Famous quotes containing the words romance, languages, linguistic and/or features:
“Harvey: Oh, you kids these days, I’m telling you. You think the only relationship a man and a woman can have is a romantic one.
Gil: That sure is what we think. You got something better?
Harvey: Oh, romance is very nice. A good thing for youngsters like you, but Helene and I have found something we think is more appropriate to our stage of life—companionship.
Gil: Companionship? I’ve got a flea-bitten old hound at home who’ll give me that.”
—Tom Waldman (d. 1985)
“People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can’t pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as “exotic” but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the ‘creativity of language,’ that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are ‘familiar.’”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)