Quotes about Language

Remember that how you say something is as important as what you say.

Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.

Communication is not what we say, but what you hear (which is a lesson I wish our educational system understood)

I come from a tradition - from the Jewish tradition, which believes in words, in language, in communication.

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

As a writer, I play with words all day long. I toy with them, listen for their overtones, crack them open, and try to stuff my thoughts inside.

Paul says that Spirit lives inside us, detecting needs we cannot articulate and expressing them in a language we cannot comprehend. When we don't know what to pray, he fills in the blanks. Evidently, it is our very helplessness that God, too, delights in. Our weakness gives opportunity for his strength.

Any Greek scholar will tell you the word blessed is far too sedate and beatific to carry the percussive force Jesus intended. The Greek word conveys something like a short cry of joy, Oh, you lucky person!

The Hebrew original does not say, 'Do not kill.' It says, 'Do not murder.' Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life — one is 'kill' (harag, in Hebrew) and the other is 'murder' (ratzach in Hebrew).

The next time you hear someone cite, 'Do not kill' when quoting the sixth commandment, gently but firmly explain that it actually says, 'Do not murder".

As Abba Eban, Israel's Foreign Minister from 1966 to 1974, expressed it: "Israel is the only nation whose citizens live on the same land, speak the same language and practice the same religion as their ancestors did 3,000 years ago.

The waters below are mayim (the Hebrew word for "water"), and waters above are sham-mayim—which some, but by no means all, scholars believe means "water there" (sham is Hebrew for "there").