Favourite Quotes on Languages

[Akela]

...to fit the eager learners' spirit of our forum :hugegrin:

Here is one of mine:
"Any language begins as music and ends up being an algebra."
Andre-Marie Amp`ere, French mathematician and physicist (1775–1836)

Our evil wishers would like to say that this applies to Latin only, but they would be WRONG

 

[Andy]

One of those quotable quotes I often remember when I get a fit of... well... hot temper (rarely happens, though! )

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
- Mark Twain

 

[QMF]

I agree with that quote Andy. That's why I hate how much profanity is used in America. It's not that I find it vulgar per se, it's that it trivializes it, so that when you really are in, as Twain puts it, "desperate circumstances", you don't have a word to turn to so as to express yourself.

 

[Andy]

I agree with that quote Andy. That's why I hate how much profanity is used in America. It's not that I find it vulgar per se, it's that it trivializes it, so that when you really are in, as Twain puts it, "desperate circumstances", you don't have a word to turn to so as to express yourself.

Agreed. And all this just leads to the creation of even nastier words... we've come a long way since "Heck".

 

[Volatica Aquila]

I work as an English tutor at my university, and this is on the wall in our office:

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."

-Winston Churchill

 

[QMF]

Heh. He could've just said "which I will not tolerate"...but I guess then the wit would've been gone.

 

[Clodia]

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."
-Winston Churchill

beautiful!

 

[amantissima]

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.
- Rita Mae Brown

 

[Andy]

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.
- Rita Mae Brown

I agree, particularly if you've heard of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The more languages you know and the better you understand the concept of Grammar, the better is your understanding of the world and its workings.

 

[Decimvs]

Our Latin professor said that Woody Allen had a funny quote regarding Latin or something, someone asked him about conjugating something and he said "I'm sorry but I'll have to decline." lol. I thought it was really funny.

 

[nequam]

A thing can be excellent unto itself, though ultimately useless, a bowel movement for example...

An old boy friend on my fascination with res latinae, not sure where he got it?

 

[Iynx]

Ah, youth. With experience one comes to appreciate that a bowel movement is useless only insofar as one's own continued existence is useless.

Charles V is supposed to have said:

Je parle espagnol à Dieu, italien aux femmes, français aux homes, et allemande à mon cheval.

And Goethe something like

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiβ nichts von seiner eigenen.

But these may both be apocryphal-- I have not been able to find an original source for either.

 

[keithmassey]

There is an Arabic proverb, lisaan jadiid insaan jadiid, "A new language [makes one] a new person."