Quotes & Sayings About Different Languages

Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locations and for all times. — Jaquelin T. Robertson

Mother made sure her little kids were subjected to a strict routine. We were given a timetable which covered our every waking moment, copies of which were posted by our bedside, in the sitting room and in the kitchen. Story hour meant that mother would read us novels and short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde and Edmondo de Amicis. Soon we graduated to Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev. She read them to us in Chinese and I never realised until much later that the writers wrote them in different European languages. Comics were absolutely forbidden and so were Enid Blyton adventures and pop music ... Lee Cyn and I soon went to a primary school nearby ... After mother's rigorous timetable, school became fun and easy-going. — Ang Swee Chai

The world is complex, and we capture it with different languages, each appropriate to the process that we are describing. — Carlo Rovelli

You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees' convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch. — Carol Goodman

I woke up find a rather noisy multi-lingual meeting going on. This was great as everyone could participate and even though everything had to be translated into about four different languages it never became boring. After a while the meeting broke up and everyone went for food. — John Blair

Languages are fluffy big pillows stuffed between nations - what others say is muffled and nearly lost in them, and when we speak their grammar we get feathers in our mouth. It's worth it. What pleasure to phrase an idea, even in child's words, slowly, and sail it across the gulf in another language to a different-speaking human being! — Richard Bach

Life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
and beautiful lies all in different languages. — Frank O'Hara

Conversation can be as mutually incomprehensible as foreign languages. We need the different and complementary perspectives of the various yogas - and ideally of all religions - not only to reach God but to reach each other. — Huston Smith

A whirlwind tour, I think, with each day starting in a different city, you wearing a different silk dress, tasting food the likes of which you cannot even imagine and learning how to weave your word-spells in all the world's languages. — Lisa Mantchev

We all have different languages; but we all really mean the same thing. — C.S. Lewis

The formation of different languages and of distinct species and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel. — Charles Darwin

One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here! — June Jordan

What I'm interested in doing in a story is bringing certain different languages, people, events together and then letting the reader make what he wants of it. — Grace Paley

Matthias knew if he started trailing after Nina on missions like some kind of watchdog, she'd put her hands on those glorious hips and demonstrate her knowledge of profanity in several different languages. — Leigh Bardugo

It is a curiously moving experience, to hear 350 sailors uttering the words "Oh shit!" in eleven different languages. — John Biggins

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

Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of 'I' and we're all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering. — Dalai Lama

The soft throb and glow roused in my breast by the gilt letters of four or five different languages winking at me from scores of handsomely tooled bindings - the sight of so much knowledge so beautifully presented - swiftly flamed out. — Ross King

Different languages cut the world into different slices. — Jean Berko Gleason

Greek is a wonderfully rich and expressive language, which makes it one of the harder of the European tongues to learn. The active vocabulary is much bigger than other European languages. The constructions and the different endings are not easy to master, especially if you are an English speaker. — John Mole

Although mathematical notation undoubtedly possesses parsing rules, they are rather loose, sometimes contradictory, and seldom clearly stated. [ ... ] The proliferation of programming languages shows no more uniformity than mathematics. Nevertheless, programming languages do bring a different perspective. [ ... ] Because of their application to a broad range of topics, their strict grammar, and their strict interpretation, programming languages can provide new insights into mathematical notation. — Kenneth E. Iverson

Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something. The Arabs are the only ones who've figured this out. They have the sense to call non-Arabic versions of the Criterion interpretations, not translations. — G. Willow Wilson

And not only that but ... when the station is completed, there will be an international crew made of astronauts coming from different cultural experiences, speaking different languages, but working together for a common goal. — Umberto Guidoni

Mr. Deacon, on the other hand, was in favour of abolishing, or ignoring, the existing world entirely, with a view to experimenting with one of an entirely different order. He was a student of Esperanto (or, possibly, one of the lesser-known artificial languages), intermittently vegetarian, and an advocate of decimal coinage. — Anthony Powell

We all have different needs, thoughts, ideas, visions, languages, colors, and creeds, but we all want peace and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

I wanted to show the world, and myself too, what I can do. I came up in the world of Philadelphia soul, but I'm fluent in a lot of languages musically and I like working with different people from different generations. — Daryl Hall

I chose 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective,' or I'll say it chose me, and it was an absolute blessing, for the experience of being in Africa for seven months and learning so many different things, from languages to foods to greetings. On so many levels, it was an incredible experience. — Jill Scott

I grew up doing a lot of traveling. My mom left home when she was 15 and traveled to 48 different countries and speaks six different languages. So I grew up with my eyes open. She raised me so that if my heart says something is wrong, I have to go help. What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. — Q'orianka Kilcher

When I meet people in different parts of the world, I am always reminded that we are all basically alike. We are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different color or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness. — Dalai Lama XIV

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. — Kofi Annan

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective."

"Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture."

"Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners and offering separate worship services according to musical preference."

"Ultimately, our aim is to draw attention to the biblical narrative from which comes to the strength for the long road of reconciliation. — Joy Moore

Programming is not all the same. Normal written languages have different rhythms and idioms, right? Well, so do programming languages. The language called C is all harsh imperatives, almost raw computer-speak. The language called Lisp is like one long, looping sentence, full of subclauses, so long in fact that you usually forget what it was even about in the first place. The language called Erlang is just like it sounds: eccentric and Scandinavian. — Robin Sloan

My research suggests that men and women may speak different languages that they assume are the same, using similar words to encode disparate experiences of self and social relationships. Because these languages share an overlapping moral vocabulary, they contain a propensity for systematic mistranslation ... — Carol Gilligan

Yes, we are all different. Different customs, different foods, different mannerisms, different languages, but not so different that we cannot get along with one another. If we will disagree without being disagreeable. — J. Martin Kohe

We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species. But imagine the possibilities. Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. We don't have to figure out everything by ourselves: there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us. Imagine how much less lonely the world would be. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

The effects of abuse are devastating and far-reaching. Domestic violence speaks many languages, has many colours and lives in many different communities. — Sandra Pupatello

Science and religion were not enemies, but rather allies - two different languages telling the same story, a story of symmetry and balance ... heaven and hell, night and day, hot and cold, God and Satan. Both science and religion rejoiced in God's symmetry ... the endless contest of ight and dark. — Dan Brown

I had a foretaste of another, larger kind of knowledge: one I believe human beings will be able to access in ever larger numbers in the future. But conveying that knowledge now is rather like a chimpanzee, becoming human for a single day to experience all of the wonders of human knowledge, and then returning to one's chimp friends and trying to tell them what it was like knowing several different Romance languages, the calculus, and the immense scale of the universe. — Eben Alexander

After 'Sesame Street,' it's a hyper-familiar world to me and I have this childlike ability to ignore the fact that I'm talking to scraps of cloth. Every country I go to, I see posters promoting the film in different languages. 'Los Muppets' - I love that! — Feist

We all arrive by different streets, by unequal languages, at Silence. — Pablo Neruda

I had an ear for languages, and I could read before I could adequately wash myself. I probably could have vied with Jeanette for the number one spot, but I'd seen what happened if you gave in to your natural aptitudes. This wasn't like the woods, where you had to be your fastest and your strongest and your bravest self. Different sorts of calculations were required to survive at the home. — Karen Russell

I think I can work with different crews; I've worked with Bulgarian, Norwegian, Japanese, and Chinese crews. For me, the most important thing is the storytelling, and I'm really comfortable working with all kinds of languages. — Isabel Coixet

Language is a personality as well. People are different when they speak different languages. — David Bezmozgis

Religion and philosophy have different logics, speak different languages. Their logics are mutually exclusive, languages sometimes overlapping. It is hard to find something really common in them. I think I
a man in totally unconditional pursuit of happiness, whatever it is, wherever it lies
am only supposed to consider which of them has more in common with life! — Raheel Farooq

At present, the most effective way of preventing war would be for statesmen to direct politics so as to support a sound nationalism. This leads to concordance between people of kindred race and languages, whereas the conquest and coercion of people of different race and language inevitably lead to new wars. — Ellen Key

A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread. — David Crystal

Everywhere you are a stranger.' Finished Iskra with seeming carelessness, and quickly and unceremoniously placed a beret with turkey feathers on her head. 'An Outsider everywhere and always different. How shall we call you, little hawk?' Ciri looked into her eyes. 'Gvalch'ca.' The elf laughed. 'Once you start to speak, you speak in multiple languages, little hawk! Very good. You will carry the name from the Elder People, a name that you yourself have chosen. You will be called Falka. — Andrzej Sapkowski

Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man seven different ways with her bare hands, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl. — Ally Carter

I tried to learn the languages - Italian, Spanish, and German - not to successfully. Working on a European set isn't a hell of a lot different from working on an American set. — Lee Van Cleef

What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth. — Mark Abley

I've never been in any country for more than four years, and I'm learning different languages all the time. It gives you a different attitude. — Santiago Cabrera

Every religion implies that it treats the problem of being and nonbeing, life and death. Their languages are different, but they speak about the same things. — Mircea Eliade

Often, architects work too hard trying to make their buildings look different. It's like we're actors let loose on a stage, all speaking our parts at the same time in our own private languages without an audience. — David Chipperfield

Everyone on the set has a mobile phone, and I found by pushing a few buttons, they could be programmed into different languages. I fixed Robbie's (Coltrane) to speak in Turkish. — Daniel Radcliffe

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think. — G. Willow Wilson

I've done so many interviews over the years in so many different languages. Radios. Papers. Magazines. There's always another interview to do. It's quite something, I have to say. — Roger Federer

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages. — N. Scott Momaday

I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal ... It was a way of getting close to different languages, of feeling connected to writers very distant from me in space and time. — Jhumpa Lahiri

He disliked English, not because they had invaded his country, but because of the effort required to understand their different languages and customs. At the same time, he was in no hurry for them to leave, for he admired them, most of the time, not for the modernity they were establishing but for the business opportunities they brought with them. — Leila Aboulela

You was in all sorts of places, huh?" "Yeah, I was. Saw the world." "What'd you think of it?" "Different languages, same shit. — Dennis Lehane

These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another- yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago. — Milton Friedman

"We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well? ... " — Mikhail Bulgakov

To expand our minds and to become more fully civilized members of the human race, we should learn as many different languages as we can. The diversity of tongues is a treasure and a resource for thinking new thoughts. — David Bellos

Shakespeare is repeated around the world in different languages, just because it's good storytelling. — Cary Fukunaga

So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya. — Haruki Murakami

He sang 'Stairway to Heaven' in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood. — Sherman Alexie

We were born between blood and gunpowder; and between blood and gunpowder we were raised. Every so often the powerful from other lands came to rob us of tomorrow. For this reason it was written in a war song that unites us: "If a foreigner with his step ever dares to profane your land, think, Oh beloved motherland, that heaven gave you a soldier in each son." For this reason we fought. With flags and different languages the foreigner came to conquer us. He came and he went. — Subcomandante Marcos

Sometimes I am a different character in different languages. I have different enjoyment from them. Sometimes different answers come out of me. Like, I didn't even know that about me. I get to know myself through different languages, actually. — Roger Federer

The last of Zahhara's patients died that night. In the end it happened very quickly. About half of them had been human, the others different alien species, but it didn't make a difference. In the last moments some of the nonhumans had reverted to their native languages, some had clutched her hand and talked to her passionately- if brokenly, through uncontrollable coughing-as if she were some family member or loved one, and she'd listened and nodded even if she didn't understand a word of it. — Joe Schreiber

After using four different languages on an album, it's tough to decide which one I'm gonna actually learn to speak. I always study the lyric, make sure I know what I'm singing, and try to get the pronunciation as perfect as possible. — Josh Groban

Music is language itself. It should not have any barriers of caste, creed, language or anything. Music is one, only cultures are different. Music is the language of languages. It is the ultimate mother of languages. — A.R. Rahman

Sometimes we speak different languages, but our hearts are the same. — Mykyta Isagulov

A lot of people know about the power of the WWE brand. We're in 145 countries in 30 different languages. We reach about 650 million households worldwide on a global weekly basis. But what they don't know about WWE is that we use all of that power to give back to the community through events like Hurricane Sandy Relief. — Stephanie McMahon

Falling for someone romantically is more complex. Many
of the old classic languages refer to three different types
of love or affection. Roughly translated, they include
general, brotherly and sexual love. When all three are
present, a relationship is indeed rich. — Nicholas Boothman

Even in India the Hindi film industry might be the best known but there are movies made in other regional languages in India, be it Tamil or Bengali. Those experiences too are different from the ones in Bombay. — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

The Bible was written in several languages, embraces many literary forms, and reflects cultures very different from our own. These are important considerations for properly understanding the Bible in its context. — Troy Perry

I don't think the public here buy this idea that women and men speak different comedic languages. — Chris O'Dowd

A person's native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training. — Ken Robinson

I don't know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people's websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries. — Tim Berners-Lee

A minute passes as we enter Little Tokyo. It's kind of similar to what you see in the movies, with a lot of signs in different languages with "engrish" translations underneath and those big red gates with the curved wood on top, whatever they're called. The passing people on the street are, understandably, largely of Asian descent.
... I get a couple looks, but I suspect it's 'cause my hair is a variety of shades not seen outside of an anime. — Vaughn R. Demont

five different love languages: quality time, the giving of gifts, acts of service, physical touch, or words of encouragement. — Kate Kennedy

So these are the kind of things that now when people are trying to move towards multiracial congregations that they're stressing. They're talking about these scriptures that say we ought to come together, and that at Pentecost, when that the Holy Spirit is said to have come upon the first Christians, they were given the ability to speak in different languages, and so that no matter who the people were, they could all worship together. — Michael Emerson

We humans, as species, are interested in communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Would not a good beginning be improved communication with terrestral intelligence, with other human beings of different cultures and languages, with the great apes, with the dolphines, but particularly with those intelligent masters of the deep, the great whales? — Carl Sagan

I'm certainly curious about people. As a kid, I moved around a lot. I was raised in a lot of different places, and thanks to working in the movies, I've gotten to keep traveling. I've always been interested in other cultures and languages. — Viggo Mortensen

God is God, but he has various names in different languages, and each strand of monotheistic religion has multiple ways of describing the godhead. — Jay Parini

I think it[3D] should be used as a new artistic form, not as a gimmick, not to impress you but the existence of an environment that you view as a theatrical dramatic experience is - you don't just have the X-Y axis, you have the Z and that makes a difference. You still have the framing, you still use lenses, so most of the cinematic rules and languages still apply but I think it's a different existence. — Ang Lee

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects. — Albert Einstein

They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews. — Margaret Mitchell

I am a tale, I am a book, written in different languages and styles

I can't be read, can't be understood,
neither by me nor the greatest of minds

I am too big, I am too small, to be processed or seen by the naked eye

I am too dim, I am too bright, to appear in the shadows or the sunshine. — Sanober Khan

INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said. — Ambrose Bierce

We talk different languages, eat different foods, but all humanity has one ancestor, which started from one person, which started from one god. — Ashraf Barhom

The basic script of an agonist tending, an antagonist reacting, played out in different combinations and outcomes, underlies the meaning of the causal constructions in most, perhaps all, of the world's languages. And in language after language, the prototypical force-dynamic scenario-an antagonist directly and intentionally causing a passive agonist to change from its intrinsic state-gets pride of place in the language's most concise causative construction. — Steven Pinker

Language is artificial, but our feelings are natural, inner, and universal. There are many languages, but feelings are the same for everyone. We can only describe it in different ways. A poet tries to sing the song of these feelings in different tunes with different music mixing with the inner emotions of the reader. — Debasish Mridha

Humanity must never lose hope. Our present conflicts and differences are difficult but not hopeless. We cannot expect people of such different races, cultures, languages, ways of life and beliefs, who have lived for thousands of years separated from each other to suddenly love each other and work together harmoniously. It takes time and patience. We must work on it stubbornly and not throw in the towel. — Robert Muller

For reasons he had never understood, she read a different newspaper each morning, spanning the political spectrum from right to left, and languages from French to English. Years ago, when he had first met her and understood her even less, he had asked about this. Her response, he came to realize only years later, made perfect sense: 'I want to see how many different ways the same lies can be told.' Nothing he had read in the ensuing years had come close to suggesting that her approach was wrong. — Donna Leon

Typefaces are to the written word what different dialects are to different languages. — Steven Heller

One of the things that was really influential early on was Ezra Pound's Cantos, one poem he worked on for 50 years. It's epic. I had a great deal of difficulty understanding it. One of the problems was you'd be reading along in English and he would move to a Chinese ideogram or French-he actually used seven different languages in a given poem. And for somebody who's not fluent in different languages it has the impact of rupturing your way of understanding something. — Richard Misrach

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms. — John Millington Synge

I don't know ... we seemed to click right away, you know? And he's so kind but determined to protect you and me both, and well, he's nice to look at. Even with the "scar. It's kind of sexy."
I chuckled. "Do you know how that scar got there?"
She giggled. "Yeah. He told me Tristan gave it to him. But it sounded like he deserved it. Jax can be ... well, he's Jax. But I think I love him."
"I'm sure the accent has nothing to do with it." She seemed to have a thing for those.
"Oh, my God. You should hear him talk dirty with that accent of his!"
I clapped my hand over my "mouth to cover a laugh. "I don't want to know that!"
"Yes, you do. Doesn't Tristan ever talk dirty to you in all those different languages he knows?"
Hmm ... funny how I'd never thought about it. He was holding out on me! That would have to change. Next time, I swore I'd make him do it. Whenever next time might be ... — Kristie Cook

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist. — John Stuart Mill