Noah Webster Quotes

It's as if we're higher apes who had a language faculty inserted.

Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?

No child is capable of speech until he has heard other human beings speak, and even two infants reared together cannot develop a language from scratch.

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 seems inconceivable that a species of human could possess fully modern language and not be fully modern in all other ways, too. For this reason, the evolution of language is widely judged to be the culminating event in the emergence of humanity as we know it today.

While language can surely be used for communication (as can much else), communication probably has no special role in its design or evolution.

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

Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language.

Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth - and perhaps even in the womb - to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

As our larynxes descended, we were able to make sounds with our mouths in new and far more expressive ways. Verbal language soon overtook physical gesturing as the primary means of communication for all human beings except Italians. (Earth (The Book), p. 36)

The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don't have access to most of human experience, and if you don't have access to experience, then you're not going to be able to think properly.

Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.

But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel , when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.

Language, as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God.

Language was not given to man: he seized it.

There's one thing that shows up on all of the lists of what makes us human: language. Our ability to share our thoughts and complex information with others far surpasses all the barks, squeaks and growls of our animal friends.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

Language is a living thing

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols

If you can't hear language, you won't be able to understand language and experience normal development. Every minute spent without hearing is a minute a child is not getting back.

My English isn't that good, maybe just 40 per cent fine by normal standards.

There isn't much doubt that like other animal societies, those of Homo sapiens involved plenty of cooperation, which might have been considerably enhanced, one would suppose, by the emergence of the remarkable instrument of language.

The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

Speech is reason's brother, and a kingly prerogative of man.