Peter Farb Quotes

Language changes and moves in a different direction evolving all the time. Where a lot of people see deterioration, I see expressive development

Speakers of English love to invent and reinvent the language.

Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.

The ways in which language changes never ceases to interest me.

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.

Natural languages generally are not designed by humans, they're just designed by the participants and you say something new and somebody else says, "Oh, that's a cool way to say it," and the next thing you know, everyone is saying it because it's shiny.

Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

I definitely do see language serving its users, and when it no longer serves them we need to look for new words.

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law

Language changes very fast.

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.

Language itself changes slowly, but the Internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly.

In my mind, if you went back to the Middle Ages, in Italy they'd be speaking Middle Age Italian. And at that point, it would obviously be indecipherable for us, but for the people of that time, it was just normal talking.

The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.

Changes in language often reflect the changing values of a culture.

The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

If words are to change their meanings, as assuredly they are, let each user of language make such changes as please himself, put up his own suggestions, and let the best win.

Language is a living thing

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

The revival of Hebrew, as a spoken language, is a fascinating story, which I'm afraid I cannot squeeze into a few sentences. But, let me give you a clue. Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.