Language Transmission Quotes

We of French origin have the sentiment of our own individuality. We want to hand down to our children the language we received from our forefathers.

Language is capable of becoming the objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience, which it can then preserve in time and transmit to following generations.

My grandmother was German. She didn't teach any of her children German. She really wanted them to be American. And now, she's since passed away, I get so frustrated sometimes. I'm like, "Oh, Oma, why didn't you teach your kids German?" My dad would have spoken German to me from birth, and I would have spoken German.

I speak Spanish to my children and they speak it better than me.

How or by what magic is it, that we convey our thoughts to one another with such case and accuracy?

I do not share the wish to see my language dead and decently buried.

Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next.

Most of my family speaks fluent Malayalam.

What is unusual about Earth is that language, literally, has become alive. It has infested matter. It is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.

Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides.

Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.

As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.

Language is an archaeological vehicle... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

I tweeted once, and I still stick to this, that I would love to marry a Croatian girl. I want my children to speak Croatian first, and for them to do that, we need someone who speaks very good Croatian.

I always speak Welsh to my family.