Language Specificity Quotes

Plainly, children learn their language. I don't speak Swahili. And it cannot be that my language is 'an innate property of our brain.' Otherwise I would have been genetically programmed to speak (some variety of) English.

I type a 101 words a minute. But it's in my own language.

There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

I'm German! Actually, I love my countr, ;I love the language. The German language is very special because it is so precise. There is a word for everything. There are so many wonderful words that other languages don't have. It is impressive to have such a rich language, and I love to work in that language.

For example, there's no word emocionó in English, so I have to say, "You, you really emotioned me," It's more precise, even though it sounds odd. "My father emotioned me." Or "That performance really emotioned to me."

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.

My favourite language, actually, is Czech, just because it's so colourful. We have so many combinations, words, and expressions. I have to say there are a lot of things which you can say in Czech, but you cannot really translate, because the meaning would make no sense.

My musical instrument is Hebrew and, to me, this is the most important fact about my writing. I write in words. I don write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors. I write in words. And my words are Hebrew words.

It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.

Hebrew is this unique thing that you cannot translate to any other language. It has to do with its history.

The language of the poem is the language of particulars.

My own view is that one cannot be religious in general any more than one can speak language in general; at any given moment one speaks French or English or Swahili or Japanese, but not 'language.

There's a specificity of language that's required in Shakespeare that most drama students in England deal with - a specificity of language that is somehow not as clear in a lot of American schools.

When we started on 'Power,' I was committed to respecting the differences among Spanish dialects: Dominican, Nuyorican, Mexican, etc. I wanted the language our characters spoke to be as specific as possible, to reflect New York as it is.

The chance to tell personal, language-specific, culturally specific stories is really flourishing on TV and I think it's just the nature of movies and international demands that you need to get a much bigger audience. TV is more like independent film was. The forms of adult drama and certain kinds of sophisticated comedy, there's no room for them in the tentpole movie universe.