Quotes about Language

It is only a poem, and we might say rightly that singing a song does not change reality. However, we must not say that with too much conviction. The evocation of an alternative reality consists at least in part in the battle for language and the legitimization of a new rhetoric. The language of the empire is surely the language of managed reality, of production and schedule and market. But that language will never permit or cause freedom because there is no newness in it. Doxology

Three Tasks of a Good Missionary Learn the language: educate yourself on how to talk in a way that people can understand and to which they can relate and eventually respond Study the culture: become so sensitized to that culture that you can operate effectively within it Translate the gospel: translate it into its own cultural context so that it can be heard, understood, and appropriated

If we believe God is present in our worship as He promises to be, then we must frame all language of worship as to Him and not merely about Him.

If the silence of nature is the possibility of language, language is the possibility of history.

How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.

I can't think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one's grammar. It's a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I'm afraid.

I will say here and now that I have never discovered, nor can I see, any reasonable use or excuse for the " waynee, weedee, weekee " convention. It is not merely that I have a profound sympathy with one of my friends who says he just cannot believe that Caesar was the kind of man to talk in that kind of way. Caesar may, indeed, have done so, but what then ?

Fou!" "Who?" "I didn't say 'who'; I said 'fou,' " "I know you did. I said who?" "Who?" "Who's fou?" "Oh, is. By Jove, 'suis'! 'Je suis fou.

Men of science spend much time and effort in the attempt to disentangle words from their metaphorical and traditional associations;

The professional interpreter is a minor miracle—far better

Among the disciples of Jesus, it seems most likely that at least Philip was bilingual in Aramaic and Greek.

My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around.