Language Quote by Robert Lane Greene

““America’s short-lived experiment with language planning is so obscure to modern memory that while the Klingon language has a 3,000-word entry on Wikipedia, as of this writing, the American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres has no entry at all.””

Robert Lane Greene

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Language

More by Robert Lane Greene

“Peeves are like that: my peeves are law, yours are unhealthy obsessions.”

Robert Lane Greene

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“Only 8000 different words appear in the Hebrew Bible, compared to the 20,000 or more that the average adult needs to know in most languages.”

Robert Lane Greene

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“If you look at the historical record, you will find that language has always been in decline. Which means, really, and it never has.”

Robert Lane Greene

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“to form such harsh unharmonious Sounds, that none but a Northern Ear could endure: They”

Robert Lane Greene

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“Arguments about language are usually arguments about politics, disguised and channeled through one of our most distinctive markers of identity.”

Robert Lane Greene

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“Afrikaans was the language of the white minority in South Africa, and the forced learning of it created resentment among blacks. Even so, Nelson…

Robert Lane Greene

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“I think flexibility, humility, and multilingualism should take the place of sticklerism, arrogance, and nationalism when we think about language. I”

Robert Lane Greene

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“Virtually anything can be translated—“X cannot be translated” usually means nothing more exciting than “We have a word, X, that you need three or…

Robert Lane Greene

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“I'd start to explain with the outward sheepish and inner pride of the nerd.”

Robert Lane Greene

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“Knowing the difference between “infer” and “imply” is no more likely to create a skeptical, bullshit-detecting citizen than knowing the atomic weight of uranium…

Robert Lane Greene

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“It is possible to communicate beautifully or boringly, in every language on Earth. But people don't like to believe this. They make self-aggrandizing myths…

Robert Lane Greene

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“Language is not law; it is in fact a lot like music. Speech is jazz – first you learn the basic rules, and then…

Robert Lane Greene

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Explore all 36 Robert Lane Greene quotes

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Usually male directors have to use foul language to get the job done. But I never came down to that level as being a…

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A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around.…

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“I only have two words to say More or Less”

TimBur

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It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language.

Samuel Barnett

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I am attracted to looking at the different things language can mean even in one sometimes quite ordinary utterance. Writing is partly about listening…

Rae Armantrout