this is a record for me

Posting two days in a row. I finished a book and I am so proud of myself. The book is "The Genius of Language" that I blogged about yesterday. I found some great quotes in it:

I worry about the power of language: that if one says anything enough times – in any language – it might become true. Amy Tan

she was discussing how people make generalizations about ethnic groups from their language - There are no words for yes and no in Chinese, so they must be very wishy-washy people. She argued that they may not have these words, but Chinese has more exact sayings depending on the context. 

Anyone who is not fluent in a strange language sheds about 30 to 40 IQ points; that’s quite a dive, which few intellects will be able to sustain without some damage to their underlying ego. Bert Keizer

this is so true; you feel like such an idiot when first learning a language. 

There is a vast difference between showing someone the way to the railway station in English and showing him the way to Plato. This is often overlooked by city-map speakers. Bert Keizer

Once again very insightful from a non-linguist: the difference between being able to converse casually and carry on an academic conversation - and your awareness of the difference.  

I believe there is genius in every language. It does not matter how many people speak it: the genius of a language is not dependent on the quantity of its speakers.

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

This from a man who was actually jailed for simply writing in his native language. 

Returning to Italian writing after gorging on this diet of English was like returning to milk toast after scones and clotted cream. I loved the accumulation of adjectives that a language so rich in words could indulge in, instead of the nuances in the repetition of the same adjectives that gives Italian its power. I loved the exaggeration of English, the curlicues of language, its baroque quality. Many of the churches, much of the painting, and people’s gesturing in Italy are baroque. But the language itself is severe: its beauty lies in elegant simplicity and the hypnotic power of its sound. And when it is distorted by the wrong rhetoric in an attempt to “enrich it,” it becomes impenetrable without gaining power. English has to work to be elegant and simple, because its sounds are rarely, if ever, as spellbinding as Italian, and so much of its nature is tortuous.

M. J. Fitzgerald

I like this description of the advantages and disadvantages of one language over another; English has a huge vocabulary which can be used to express slight nuance, but the sound, or music, of the language is maybe not its best feature.

And I live on, not feeling whole in Korean or in English. For me, one language is complementary to the other, one always lacking a capacity that the other has. And I have a fear, constantly, of not quite being understood in just one language: Do you know what I am trying to say? Do you know who I am?

Ha-Yun Jung

ah, the perils of bilingualism...

For a poet or a novelist the distinction between what was remembered and what was imagined and made up is shadowy and unimportant. What matters is the irresistible, magnetic force exerted by a place, by a language, and, I will add, by a literature.

Louis Begley

beautiful sentence (for English, anyway). When one writes about a place of their youth, is it important to get every detail right, or just make the story "magnetic?"

Ok, off to work on my research for my Capstone. If I come across any interesting quotes in my articles about articles, I'll let you know (but don't hold your breath....)