Guido van Rossum Quotes

I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.

Languages are true analytical methods.

English is a very expressive language.

I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.

I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language.

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.

Language makes infinite use of finite media.

The integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. Linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence.

I know what the structure of the language is.

I have never designed a language for its own sake.

As Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.

Language is something that I take great interest in.

I love the English language, the colors of it, the many, many nuances, the different influences. I find German stilted, in a way, by comparison.

The ways in which language changes never ceases to interest me.

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

The words of the world want to make sentences.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.

Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

I am better at math than spelling.

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.

I really like grammar. And spelling. I was a spelling-bee kid. I'm hard-core about grammar.

I don't hate language. I have my own language, but I also enjoy the English language. Obviously, you don't read a lot of literature and not care about language.