Language Acquisiton Quotes

In the absence of either a widely accepted theory of language learning or a solid empirical base for classroom practice, teachers and learners have always been, and will always be, vulnerable to drastic pendulum swings of fashion, the coming and going of various unconventional and unlamented "Wonder Methods" being an obvious recent example. The sad truth is that after at least 2,000 years, most language teaching takes place on a wing and a prayer - sometimes successfully, but often a relative failure. ~ Michael H. Long

Anyone who has undergone home repair lately knows that your everyday artisan uses language so loosely and makes false promises so glibly as to make your politicians, even the presidential candidate, seem like a model of accuracy and rectitude. 'Be there Wednesday at nine,' the workman will tell you. It is a lie. He is humoring you. He says it to silence you, the way you tell a child you will take it to Disneyland if it will stop crying. ~ Mary McGrory

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us. ~ Alice Walker

Language has to be partly innate, simply because human babies are born with the ability to learn the language of their parents. While this can justifiably be called a language instinct, there is no one gene compelling us to produce language. Instead, a set of genetic settings gives rise to a set of behaviors and perceptual and cognitive biases, some of which may be more general and others of which are more language specific. ~ Christine Kenneally

The death of Walt Disney is a loss to all the people of the world. In everything he did, Walt had an intuitive way of reaching out and touching the hearts and mind of young and old alike. His entertainment was an international language.
For more than 40 years, people have looked to Walt Disney for the finest quality in family entertainment. There is no way to replace Walt Disney. He was an extraordinary man. Perhaps there will never be another like him ... The world will always be a better place because Walt Disney was its master showman. ~ Roy O. Disney

There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity. ~ Washington Irving

It is a sore point, because you do have advantages if you have access to more than one language. You also have problems, because on bad days you don't trust yourself , either in your first or second language, and so you feel like a complete halfwit. ~ W.G. Sebald

The lessons continued: for two days she taught him nothing but ways to call for help in every language in the world... ~ Neil Gaiman

I always knew Fitz would wind up writing; although I figured he'd be a poet or a storyteller. He would play with language the way other children played with stones and twigs, building structures for the rest of us to decorate with our imagination. ~ Jodi Picoult

The power of language transcends the need for survival, and the components of the human brain required for it are too complex and advanced to have developed over time. ~ Jonathan Merritt

Don't be ridiculous. Only one of the most condescending phrases in the English language ... and ~ Christine Pope

'Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic. ~ Tom Paulin

As a writer, I roll around in words the way cats roll around in catnip. ~ Gina Barreca

The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry. ~ Alice McDermott

That's how ideas and the institutions they generate come to be in the first place. It is in strings of words that we make ideas. The words, however, can say anything that the language permits, which, in our case, is quite a lot, so a string of words can just as easily express inanities as ideas. When inanities are expressed, we can discover them just by paying attention to the words. ~ Richard Mitchell

The four most important words in the English language are, "What do you think?" Listen to your people and learn. ~ J.W. "Bill" Marriott Jr.

I don't see myself as experimenting in any conscious way, it's perhaps that certain books require different densities of language. ~ John Scott

English is not merely a language anymore; it has become a way of life for millions of non-native English speakers around the world. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

We make bear sounds, talk bear language when we are in a fighting mood. "Harrnh"
and you are as good as gone. ~ John Fire Lame Deer

In such a society as ours the only possible chance for change, for mobility, for political, economic, and moral flow lies in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in the use of fictions, of language. ~ Kathy Acker

Reading him was like reading runes - apparently you had to know the language. ~ Rachel Lee

This is why the shaman is the remote ancestor of the poet and artist. Our need to feel part of the world seems to demand that we express ourselves through creative activity. The ultimate wellsprings of this creativity are hidden in the mystery of language. Shamanic ecstasy is an act of surrender that authenticates both the individual self and that which is surrendered to, the mystery of being. Because our maps of reality are determined by our present circumstances, we tend to lose awareness of the larger patterns of time and space. Only by gaining access to the Transcendent Other can those patterns of time and space and our role in them be glimpsed. ~ Terence McKenna

Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens. ~ Pierre Trudeau

When the meaning is unclear there is no meaning. ~ Marty Rubin

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. ~ Booker T. Washington

One of the most interesting results was part of a study my students and I conducted dealing with status in email correspondence. Basically, we discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status. ~ James W. Pennebaker

They call our language the mother tongue because the father seldom gets to speak. ~ George W. Bush

Russian is such a tough and complex language that I am happy enough to understand everything and read most things pretty well, but, without constant practice, my speech is not what I wish it was, and I would sooner write in crayon than write a letter in Russian. ~ David Remnick

Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight....what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughters, who wanted to be a writer. [I said], "Tell your daughter three things." Tell her to read...Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language. She may be paying attention to things in the words beyond anyone else's comprehension, things that feed her curiosity, her singular heart and mind. ...Second, I said, tell your daughter that she can learn a great deal about writing by reading and by studying books about grammar and the organization of ideas, but that if she wishes to write well she will have to become someone. She will have to discover her beliefs, and then speak to us from within those beliefs. If her prose doesn't come out of her belief, whatever that proves to be, she will only be passing along information, of which we are in no great need. So help her discover what she means.
Finally, I said, tell your daughter to get out of town, and help her do that. I don't necessarily mean to travel to Kazakhstan, or wherever, but to learn another language, to live with people other than her own, to separate herself from the familiar. Then, when she returns, she will be better able to understand why she loves the familiar, and will give us a fresh sense of how fortunate we are to share these things.
Read. Find out ~ Barry Lopez

To change your language you must change your life. ~ Derek Walcott

In 1989, I was awarded the Von Neumann Prize in Operations Research Theory by the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences. They cited my works in the areas of portfolio theory, sparse matrix techniques and the SIMSCRIPT programming language. ~ Harry Markowitz

It sometimes seems to me that a pestilence has struck the human race in its most distinctive faculty - that is, the use of words. It is a plague afflicting language, revealing itself as a loss of cognition and immediacy, an automatism that tends to level out all expression into the most generic, anonymous, and abstract formulas, to dilute meaning, to blunt the edge of expressiveness, extinguishing the sparks that shoots out from the collision of words and new circumstances. ~ Italo Calvino

Although I could lament in the language and feelings of David for Absalom, I am constrained to say, peace to his manes. Let us weep for the living, and not for the dead. ~ Andrew Jackson

This book is unlike any other prophecy book because most prophecy books rely on "man's best guess" on what the ancient prophets really wrote about. This book decodes the "mystery language"={152[of the]Lord almighty God]a secret language hidden in plain sight,within the bible that actual reveals the actual voice of Jesus explaining to Jonah=[43] the seer=[43] of the language=[43]of God=[43] how the endtimes will be like.The translation is infallible become it disregards any human component or opinion.Perfection is hard to explain but is to prove so to read free excerpts of this book upload www.the jonahprophecies.com hit "buy the book" section then hit the "excerpts from the book" section and nine free pagers will pop up appear.What is remarkable you will hear he voice of Christ as clear as day as you start reading.It's like a miracle. ~ Fred Paul Dello Iacono

Language has been mobilised and sent into battle; it directs the human carnage of conflict with its enunciation of emotion, stimulating souls to abandon peace. ~ Daniel S. Fletcher

Music, as many people have said, is the universal language. Of course points are made which make you think about things, but ultimately it makes you feel. And that's why people remember more songs that have meant something during their life than films. They start to define periods in your life, and that's kind of the beauty of it. ~ Scott Weiland

He was feeling totally lost, leaving his family and country for a place where he knew nobody and didn't even speak the language. ~ Patrick Mouratoglou

I see more now. As far as concepts, I know where teammates are going, linemen are going. I can read defensive fronts. I can read the body language of linebackers. I study film to see who's a bull rusher and who's a finesse rusher. I think I've learned. ~ Brandon Jacobs

Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that men can understand. ~ S.D. Gordon

Woman's Anthem
Women are fierce. They are powerful. No matter what language they speak, how they dress, or the work they choose to do. What matters is they have a choice, and the freedom to carve out a life for themselves.
As long as we know women who are strong and resilient, we must respect them, carry them forward, lift them up.
For they are the product of all our other selves, the women we were, the ones we strive to be, the collective struggle of our mothers, our sisters, our daughters.
Our salvation will only come if we stand together ~ Lang Leav

To convey in any existing language how I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean. ~ Mary-Louise Parker

The Holy Bible is the Spirit of God exposed to humanity in the Language of Heaven. ~ Felix Wantang

I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word. ~ Sven Birkerts

TGIF," I said aloud even though it was only Thursday. But I was alone in my apartment as far as I knew. I deliberately avoid making whimsical incorrect statements in public. You would be surprised at how many people get irritated if you say "TGIF" on the wrong day. By "people" I mean "English professors." To most English professors it would be inconceivable to say, "Thank God it's Friday" on a Thursday. I don't know if that's because they are strict adherents to the rules of language or if they are mentally ill. ~ Gary Reilly

We're all human, we should be respectful of others, and tolerant with each other. This matters more than whether we eat the same food or speak the same language. The skin colour does not make us different. It's easier to be with people that are different to you but have the same values than to be with people who appear similar to you but have different values." Sophie ~ Angela Nicoara