#communication

Isn't language loss a good thing, because fewer languages mean easier communication among the world's people? Perhaps, but it's a bad thing in other respects. Languages differ in structure and vocabulary, in how they express causation and feelings and personal responsibility, hence in how they shape our thoughts. There's no single purpose "best" language; instead, different languages are better suited for different purposes. For instance, it may not have been an accident that Plato and Aristotle wrote in Greek, while Kant wrote in German. The grammatical particles of those two languages, plus their ease in forming compound words, may have helped make them the preeminent languages of western philosophy. Another example, familiar to all of us who studied Latin, is that highly inflected languages (ones in which word endings suffice to indicate sentence structure) can use variations of word order to convey nuances impossible with English. Our English word order is severely constrained by having to serve as the main clue to sentence structure. If English becomes a world language, that won't be because English was necessarily the best language for diplomacy. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#language #thought #communication

We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#audible #background #codes #communications #environment

simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other kind of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world’s champions. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#communication

Isn't that how we all will end up? Best friends today, communicating via emails tomorrow. Crush today, dancing at their weddings tomorrow. ↗

— Manasa Rao

#end #friendship #weddings #communication

It is vital that the United States maintains open lines of communication with our allies. We must assure them of our commitment to eradicating global terrorism wherever it may reside or wherever it's given haven. ↗

— George Allen

#assure #commitment #communication #eradicating #given

In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions. ↗

— Julian Assange

#around #assets #attacks #been #different

Significant officials at publicly traded companies are casually and cavalierly engaged in insider trading. Because insider trading has as one of its elements communication, it doesn't take rocket science to realize it's nice to have the communication on tape. ↗

— Preet Bharara

#casually #communication #companies #elements #engaged

I just realized my lips are inside out. They should be turned inwards, because I spend most of my time talking to myself. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#communication #inside-out #introvert #lips #lunatic

Energy doesn't communicate in English, French, Chinese or Swahili, but it does speak clearly ↗

— Elaine Seiler

#energy #transformation-energetics #communication

I realized that there were times when we talked not because we needed to communicate anything important, but simply because we each drew comfort from the other's voice ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#communication