Language Acquisition Quotes

• Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Communication, Thinking, Shapes

  91 Copy quote

• A different language is a different vision of life.

  Federico Fellini

  Life, Work, Communication

  Federico Fellini, Bert Cardullo (2006). “Federico Fellini: Interviews”, p.180, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  101 Copy quote

  Show source

• Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.

  Roger Bacon

  Inspirational, Education, Wisdom

  86 Copy quote

• A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.

  Roger Ascham

  Men, Language Words, Excellence

  7 Copy quote

• As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

  Roger Ascham

  Men, Language Words, Wings

  47 Copy quote

• Dance is the hidden langauge of the soul, of the body.

  Martha Graham

  Inspirational, Dance, Art

  "Martha Graham Reflects on Her Art and a Life in Dance". archive.nytimes.com. March 31, 1985.

  103 Copy quote

  Show source

• Learn Languages the Right Way. Language acquisition games and abstract communicative method are bullshit. The second-best way to learn a foreign language is alone in a room doing skull-numbing rote memorization of vocabulary, grammar, key phrases, and colloquialisms. The best way is in bed.

  Chuck Thompson

  Vocabulary, Keys, Games

  6 Copy quote

• To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Two, Use, May

  "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D". Book by James Boswell, 1791.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some innate capacity - some part of the human genetic endowment - enters into language acquisition. That much is uncontroversial among those who believe that humans are part of the natural world. If it were not true, would be a miracle that my granddaughter reflexively identified some elements of the blooming buzzing confusion as language-related and went on to acquire capacities of the kind that you and I are now exercising, while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, bee...), presented with exactly the same data, could not take the first step, let alone the later ones.

  Noam Chomsky

  Believe, Exercise, Data

  Source: libcom.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is a nation without a mother tongue?

  Jack Edwards

  Mother, Tongue, Language

  20 Copy quote

• UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of thisfaculty as a 'language acquisition device,' an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Yield, Mind

  4 Copy quote