Quotes about Linguistics

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can?

I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.

If you can not master your language you must be it's slave.

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.

The professional interpreter is a minor miracle—far better

Ebonics is not a separate language. It is ghetto speech and substandard English. To claim that ebonics is a positive way of communicating for blacks is to condemn blacks to menial jobs and economic inferiority. A person who fails to learn correct language skills is forever handicapped in seeking employment.

If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide.