Linguistic Limitations Quotes

Life doesn't exist inside language: too bad for me.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

I have almost never written about my experience as a soldier on the battlefield, because I tried, and I found that it is beyond my capacity to describe the battlefield. The battlefield consists mostly of smells, and it is very difficult to describe smells in words - very difficult indeed.

The trouble with words is that they give us the illusory sense that we are making ourselves understood as well as understanding what others are saying. However, when we turn around and come face-to-face with our destiny, we discover that words are not enough.

I don't think words always lead to meaning, but the things you can create with them are still pretty amazing. I've been really into Joni Mitchell, for example, but I've also been into some studio stuff, like Bjork.

Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean].

A language is a map of our failures

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone"(117).

And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek.

I meet people overseas that know five languages - that the only language I'm comfortable in is English.

I want to start where language ends.

By and large, Americans close their ears to anything not in English. That's stupid because there's some great music around the world that we should be listening to.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

Acting in another language is great, and I've done that. But you can't do it as well as you can do it in your own language.

No language exists that cannot be misused... Every Interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.

The phone conversation where I haven't had a smoke, it's like trying to talk without using adverbs.

What we cannot think we cannot think, therefore we also cannot say what we cannot think.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

We sift reality through screens composed of ideas . (And such ideas have their roots in older ideas.) Such idea systems are necessarily limited by language , by the ways we can describe them. That is to say: language cuts the grooves in which our thoughts move. If we seek new validity forms (other laws and other orders) we must step outside language.

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

I don't speak French, but I took it for five years growing up. So, if I were in a situation where I had to be, like, 'Excuse me, pineapple dog house red, what time is it library?' - no problem.

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.