perception of language Quotes

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color.

You can taste a word.

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.

[Nabokov's] language is made visible . . . like a veil or transparent curtain. You cannot help seeing the curtain as you peek into the intimate rooms behind.

what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.