Language Comprehension Quotes

To be functionally fluent in a language, for instance, in most cases you need about 1,200 words. To acquire a total of vocabulary words, if you really train someone well they can acquire 200 to 300 words a day, which means that in a week they can acquire the vocabulary necessary to speak a language.

For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating.

That is not good language which all understand not.

I can speak French but I cannot understand it.

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

What's always a challenge for me is that my Spanish is not the level of my English. Nor do I read in Spanish the way I read in English.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.

When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.

I can't speak much Italian. I do go down well over there, but it's frustrating because I can't really speak it. Even if I do talk, they can't understand my accent, but I should try to learn it.

...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

...language is not the frosting, it's the cake.

Sometimes people have a difficult time understanding my English.

I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear. "Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.

Language is the light of the mind

You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.

I don't feel I have an issue with listening or understanding English in any sort of way.

I've got a little baby, I made him...He doesn't speak, he's 2...He's a slow learner, he's only got 2 words...car and map...I'm slightly worried he's trying to escape. If his next word is passport we are in serious trouble!

I don't speak but understand Gujarati.

We're actually more popular in the U.K.; they really get us, and in Australia. In the non-English speaking countries, they don't really get it.

Grammar is what gives sense to language .... sentences make words yield up their meaning. Sentences actively create sense in language. And the business of the study of sentences is grammar.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like 'and' that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.