#linguistic

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#politics #psychology #culture

Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic. ↗

— Diane Ackerman

#nature #nature

The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us. ↗

— Kenneth L. Pike

#even #find #intelligible #linguistics #marvelous

Intended to serve as an introduction to both the linguistic and also the practical study of spoken English. ↗

— Henry Sweet

#both #english #intended #introduction #linguistic

In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#different #general #grammar #inscriptions #instance

It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#anyone #aware #become #contribution #evident

Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#branch #general #language #languages #laws

The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind. ↗

— Arika Okrent

#linguistics #nature #life

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. ↗

— William Jones

#family

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to compute it. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#linguistics #science #humor