsNative AmericaTurtle IslandEthnologyJaime De AnguloAchumawi Tribe
Author:Jaime de Angulo
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“The scientific descriptions of ethnology that we find in books are inevitably dry and do not give the least impression of the mysterious world of the Achumawi, whose life is so inextricably mixed in with the animals, the trees, the plants. But without forming some mental picture of that life, it is, I believe, almost impossible to understand how and to what extent the Achumawi Indian finds himself in a state of direct mystical connection with the universe that surrounds him. Now that is precisely his religion, and his entire religion.” — Jaime de Angulo Appears in the introduction of "Tracks Along the Left Coast" by Andrew Schelling”

HistoryCaliforniaIndigenousAnthropologyLinguisticsNative AmericaEthnographyTurtle IslandJaime De Angulo
Author:Jaime de Angulo
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“You say that to (Franz) Boas science is "austere and impersonal." You know, that is just the thing that gets my goat. They have managed to take all the life out of science. Why be ashamed of the joy and the exaltations that are the blood of knowl-edge? Why pretend that you have no emotions? In another century they will look aghast at the funereal aspect of our science. They will say: those people were doing penance for something! ... We have driven our libido underground.” — Jaime de Angulo, written in a letter to his friend and mentor, the linguist Edward Sapir (Appears in the introduction to "Tracks Along the Left Coast" by Andrew Schelling)”

NatureHistoryCaliforniaIndigenousAnthropologyLinguisticsEthnographyTurtle IslandJaime De AnguloAndrew Schelling
Author:Jaime de Angulo
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“Ох, філологіє! Ох, великомученице! Хто тебе не зважувався брати на муки! Кожен, хто пару слів тямить написати, та ще - не дай Боже - якусь чужу мову зна, - уже вважа себе коли не за справжнього лінгвіста, то хоч за таку людину, яка сміє авторитетно вирікати свій суд про філологічні й лінгвістичні справи. Всі інші науки не такі безталанні, не такі беззахисні перед профанами. Ніхто вам не зважиться (бо попросту посоромиться), не бувши спеціялістом, споритися проти астронома, ляпати дурниці проти техніка, плескати нісенітниці проти хіміка; ну, а в філологічних питаннях кожен-кожен забирає голос... і віщає.”

LinguisticsPhilology
Book:Виривки з мемуарів одного старого гріховоди. Вибране
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“Ma d'altra parte, il linguista che voglia interpretare un testo oggi deve fare i conti con la frattura che esiste tra l'archeologia e la filologia in America. Il punto di vista filologico, con il suo dotto interesse per i testi come tali, è diventato ostico e incomprensibile per l'archeologia americana moderna, altamente sviluppata scientificamente per quel che riguarda la correlazione logica di prove strettamente materiali, ma la cui popolarità e i cui finanziamenti sono strettamente connessi con interessi estetici o legati alla concretezza della sua materia, i prodotti dell'uomo, in particolare di tipo esotico.”

AnthropologyAcademiaLinguisticsPhilologyArchaeologyologyBenjamin Lee WharfEdward Sapir
Book:Language, Thought, and Reality; Selected Writings
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“What will endure, I hope, is the idea of Rotwelsch, the idea that marginalized groups develop special languages as tools for survival. We often think of such groups in terms of ethnic identity, but the identity of Rotwelsch speakers was defined by being outside the order of settled society, period. From this position as complete outsiders, they forged an identity by borrowing from the languages around them, with astonishing resilience and inventiveness. Having been cast out from society, they created an idiom that expressed their hard-earned wisdom, their willingness to live differently, and their sheer will to survive.”

IdentityResilienceLinguisticsLanguagesItinerantRotwelsch
Book:The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate
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“When he was with a client, he had to be careful not to use any of the forbidden words. Struggle, resist, rebel, queer—and a host of others—were considered too radical by the State and had been banned decades ago, replaced with more innocuous words such as 'to make effort ', 'to dispute' and 'to betray'. Queer, having passed through 'LGBTQIA+' at the turn of the century and 'Sexual and gender divergents' to decades later, now had no permissible equivalent that wasn't a slur. As the linguists working in the State knew very well, without a vocabulary to express it, there could be no concept. By banning the very idea of queerness, they hoped that the people themselves would also disappear.”

StruggleRebelQueerLinguisticsResistQueernessDoublespeakReappropriation
Book:Margins and Murmurations
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“Words should not be used merely because they are 'old' or obsolete. The words chosen, however remote they may be from colloquial speech or ephemeral suggestions, must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people. (To such Beowulf was addressed, into whatever hands it may since have fallen.) They must need no gloss. The fact that a word was still used by Chaucer, or by Shakespeare, or even later, gives it no claim, if it has in our time perished from literary use.”

WritingWordsVocabularyLinguisticsTranslationArchaic EnglishWord Usage
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
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“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don't want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets. We dress it in fancy clothes and tell it to behave, and it comes home with its underwear on its head and wearing someone else's socks. As English grows, it lives its own life, and this is right and healthy. Sometimes English does exactly what we think it should; sometimes it goes places we don't like and thrives there in spite of all our worrying. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like Latin; we can throw tantrums and start learning French instead. But we will never really be the boss of it. And that's why it flourishes.”

LanguageEnglishLinguisticsLanguage Evolution
Book:Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
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“And with them, or after them, may there not come that even bolder adventurer—the first geolinguist, who, ignoring the delicate, transient lyrics of the lichen, will read beneath it the still less communicative, still more passive, wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks: each one a word spoken, how long ago, by the earth itself, in the immense solitude, the immenser community, of space.”

TimeExplorationLinguistics
Book:The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics
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“И вот, спустя некоторое время, случилось чудо: в стран, где когда-то книг были миллионы, не осталось ни одного печатного издания. Все было уничтожено, причем не государством - тут его возможностей просто не хватило бы! - а обычным гражданами. Их страхами попасть за решетку в рамках "показательного дела". Их паранойей. Их предосторожностями.”

LinguisticsBelarusBelarusian LanguageWelcome To Belarus
Book:Мова
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“Les enquêtes effectuées en 1830 démontrent, qu'en Basse-Bretagne, 70% de la population parle breton. Les grandes villes sont bilingues, le total des monolingues bretons s'élève à 80% des locuteurs, une grande partie de ces bretonnants sait lire et écrire le breton. Cette situation va perdurer jusqu'à la veille de la première guerre mondiale, à l'exception des villes dont la francisation s'est fortement accentuée. On évalue le nombre de locuteurs à 1300000 en 1914. p145”

LanguageLinguisticsBrittanyBretonBreizh
Book:Parlons breton: Langue et culture
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“Si cette population avait transmis sa langue aux générations suivantes dans des conditions de développement normales, cela ferait maintenant quelques quatre ou cinq millions de bretonnants : les langues vernaculaires ayant moins de cinq millions de locuteurs sont nombreuses : l'hébreu (4,6 millions), le norvégien (4,4 millions), l'albanais (2,5 millions), l'islandais (220 000) etc. p145-146”

LinguisticsBrittanyBretonBreizhBrezhoneg
Book:Parlons breton: Langue et culture
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“Words can be as tricky as a sneaky magician pulling tricks out of their linguistic hats. But you, my witty friend, you've got the magic decoder ring for patterns! So, let those words try their verbal acrobatics while you're on the lookout for the real patterns that spill the secrets of truth. It's like watching a linguistic circus, and you're the ringmaster of wit!”

InspirationalMotivational QuotesWisdom QuotesWordsInspiring QuotesFriendship QuotesLinguistics
Author:lifeispositive.com
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“To my mind this makes psychedelics central to any political reconstruction, because these are the only force in nature that actually dissolve linguistics structures; lets the mechanics of syntax to be visible, allows the possibility for rapid introduction and spread of new concepts; gives permission for new ways of seeing; and this is what we have to do, we have to change our minds.”

WayGivingMindPoliticalForceSeeingPossibilityConceptsStructureSpreadVisibleNew WaysPermissionMechanicRapidsIntroductionLinguisticsReconstructionSyntax
Author:Terence McKenna
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“A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it - the element of the sacred.”

IfsTryingMeanArtReligiousLevelsStudyPsychologyMissingElementsUniqueEconomicsEssenceSacredPhenomenonSociologyLinguisticsPhysiology
Author:Mircea Eliade
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“In my own professional work I have touched on a variety of different fields. I've done work in mathematical linguistics, for example, without any professional credentials in mathematics; in this subject I am completely self-taught, and not very well taught.”

WellsDifferentSelfDoneMy OwnSubjectsExampleFieldsTaughtMathematicsVarietyMathematicalTouchedLinguisticsCredentialsSelf TaughtProfessional Work
Book:The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
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