What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language. - Jane Goodall
The man who does not know other languages, unless he is a man of genius, necessarily has deficiencies in his ideas. - Victor Hugo
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. - Hippocrates
'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.' - J.R.R. Tolkien
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write. - J.R.R. Tolkien
There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you’re bound to understand and like everything that we do. And of course you don’t. - Rowan Atkinson
The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. [But] precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with the real objects of the world, and is overly pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.
Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.
Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.
Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging.
A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies that have moulded them.
There is the disadvantage of not knowing all languages," said Conseil, "or the disadvantage of not having one universal language. - Jules Verne
