Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes

Language does not stand still. Surprisingly, despite this knowledge, most speakers are fearful of change.

Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

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

We are always going to be influenced by America... I watched the word 'bum' go out and 'butt' come in. And part of me says, oh that's a shame, but Aussie boys are still Aussie boys.

Somehow, German just vanished at some point. We already started at an early stage to translate our albums, and at some point, we started to write only in English.

Natural languages generally are not designed by humans, they're just designed by the participants and you say something new and somebody else says, "Oh, that's a cool way to say it," and the next thing you know, everyone is saying it because it's shiny.

A new language always reflects a new point of view, and the gradual unconscious popularization of new words, or of old words used in new ways, is a sure sign of a profound change in people's articulation of the world.

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.

Remember in the forms of speech comes change Within a thousand years, and words that then Were well esteemed, seem foolish now and strange; And yet they spake them so, time and again, And thrived in love as well as any men; And so to win their loves in sundry days, In sundry lands there are as many ways.

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.

... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it.

What the psychedelics are for us as a species, rather than for each one of us as an individual, what they are for us as a species is an enzyme that catalyzes the language-making capacity.

An idea does not pass from one language to another without change.

We cannot evolve faster than our language. The edge of being is the edge of meaning, and somehow we have to push the edge of meaning. We have to extend it.

It's commonly assumed that the emergence of language was a key element of the great leap. We of course know very little about the sociopolitical conditions that existed at the time, but there's no scenario I can think of that suggests how a sudden change in these conditions could have led to the emergence of language.

It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced.

Someday I will tell my grandchildren that I lived in the era when OK was abbreviated to K.

As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'.

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

First, in the history of words there is much that indicates the history of men, and in comparing the speech of to-day with that ofyears ago, we have a useful illustration of the effect of external influences on the very words of a race.

The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.

As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change.

The culture cannot evolve faster than the language. The language is the flashlight that shows the path.