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- Language Quotes

See also: - Nonsense Poems, - Odd Words and - Odd Names in the - Language Humour section

See also: longer quotes from specific authors:


From Language Change: Progress or Decay? by Jean Aitchison (1981):


From Verbatim by Erin McKean (Editor):


France's greatest lexicographer, Emile Littré, was once found by his wife, in flagrante, and in the conjugal bedroom at that, with their housemaid. Happily, the exchange that followed makes sense almost as well in English as in French.

"Emile," cried Mrs Littré, "I am surprised!"
"No, my dear," replied the erring lexicographer calmly. "You are astonished. It is we who are surprised. "


I did pick up a self-instruction book on Latin, and with just a few days of casual study managed to completely forget the ablative. With early progress that good -- it took my father *years* to forget it -- I'm eager to get back to it.

-- Joseph Nebus in a posting on the sci.math newsgroup


From The Artful Universe by John D. Barrow (Oxford University Press, 1995):


From Words Fail Me by Philip Howard (Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1980):


From New Words for Old by Philip Howard (Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 1977):


From Teach Yourself Linguistics [5th Edition] by Jean Aitchison (Hodder, 1999):


Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

-- Source unknown, found on Kevin & Kell website


Using kanji is like when you first start having sex. At first you can't stop thinking about it. But eventually you'll get over the feeling of wanting to do it constantly to every word you meet, and just limit yourself to when it is actually appropriate...

-- usenet posting by "necoandjeff" in sci.lang.japan, dated Mon, 11 Jul 2005 14:53:42 +0900


From Japanese in Action: An Unorthodox Approach to the Spoken Language and the People Who Speak It (Revised edition) by Jack Seward (Walker/Wetherill, New York, 1990): [Note: I've altered the romanization by replacing the macrons for long vowels with the doubled vowels of the kana spelling, and used 'o' for the particle 'wo', and provided Japanese text where there was none in the original.]


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