Rabih Alameddine Quotes

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.

People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.

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

Speakers of English love to invent and reinvent the language.

Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.

Britain's fascination with its changing language is renowned.

The extraordinary thing about new words is that probably only about one per cent of them are new. Most are old words revived and adapted.

'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'

Words move, turning over like tumbling clowns; like certain books and like fleas, they possess activity. All men equally have the right to say, 'This word shall bear this meaning,' and see if they can get it across. It is a sporting game, which all can play, only all cannot win.

I definitely do see language serving its users, and when it no longer serves them we need to look for new words.

If words are to change their meanings, as assuredly they are, let each user of language make such changes as please himself, put up his own suggestions, and let the best win.

I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial -- or is it post-colonial? -- cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

Every word was once a poem.

I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.

I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passe before it gets into print.

Words aren't made — they grow,' said Anne.

The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.

Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize.

It is my firm belief that all successful languages are grown and not merely designed from first principles

Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.

I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

It is by metaphor that language grows.