German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of...
In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to...
From this I think we can conclude that the definitive English holorime has yet to be written. However, an old children's riddle does seem to come close. It is the one that poses the question "How do...
Language is more fashion than science
The poems that used to entrance me in the days of Miss Violence now struck me as overdone and sickly. -the archaic language of unrequited love. I was irritated with such words, which rendered the...
Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of...
In France the most often used word is connerie, which means bullshit, and in America it's hands-down awesome, which has replaced incredible, good, and even just OK. Pretty much everything that isn't...
We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if...
I just like the feeling of finding the right word in my mind and employing it. I get pleasure from that feeling. I prefer language to gesture. I figured other people might, too.
What you should do, she told Fat during one of his darker hours, is get into studying the characteristics of the T-34. Fat asked what that was. It turned out that Sherri had read a book on Russion...
The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else's fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been...