Our native language is like a second skin, so much a part of us we resist the idea that it is constantly changing, constantly being renewed. — Casey Miller
When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience. — David Antin
Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club -the community of speakers of that language. — Frank Smith
We need a president who's fluent in at least one language. — Buck Henry
The only international language in the world is a child's cry. — Eglantyne Jebb
The accent implies your language and the manner implies your clan. — Thai Proverbs
To have another language is to possess a second soul. — Charlemagne
He who does not love his mother tongue is worse than a rotten fish. —
Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom. — Roger Bacon
When a person has an accent, it means he can speak one more language than you — Fernando Lamas
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing. — Claude Levi-Strauss
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing. — Claude LeviStrauss
When a foreigner swears in his own language, we are not offended. — Albanian Proverbs
Native Language Image Quotes
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Native American Quotes
Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. — Crazy Horse
If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew. — Pocahontas
Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State? — Robert E. Lee
A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one. — Crazy Horse
If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys. — Chief Dan George
May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong. — Chief Dan George
The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.
I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again. — Crazy Horse
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty. — Chief Joseph
We’re not Indians and we’re not Native Americans. We’re older than both concepts. We’re the people, we’re the human beings. — John Trudell
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
What Is Language Quotes
The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are. — Ludwig van Beethoven
The world is not the most pleasant place. Eventually, your parents leave you and nobody is going to go out of their way to protect you unconditionally. You need to learn to stand up for yourself and what you believe and sometimes, pardon my language, kick some ass. — Queen Elizabeth II
A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language. — Noam Chomsky
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously. — Julio Cortazar
It gives a message to people of love... it does not matter what's the colour of your skin, what language do you speak, what religion do you believe in. It is that we should all consider each other as human beings and we should respect each other. — Malala Yousafzai
What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language. — Miuccia Prada
Love will find its way through all languages on its own.
Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside? — Jackson Browne
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience. — Dale Carnegie
What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself — Amin Maalouf
One of my big philosophies is that fighting is the sport that crosses all borders. I don't care what color you are, what country you come from or what language you speak, fighting is in our DNA. We get it and we like it. — Dana White
Mother Tongue Quotes
I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue. — William Tyndale
A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians. — Garry Kasparov
Musical ability is not an inborn talent but an ability which can be developed. Any child who is properly trained can develop musical ability just as all children develop the ability to speak their mother tongue. The potential of every child is unlimited. — Shinichi Suzuki
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner. — William Cameron Townsend
Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It's the language of the soul. — Gabrielle Roth
For us Indians, I don't think English can ever exude that magic of emotions which our mother tongue can. — Kailash Kher
The ability to speak several languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless.
Symptoms are the body's mother tongue; signs are in a foreign language. — John Brown
I am not ashamed to reply to you in my mother tongue, however imperfectly, and am glad to be able to show that my fatherland means more to me than anything else — Bedrich Smetana
This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue. — Tahar Ben Jelloun
The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity. — Amin Maalouf
Native Country Quotes
When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I could not ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. Now what's the difference? — Jesse Owens
My dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heav'n is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content! — Robert Burns
I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language... Apache. — Steve Martin
In your silence, when there are no words, no language, nobody else is present, you are getting in tune with existence.
They say there are about 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. But if you ask a Native American, that number is more like 300 million. — David Letterman
That man's the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best. — Alfred Lord Tennyson
The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives. — Henry A. Wallace
There are hundreds of languages around the world, but a smile speaks them all.
Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike-brothers of one father and one another, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all. — Chief Joseph
The earth was created by the assistance of the sun, and it should be left as it was. The country was made without lines of demarcation, and it is no man's business to divide it. — Chief Joseph
I want to be understood by my country, but if I fail to be understood - what then?, I shall pass through my native land to one side, like a shower of slanting rain. — Vladimir Mayakovsky
With this lodging and diet our extreme toil in bearing and planting palisades so strained and bruised us and our continual labor in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause sufficient to have made us as miserable in our native country or any other place in the world — John Smith
Native Place Quotes
All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection. — James K. Polk
To make revolution in Korea we must know Korean history and geography as well as the customs of the Korean people. Only then is it possible to educate our people in a way that suits them and to inspire in them an ardent love for their native place and their motherland. — Kim Il-sung
The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place. — Arthur Schopenhauer
Music is the universal language of mankind.
To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. — Chief Seattle
True Democracy makes no enquiry about the color of the skin, or the place of nativity. Wherever it sees a man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights — Salmon P. Chase
Having a place means that you know what a place means...what it means in a storied sense of myth, character and presence but also in an ecological sense...Integrating native consciousness with mythic consciousness — Gary Snyder
We all smile in the same language.
Europe is a very different place from my native country of Colombia and my children are growing up in a very urban setting which is nothing like when I was growing up and would be able to play barefoot in the street. But we have a very good life. — Shakira
The danger is that you can wind up doing tourist pictures. I want to see it fresh and see the little bits of everyday life that a native might take for granted, but that are special to the place, while at the same time, not taking a picture that would be a tourist cliché. — Stephen Shore
It is our duty to preserve huge tracts of land in something resembling its native condition. The biological interactions necessary to insure the continuities of life are astonishingly complex, and cannot take place in islands of semiwilderness like the national parks. — William Kittredge
I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguays dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile. — Mario Benedetti
Foreign Language Quotes
If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann müssen sie Deutsch sprechen. — Willy Brandt
My neighbor has two dogs. One of them says to the other, "Woof!" The other replies, "Moo!" The dog is perplexed. "Moo? Why did you say 'Moo'?" The other dog says, "I'm trying to learn a foreign language." — Morey Amsterdam
Still, Lenin personally also forced through the deportation in fall 1922 of theologians, linguists, historians, mathematicians, and other intellectuals on two chartered German ships, dubbed the Philosophers’ Steamers. GPU notes on them recorded: “knows a foreign language,” “uses irony.” — Stephen Kotkin
Do you know what a foreign accent is? It's a sign of bravery. — Amy Chua
I speak the truth but I guess that's a foreign language to ya'll! — Lil Wayne
You can never understand one language until you understand at least two. — Geoffrey Willans
Independent India's leaders will neither use a foreign language nor rule from a remote place. — Vallabhbhai Patel
[When her daughter suggested the President refer in his conversation with foreign dignitaries about lawn care to 'fertilizer' instead of to 'manure':] But remember, it took me almost thirty years to get him to call it manure. — Bess Truman
I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does. — Jeanette Winterson
The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it. — Learned Hand
Native Quotes
I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land. — Thabo Mbeki
Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect — Frantz Fanon
We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories. — Cecil Rhodes
Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. Its five hundred years later and they still cant see us. We are still invisible. — John Trudell
Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. — Rigoberta Menchu
I am tired of talk that comes to nothing It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. It does not require many words to speak the truth. — Chief Joseph
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. — Geronimo
Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina. — Maria Tallchief
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. — Crazy Horse
There is a direct connection between violence against the Earth and violence against women. — Lee Maracle
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right. — Black Hawk
My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the greatness of the spirit that has always been the foundation of the Ojibwa people. — Norval Morrisseau
Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. — George Bernard Shaw
In the UK, most of the nasheeds that I did were in my native language, Urdu. Youngsters who could not understand the language came up to me... [and] said it was a great experience to just listen. That was actually very heart warming for me. — Junaid Jamshed
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. — Edsger Dijkstra
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. — Benjamin Lee Whorf
To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing. — Edith Piaf
A Swedish physicist can not discuss his work with fifty people unless he goes abroad. A Swedish economist can get opinions and instructions in his native language from thousands upon thousands of his fellow citizens. — George Stigler
We already knew that kids learned computer technology more easily than adults, It is as if children were waiting all these centuries for someone to invent their native language. — Jaron Lanier
We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II to see the value that Native languages bring not only to their culture, but to the security of all Americans. — Rick Renzi
So, rather than becoming multicultural, rather than becoming a person of several languages, rather than becoming confident in your knowledge of the world, you become just the opposite. You end up in college having to apologize for the fact that you no longer speak your native language. — Richard Rodriguez
My dad is a minister, and my mum is a worker with the less fortunate and the disabled. They're Nigerian natives. Their first language is Yoruba, and their second language is English. — John Boyega
A woman who utters such disgusting and depressing noise has no right to be anywhere, no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech, that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible. Don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. — Rex Harrison
Today, getting people to hear your story on social media, and then act on it, requires using a platform’s native language, paying attention to context, understanding the nuances and subtle differences that make each platform unique, and adapting your content to match. — Gary Vaynerchuk
For me, chess is a language, and if it's not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age. — Garry Kasparov
We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically. — William Hazlitt
Only idiots and infants need things. The language of needs is the native tongue of socialists, therapists, and paternalists of all sorts and is addressed to needy dependents. The language of wants is spoken by self-respecting adults and is addressed to other self-respecting adults. — Thomas Szasz
The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forgo; And now my tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony. — William Shakespeare
I have a high regard for Native languages and the pivotal role they have played in our nation's history — Rick Renzi
From the moment of birth, babies cry in the accent of their mother's native language. — Annie Murphy Paul
Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very possibly they make the same mistakes in their own speech, but they know-unconsciously, not as a set of rules they learned in school-when a sentence is incorrect. — Peter Farb
Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America. — Jack Kerouac
Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker. — Ann Patchett
all the French speak French - even the children. Many Americans and Britishers who visit the country never quite adjust to this, and the idea persists that the natives speak the language just to show off or be difficult. — Olivia De Havilland
Above all, translators must be native speakers. It’s not because they speak the language better – I understand that sometimes a foreigner can learn a language better than native speakers. It has more to do with intimate knowledge of the society for which the book is being translated. — Sergei Lukyanenko
Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends, who can never alter or forsake,Who for inconstant roving have no power,And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,--Let me return to you; this turmoil endingWhich worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,And, o'er your old familiar pages bending,Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,Fancies, the audible echo of my own,'Twill be like hearing in a foreign climeMy native language spoke in friendly tone,And with a sort of welcome I shall dwellOn these, my unripe musings, told so well. — Caroline Norton
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. — Benjamin Lee Whorf
They jabbered amongst themselves in a bizarre jibberish that sounded like Spanish gone wrong: maybe gringo Spanglish, some kind of Espanahuatl that I hadn’t decoded yet, or a dialect of Spanmayan, Zapotecnish, Spanotomi, Mixtecnish, or some other new native language; or Japanish, Spanorean or…I’m getting carried away. You need a talent for picking up new words and grammars these days-it’s become an obsession with me, someday I’ll probably write a book about it, but in what language? — Ernest Hogan
My dad is a minister and my mum is a worker with the less fortunate and the disabled. They're Nigerian natives. Their first language is Yoruba, and their second language is English. My mum and dad moved to London when they had my eldest sister. They started a life in London as immigrants, and they built up from there. They're no actors in my family, but there are definitely animated black people in my family. — John Boyega
I make the case in the book that Standard English, that language we all aspire to live and move and have our being within, is actually based on a fiction. It's not anyone's native way of speaking or writing. That's why we have to take classes in it. Language is just really squishy. — Kory Stamper
That is the beauty when I discovered the label 'Touched With Fire.' That book defined it for me, I could be that. And we just happen to be living in one age of society that put these various labels on the condition. In Aristotle's time, it was the 'inspired state.' In the Native American cultures, you were the shaman. Labels and language creates realities, even if they are false. — Paul Dalio
On the one hand, there is no question that English - frequently bad English - has become the universal language of scholarship. It is clearly a tremendous handicap for people outside of the United States, Britain, and Australia and a few other countries because few of them are native speakers, but we demand that they present and publish in English. — Henry Rosovsky
Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown. — William Hazlitt
The United States, a land of immigrants from every corner of the world, has been strengthened and unified because its newcomers have historically chosen ultimately to forgo their native language for the English language. We have all benefited from the sharing of ideas, of cultures and beliefs, made possible by a common language. We have all enriched each other. — S. I. Hayakawa
We cannot rely on our native tongue if our spouse does not understand it. If we want them to feel the love we are trying to communicate, we must express it in his or her primary love language. — Gary Chapman
English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us. — Willard Van Orman Quine
Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language. — Laurence Sterne
Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right. — George Santayana
Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With the computer and programming languages, mathematics has newly-acquired tools, and its notation should be reviewed in the light of them. The computer may, in effect, be used as a patient, precise, and knowledgeable "native speaker" of mathematical notation. — Kenneth E. Iverson
It was hard for me to do the show (All-American Girl) because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show and the host said, "Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?" So I looked at the camera and said, "Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate." — Margaret Cho
Post-wounded women know that postures of pain play into limited and outmoded conceptions of womanhood. Their hurt has a new native language spoken in several dialects: sarcastic, jaded, opaque; cool and clever. They guard against those moments when melodrama or self-pity might split their careful seams of intellect, expose the shame of self-absorption without self-awareness. — Leslie Jamison
No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth. — Thomas Jefferson
In Conclusion
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