#language

My Japanese isn’t much better today, but at least now I appreciate my duality more than when I was a punk kid. ↗

— Gil Asakawa

#japan #japanese-american #language #japan

Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language! ↗

— Pablo Neruda

#romance #spanish #seduction

Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Dieu! Misplace a single le or la and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#grammar #language #syntax #words #grammar

A schoolchild should be taught grammar--for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases. ↗

— E.B. White

#grammar

As you can see, the hyphen is a nasty, tricky, evil little mark that gets its kicks igniting arguments in newsrooms and trying to make everyone in the English-speaking world look like an idiot - it's the Bill Maher of punctuation. ↗

— June Casagrande

#language #grammar

When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings ↗

— Octavio Paz

#language #society #grammar

I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all. ↗

— Sarah Dunant

#grammar

Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#science #words #love

I speak the language of love. That’s right, I speak Russian. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#language-of-love #love #russian #love

It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#humor #language #humor