"Linguist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confinements, half irritating, half comic, to which he may be subjected, do not bother the war correspondent of the old world nearly as much as do the foreign languages which, if he is not a good linguist, hamper him every hour of every day. He really should possess the gift of tongues—be conversant with all European languages, a neat assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African tongues, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... thorough-going mother, and no linguist. She really is improved, and I like her more really than ever I could, poor dear. I believe her head was once quite turned, and that he influenced her entirely, and made her forget everything else; but she has a heart, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... big girl, six years old, and tall for her age, when her parents settled down in England. She first spoke Italian, and picked up Italian ways from her nurse, an old party who was devotedly attached to her. Even Alan was a good Italian linguist, and given to foreign manners when a little chap. But Harrow soon knocked them out ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... Carolina. In 1824 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry at West Point, a position which he held but a few months. In 1854 he was appointed State Geologist of Wisconsin, and died at Hazel Green, in that state. Dr. Percival was eminent as a geographer, geologist, and linguist. He began to write poetry at an early age, and his fame rests chiefly upon his writings in this department. In his private life, Percival was always shy, modest, and somewhat given to melancholy. Financially, his life was one of struggle, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and prominent members of the Ethical Society, some of them New York financiers who had come from East Side sweat shops. Perhaps the most eager opponent of the closed shop in their body was a cosmopolitan young manufacturer, a linguist and "literary" man, interested in "style" from every point of view, who had introduced into the New York trade from abroad a considerable number of the cloak designs now widely worn throughout America. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... reached our hotel again we found the elite of the town waiting in the bar-room for us. There was a huge jolly Greek priest, all big hat and velvet, the prefect, the schoolmaster, a linguist, and the little black-hatted man whom we had ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... was a genial and indulgent employer, so probably young Borrow found little to prevent him from bringing Ab Gwilym into company with Blackstone: by adopting the law the ardent young linguist had not ceased to be Lav-engro; indeed, the acquisition of languages was his chief pursuit. He already knew, in a way, Latin, Greek, Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, and what Dr. Knapp calls "the broken jargon" then current in England ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... Stevenson is proving a serious rival to Principal MacAlister as a linguist. Sir Daniel yesterday addressed public gatherings in English, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... Barwick in Elmet in the same county. He held both these livings till his death, which took place in 1615. By his Will he left his body "to be buried when and where it shall please God." He was no mean linguist for he bequeathed his Hebrew Bible and a Syriac Testament as well as Greek, Latin and Italian works to his brother. His books of Phisick and Philosophie he bequeathed to his sonne Titus Bright, M.D. He was fond of music and possessed the standard work on harmony ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... liver-colored linguist. 'They just tell me in the town. Verree bad act that Senor O'Connor make fight with General Tumbalo. Yes, general Tumbalo great soldier ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... ethnological misuse of ARYAN to signify not spiritual, but physical, characteristics, led the great Orientalist, Max Muller, to say quaintly: "To me an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... principles. But one result, and to us the most important, was that the new attachment led to the composition of one of the worst biographies in the language, out of materials which might have served for a masterpiece. Bowring was a great linguist, and an energetic man of business. He wrote hymns, and one of them, 'In the cross of Christ I glory,' is said to have 'universal fame.' A Benthamite capable of so singular an eccentricity judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon religious topics with his master. To Bowring we also owe the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... th' old Chaldean conjurers In so many hundred thousand years Beside their nonsense in translating, 915 For want of accidence and Latin, Like Idus, and Calendae, Englisht The quarter-days by skilful linguist; And yet with canting, sleight and, cheat, 'Twill serve their turn to do the feat; 920 Make fools believe in their foreseeing Of things before they are in being To swallow gudgeons ere th' are catch'd; And count their chickens ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... and for whom I have ever felt a very humble estimate—the men who play all manner of games, and the men who speak several languages. I begin with the latter, and declare that, after a somewhat varied experience of life, I never met a linguist that was above a third-rate man; and I go farther, and aver, that I never chanced upon a really able man who ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... well to mention that Frau von Lilly accompanied us on our trip to Sordavala, Valamo, and Imatra, acting as guide, cicerone, and friend. Being an excellent linguist, and well versed in the manners and customs of her country, her aid was invaluable; indeed, it is to her we owe much of the success of our summer jaunt to Finland. At Sordavala, however, we were joined for a few days by a young Finlander, whose family name is a household word in Suomi, and who, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... do believe that nine tongues all at work could not have matched her. But peace be with her! she is silent at last, and cannot hear me now. I thought I myself possessed an extensive knowledge of the languages, but, alas I was nothing; as a linguist she was without a rival. However, I pass that over, and return to the subject of my toast. Now, my dear Martha, since heaven ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... infallible one. The effort at portraiture is good for art if the men to be portrayed are good men, not otherwise. In the instance before you, the head is that of Mithridates VI. of Pontus, who had, indeed, the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts; but, as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his mother, certainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, I have not counted how many of his children, and from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand persons besides; ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... altogether to his liking he resumed his concert work and commenced a long series of tours which included all the nooks and corners of the world where one might find a musical public. He was an accomplished linguist, speaking many languages very fluently. His work as a composer was not significant but in certain branches of pianoforte playing he rose to exceptional heights. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... better linguist helped to interpret most of these words and phrases, for though she spoke the bastard language, that, as I have said, is employed there, she expressed her meaning more by ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... popular than Victor Carrington, the surgeon. His accomplishments were of so varied a nature as to make him invaluable in a large party, and he was always ready to devote himself to the amusement of others. Sir Oswald was astonished at the versatility of his nephew's friend. As a linguist, an artist, a musician, Victor alike shone pre-eminent; but in music he was triumphant. Professing only to be an amateur, he exhibited a scientific knowledge, a mechanical proficiency, as ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... home at a quarter to one, and after breakfast proceeded at once with Lady Montefiore to the city to attend the funeral service in the Portuguese Synagogue, where Dr Loewe (who filled the office of oriental linguist and Hebrew lecturer to his late Royal Highness) delivered a discourse, at the conclusion of which we repaired to the great Synagogue of the German community. There was a funeral service, but no discourse." "The Jews," Sir Moses says, "have lost an excellent friend: may he be rewarded with eternal ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... independently, published a most instructive and philosophical pamphlet (an excellent notice of which is to be found in the 'Reader', for February 27th of this year) supporting similar views with all the weight of his special knowledge and established authority as a linguist. Professor Haeckel, to whom Schleicher addresses himself, previously took occasion, in his splendid monograph on the 'Radiolaria',* to express his high appreciation of, and general concordance with, Mr. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the fun, and to his personal prestige with conjuring tricks, fiddling, piping, taking photographs, etc. Some of the Islanders were much attached to him. I suppose that their main impression was that he was a linguist who had committed a crime somewhere and ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... no means unintelligible—I am examined through the medium of an interpreter, who makes a terrible hash of my replies. He talks of the 'foots of my friend's negro,' and the 'commandant's, officers', sergeant's relations,' by which I infer that the learned linguist has never overcome the fifth lesson of his Ollendorff. It is accordingly found necessary to conduct the rest of the inquiry ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... sphere in order fully to understand those very things with which he is most familiar. A man must study other languages, if he would hope fully to understand his own. A man must study more than languages merely if he would become a perfect linguist. The only way to understand arithmetic thoroughly is to study algebra. A parent who has only one child, and who gives his entire and exclusive attention to the study of that child, in order that he may, by a thorough understanding of its nature and disposition, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... teacher help her paint a few show-pictures. But I know very little about it, for I haven't much taste that way. Father has us educated according to our tastes; that is, if we show a little talent for any one thing, he has us try to perfect ourselves in that one thing. Julia is the linguist, and can jabber French and German like natives. Father also insisted on our being taught the common English branches very thoroughly, and he says he could get us situations to teach within a month, if it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Lucas de la Reina, who was one of the foremost religious in the Bisayan province—a fine linguist, and one who added much to the sacristies, and was very discerning in things pertaining to the altar—was prior in the same village, he heard that a wretched mestizo woman in his district was leading a dissolute life; for on that occasion the encomendero Don Agustin Flores was there. This ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... adventure as this,—a fine young man and a lovely young woman thrown together in such a way, could hardly fail of suggesting certain ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So Emma thought, at least. Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?—How much more must an imaginist, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... did not possess [8]—that of being a great translator. If the public are sorry, we are deeply sorry, too, but we cannot help it. Burton's exalted position, however, as ethnologist and anthropologist, is unassailable. He was the greatest linguist and traveller that England ever produced. And four thrones are surely enough for any man. I must mention that Mr. Payne gave me an absolute free hand—nay, more than that, having placed all the documents before me, he said—and this he repeated again and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the Earl of Leicester's physician before 1586, and the Queen's chief physician from that date. An accomplished linguist, with friends in all parts of Europe, he acted in 1590, at the request of the Earl of Essex, as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of Philip II's persecution, whom Essex and his associates brought to England in order to stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... in Caius's learning." A.: "I have been often in his company, and have found no reason for believing this." B.: "O! then you deny his learning, are envious, and Caius's enemy." A.: "God forbid! I love and admire him. I know him for a transcendant linguist in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern European languages;—and with or without the Sanscrit, I look up to him, and rely on his erudition in all cases, in which I am concerned. And it is this perfect trust, this unfeigned respect, that is the appointed criterion of Caius's friends and ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their feet sore, we find on the contrary at a very early time, as in Diodorus, regarding the cavalry of Alexander the Great, in Xenophon, regarding the retreat of the ten thousand, in Polybius, regarding the cavalry of Hannibal in Etruria, etc. It is also known that the cavalry of the linguist King of Pontus, Mithridates the Great, at times and specially at the siege of Cyzicus were delayed, in order to let the hoofs of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... right good scholar shalt thou one day be, And that no distant one; when even she, Who now to thee a star far off appears, That most rare Latinist, the Northern Maid— The language-loving Sarah[1] of the Lake— Shall hail thee Sister Linguist. This will make Thy friends, who now afford thee careful aid, A recompense most rich for all their pains, Counting thy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Mrs. Carlyle. She had met with a governess; one desirable in every way who could not fail to suit her views precisely. She was a Madame Vine, English by birth, but the widow of a Frenchman; a Protestant, a thorough gentlewoman, an efficient linguist and musician, and competent to her duties in all ways. Mrs. Crosby, with whom she had lived two years regarded her as a treasure, and would not have parted with her but for Helena's marriage with a German nobleman. "You must not mind her appearance," went on ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... acquaintance with fifty-four. It is commonly said of Cardinal Mezzofanti that he could speak thirty and understand sixty. It is quite plain from the pages of Lavengro itself that Borrow did not share Gregory XVI.'s high estimate of the Cardinal's mental qualifications, unrivalled linguist though he was. That a "word-master" so abnormal is apt to be deficient in logical sense seems to have been Borrow's deliberate opinion (with a saving clause as to exceptions), and I have often thought that it must have been Shakespeare's too, for does he not ascribe a command ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... is at the same time a linguist, a musician, an antiquary, a profound student of philology, and skilled withal in the graphic arts, it would seem inevitable that he should have more than a local reputation; but when, in 1844, a thin volume entitled 'Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect' appeared in London, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thou art I'll be sworn, or what any man's Worship pleases; for let me tell ye, Harry, he is capacitated to oblige in any quality: for, Sir, he's your brokering Jew, your Fencing, Dancing, and Civility-Master, your Linguist, your Antiquary, your Bravo, your Pathick, Your Whore, your Pimp; and a thousand more Excellencies he has to supply The necessities of the wanting Stranger.—Well, Sirrah—what design now Upon Sir Signal and his wise Governour?—What ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... a linguist as he is a musician, he coaxes and curses his men in perfect, idiomatic French, German and Spanish as well ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... occupied by the ex-queen, was quite interesting. We were permitted to examine its internal economy, and found by the library that her husband was a man of cultivation and taste, especially well read in the classics, and a good linguist. His bookcases showed several thousands of good and well-thumbed books in English, French, Latin, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. Yet we see many who have mistaken their calling from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist, the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Father Ephraim had to bide his time. Meanwhile he made himself useful by ministering to the Roman Catholics of the place. Official and other documents show that Father Ephraim was a very devout and a very able man. He was 'an earnest Christian,' 'a polished linguist,' able to converse in English, Portuguese and Dutch, besides his own French, and he was conversant with Persian and Arabic. He had the charm of attractive friendliness, which is so common with Frenchmen, ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... Hotaloya personally knew Mpolo (Paul du Chaillu), and often spoke to me of his prowess as a chasseur and his knowledge of their tongue. But reputation as a linguist is easily made in these regions by speaking a few common sentences. The gorilla-hunter evidently had only a colloquial acquaintance with the half-dozen various idioms of the Mpongwe and Mpangwe (Fan) Bakele, Shekyani, and Cape Lopez people. Yet, despite verbal inaccuracies, his facility ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... speak to them." Madame Beattie, being a fluent linguist, had natural scorn of a tubby little New Englander who ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... literature; science; knowledge acquired by experience, experiment, or observation." Milton gives us a rhetorical definition in a negative form, which is of equal value, at least, with any authority yet cited. "And though a linguist," says Milton, "should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... vocabulary together, and began talking for myself. As I soon knew more Spanish than any of the crew, (who indeed knew none at all,) and had been at college and knew Latin, I got the name of a great linguist, and was always sent for by the captain and officers to get provisions, or to carry letters and messages to different parts of the town. I was often sent to get something which I could not tell the name of to save my life; but I liked the business, and accordingly never pleaded ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... assisted at the same gathering, was a remarkable personality, and one of the most astute men I ever met. He was a graduate of Queen's College, Cork, and an accomplished linguist. He was a skilful engineer, and had served with distinction in the American Civil War. When I knew him he was about thirty-five years of age, tall and of fine presence. To him was deputed the work of purchasing arms for ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... Can one produce retrieval software advanced enough for the postdoctoral linguist, yet accessible enough for unattended general ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... influence of authority in matters of opinion. Settlement of questions by "texts" is a saving of endless pains. For that there are such lunar inhabitants must need little proof. Every astronomer is aware that the moon is full of craters; and every linguist is aware that "cratur" is the Irish word for creature. Or, to state the argument syllogistically, as our old friend Aristotle would have done: "Craturs" are inhabitants; the moon is full of craters; therefore the moon is full of inhabitants. We appeal to any unbiased mind whether such argumentation ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... comparison with the other great poets. It is sufficient for me to know that critics place him very high as an original poet, although it is admitted that he drew much of his material from French and Italian authors. He was, for his day, a great linguist. He had travelled extensively, and could speak Latin, French, and Italian with fluency. He knew Petrarch and other eminent Italians. One is amazed that in such an age he could have written so well, for he had no great models to help him in his own language. If occasionally indecent, he is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... really astonished to find how well I could understand it, and make myself understood, in the course of a few days, though candor obliges me to say that if there is any one thing in the world for which nature never intended me it is a linguist. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... prove so detrimental to every interest concerned. The consuls should either be acquainted with the Chinese language, a work for a lifetime, or have an American interpreter. The practice of having a Chinese linguist is most damaging—the native linguist being invariably a lying knave, who becomes consul de facto, whom no native can approach without a bribe, which it is supposed goes in part to the consul. As the points where consuls are needed are numerous, some of them being where the honorable merchantman ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... being the better linguist of the two, naturally assumed the part of spokesman. "We have with us a man who speaks the Makolo tongue, and whose language we speak; therefore we communicate with your ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Aretinus has been assumed by five or six natives of Arezzo in Tuscany, of whom the most famous and the most worthless lived in the xvith century. Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, the disciple of Chrysoloras, was a linguist, an orator, and an historian, the secretary of four successive popes, and the chancellor of the republic of Florence, where he died A.D. 1444, at the age of seventy-five, (Fabric. Bibliot. Medii AEvi, tom. i. p. 190 &c. Tiraboschi, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... no good at his job, he was a tremendous swell at other things. He was an uncommonly good linguist, and had always about a dozen hobbies which he slaved at; and when he found himself at Deira with a good deal of leisure, he became a bigger crank than ever. He had a lot of books which used to follow him about the world in zinc-lined boxes—your big ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... a ladies' man. Courtly, refined, and a splendid linguist, as he was, the girls always voted him great fun; but from the elder ones, and from married women especially, he somehow held himself aloof. His one woman-friend, as everybody knew, was the flighty, go-ahead ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... acquaintance of Count Giraldi, a gentleman not only in the immediate service of the sovereign but high in the confidence of the heir-apparent, a man of the world, a traveller, affable, an abundant linguist, no mean philosopher, possessor of a cabinet of antiquities, a fine library, a band of musicians second to none in Florence. If ever a young man was placed square upon his feet again after a damaging fall it ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Anatomist to the Court, and, as a token of especial grace, on one occasion, went so far as to bestow upon the young Swiss his own sword. His attainments in all the amusements of a gentleman probably had more to do with these advancements, however, than any professional skill. He was a capital linguist; at fencing, leaping, running, and other manly exercises, he found few rivals; and his dabblings in architecture and botany were at least as notable as his mastership of chess and his skill as a musician. But when it came to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... not been long in Hamburg before he made the acquaintance of a most remarkable man named Mattheson. In addition to being an exceedingly clever musician and composer, Mattheson was a good linguist and a writer on a variety of musical subjects. He had formed a resolve to write a book for every year of his life, and he accomplished more than this, for he lived to be eighty-three years of age, and at the time of his death he had published no fewer than eighty-eight ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... scornfully. "Your resemblance to the 'chattels' of the East is a remote one. There is Eastern blood in your veins, no doubt, but you are educated, you are a linguist, you know the world. Right and wrong are recognizable to ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... progress which Miss Vernon, whose powerful mind readily adopted every means of information offered to it, had made in more abstract science, I found her no contemptible linguist, and well acquainted both with ancient and modern literature. Were it not that strong talents will often go farthest when they seem to have least assistance, it would be almost incredible to tell the rapidity ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... talents having nicely shown, 80 He came by sure transition to his own: Till I cried out, You prove yourself so able, Pity you was not druggerman at Babel; For had they found a linguist half so good, I make no question but the tower had stood. 'Obliging sir! for courts you sure were made: Why then for ever buried in the shade? Spirits like you should see, and should be seen, The king would smile on you—at least the queen.' Ah, gentle sir! you courtiers so cajole us— ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... cried the king, zealously. "I am truly curious to admire the German linguist's work who has so boldly undertaken ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... language from that of their Roman ancestors or their Italian descendants, as is shown by the celebrated chronicle of the monk Benedict, of the convent of St. Andrea on Mount Soracte, written in such barbarous Latin, and with such strange grammatical forms, that it requires a profoundly skilled linguist to decipher it.* (* See G. ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... combustion. No sooner had it begun, however, than Joseph J. Ettor, an I.W.W. organizer, hastened to take charge, and succeeded so well that within a few weeks he claimed 7000 members in his union. Ettor proved a crafty, resourceful general, quick in action, magnetic in personality, a linguist who could command his polyglot mob. He was also a successful press agent who exploited fully the unpalatable drinking water provided by the companies, the inadequate sewerage, the unpaved streets, and the practical destitution of many of the workers. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... to expect the average American to be a linguist; we are too far removed from foreign countries. As a matter of fact, if you would make yourself agreeable, it is much better (unless your facility was acquired as a child or you have a talent amounting to genius for accent ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... perception of the picturesque and characteristic, of the couleur locale, to use the French term, whether in men or manners, scenery or costume, and he embodies his impressions in pointed and sparkling phrase. As an antiquarian and linguist, he unites qualities precious for the due appreciation of Spain. Well-versed in the Castilian, he also displays a familiarity with the Cantabrian tongue—that strange and difficult Vascuense which the Evil One himself, according to a provincial proverb, spent seven years of fruitless labour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... had managed to make myself understood to some German prisoners, I was looked upon as a great linguist, and vulgarly credited with a knowledge of all the European languages. So I was sent, together with the Quartermaster-Sergeant and the Sergeant-Major, on billeting expeditions. Arranging for quarters at the farm, I made great friends with the farmer. He was ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... 1628), and the "King's Falkner," and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined the professions, not frequently united, of "attorney and husbandman," in Barwell, Leicestershire (1655). "The lame chimney- sweeper," and the "King of the gypsies," and Alexander Willis, "qui calographiam docuit," the linguist, and the Tom o' Bedlam, the comfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the suicide, they all found death; or, if they sought him, the churchyard where they were "hurled into a grave" was interdicted, and purified, after a fortnight, with "frankincense and sweet perfumes, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... duties of maternity,—the nature of moral influence,—been pointed out to her? Has she ever been enlightened as to the consequent unspeakable importance of personal character as the source of influence? In a word, have any means, direct or indirect, prepared her for her duties? No! but she is a linguist, a pianist, graceful, admired. What is that to the purpose? The grand evil of such an education is the mistaking means for ends; a common error, and the source of half the moral confusion existing in the world. It is the substitution of the part for a whole. The time when young women ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... new and sometimes plainer language parts of "Light on the Path"; but whether this effort of mine will really be any interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible if, in order to make it so, some misguided linguist translates the words in which it is couched into every living or dead language, and shouts these different phrases in his ear. But for those who are not deaf and dumb one language is generally easier than the rest; and it is to such ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... and Polish descent, now occupying this quarter. The Portuguese Jews were highly cultured, well-to-do, orderly, and clean people; one of their most brilliant minds was Menasseh-ben-Israel, Rabbi at the Synagogue situated on a canal just behind Rembrandt's house, a great linguist, the first Hebraic printer in the Netherlands, the teacher of the celebrated philosopher Spinoza, a sympathetic and admirable figure, whom we see until the close of his life ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... carried on a conference with greater ease and affability. He was master, besides his own, of the English, French, and Portuguese languages, having resided from his birth chiefly in the vicinity of the European forts, and in his younger days had been much connected with them, officially as a linguist. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... younger, I think, of his fair hostesses at Seville, whom he there described himself as making earnest love to, with the help of a dictionary. "For some time," he said, "I went on prosperously both as a linguist and a lover,[123] till at length, the lady took a fancy to a ring which I wore, and set her heart on my giving it to her, as a pledge of my sincerity. This, however, could not be;—anything but the ring, I declared, was at her service, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... penniless youth, such as he, could have little chance of attention or fair play in the world if he appeared in his proper character; so he painfully assumed another, of a nature that could not long have been supported even had he been a various linguist deeply versed in etymologies, and especially proficient in our extinct idioms, and their several dates of usage, instead of wanting even Latin enough to understand the easiest parts of Skinner's Etymology of the English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... obtain the eventful history of vast warlike nations, of their rise and of their fall. The western Apaches or the Shoshones, with their antiquities and ruins of departed glory, will unfold to the student's mind long pages of a thrilling interest, while in their metaphors and rich phraseology, the linguist, learned in Asiatic lore, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... evident to me from the moment that I set eyes upon his ill-favoured countenance. After a hurried conference with Delgado, he came forward and addressed me in Arabic, of which I could not understand a word. Luckily, however, Sam the cook, who, as I think I said, was a great linguist, had a fair acquaintance with this tongue, acquired, it appears, while at the Zanzibar hotel; so, not trusting Delgado, I ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... of languages had already been found by a learned Englishman in a distant land. In 1783 Sir William Jones had been sent out as a judge in the supreme court of judicature in Bengal. While still a young man at Oxford he was noted as a linguist; his reputation as a Persian scholar had preceded him to the East. In the intervals of his professional duties he made a careful study of the language which was held sacred by the natives of the country in which he was living. He was mainly instrumental ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... ibid.. 185. Six audiences a week and often two a day besides his labors as antiquarian, historian, linguist, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dialect; idiom, phraseology, diction; argot, flash, slang, lingo, cant, jargon, gibberish; Volapuk, pasilaly, Esperanto. Associated Words: lingual, linguistic, linguist, linguistics, philology, philologist, philological, polyglot, glottology, glossology, paleography, glossologist, monoglot, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... suggested. The room was full of articles of value, but none had been taken. The dead man's papers had not been tampered with. They were carefully examined, and showed that he was a keen student of international politics, an indefatigable gossip, a remarkable linguist, and an untiring letter-writer. He had been on intimate terms with the leading politicians of several countries. But nothing sensational was discovered among the documents which filled his drawers. As to his relations with women, they appeared ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at least twelve Frenchmen. Duvivier was called to Bougie; Maumet was compelled by his wounds to return to Paris; Captain Lamoricire was, therefore, appointed chief of the united battalion, having given proof of his capacity in every way,—whether as soldier, linguist, or negotiator,—being a wise and prudent man. It is to the training the Zouaves received under this remarkable man that much of their subsequent success must be ascribed. In his dealings with the Arabs he had shown himself the first who could treat with them by other means than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... acquired an excellent knowledge of the Serbo-Croat language; he intended to introduce the national tongue into all the public offices. But this naturally could not be carried through without an intervening period, and unluckily Marmont so far excelled his compatriots as a linguist, that when the newspaper Telegraphe officiel des Provinces Illyriennes appeared at Ljubljana, the capital (under the brilliant editorship of Charles Nodier, who came out from France for that purpose), and it was announced that there would be French, German, Italian and Slav ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... native interpreters came into the venereal tent as a patient. At the time it was under my care. There was, by the way, very little venereal disease amongst the troops, though, of course, the country is full of it. He was a little olive Jewish boy, alert in manner, and muscular, and a good linguist. When war broke out he was living in Baghdad, where he had learned French and English at one of the Mission Schools there, for he was a Christian. When Turkey came in, he fled from Baghdad with many others who wished to avoid conscription. He travelled down the river ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... Queen whose Court was similarly circumstanced. This is the piece which Mr. Yates has had the daring to get done into English, and transplanted into Spain, and interspersed with embroidery, confectionary, and a Spanish sentence; the last judiciously entrusted to that accomplished linguist, Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... my boy, hanna-hanna, wash!" he cried. Bob was a linguist, and had been to sea in his day, as he many a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the only familiar thing we Yankees can meet with in Holland is a harvest song which is quite popular there, though no linguist could translate it. Even then we must shut our eyes and listen only to the tune, which I ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... himself, promising that he would act like a philosopher; he only half kept his promise: for I must inform you that my nephew has conceived, I do not know why, an insurmountable antipathy to M. Larinski; he is subject to taking dislikes to people. During dinner, Abbe Miollens, who is a great linguist and a great traveller, and who has at the ends of his fingers everything concerning Poland and the Poles, led the conversation to the insurrection of 1863. M. Larinski, at first, refrained from discussing this sad subject; little by little the flood-gates were opened: ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... and though that his office under his lord was lucrative, yet he got no estate; but saith my author "peculiari poetis fato semper cum paupertate conflictatus est." So that it fared little better with him than with William Xilander the German (a most excellent linguist, antiquary, philosopher and mathematician), who was so poor, that (as Thuanus saith), he was thought "fami non famae scribere." 'Returning into England, he was robb'd by the rebels of what little he had; and dying for grief in great want, anno 1598, ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... Generale printed at Toledo in 1527, in the black letter, double columned, in folio? Enough to madden even our poet-laureat—for life! I should add, that these books are not thus carefully kept together for the sake of shew: for their owner is a fair good linguist, and can read the Spanish with tolerable fluency. Long ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... intention of photographing the tourists and attendant watchdog guides. She did not succeed, because one of the guides recognized her as a member of his flock and crossed the road to where she stood. I know the man slightly. He is a cosmopolitan, a linguist of great skill, who speaks good English, with Portuguese suavity of manner, in times of calm, but bad English, with French excitability of gesture, when he is annoyed. He reasoned, most politely I'm sure, with the two girls. He wanted ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... German by birth, but a cosmopolitan by nature and by virtue of his own restless disposition, which would never permit him to settle down for very long in any one place, however attractive. He was a perfect marvel in the matter of learning, a most accomplished linguist, and an indefatigable delver in the lesser-known fields of science, wherein he was credited with having made discoveries of vast importance and value. If such was the case he was in no hurry to make his discoveries public property, chiefly, perhaps, because—as some of his more intimate friends ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... natural phenomena of light and heat, was due to the same causes as all others, but we will consider it in its Vedic phase, as it may be gathered from tradition, and from the discoveries of comparative philology, and we have a sure guide in this research in the great linguist Kuhn, whose remarks have been enlarged and ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... family, all of whom were taught English at an early age. "I," she writes, "was stubborn and refused to speak it. So one day when I was nine years old my father punished me—the only time I was ever punished—by shutting me in a room alone for a whole day. I came out of it a full-blown linguist. I have never spoken any other language to him, or to my mother, who always speaks to me in Hindustani. I don't think I had any special hankering to write poetry as a little child, though I was of a very fanciful and dreamy nature. My training under my father's ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... aversion.' He has also transcribed the unappropriated hints on Writers for bread, in which he decyphers these notable passages, one in Latin, fatui non fam, instead of fami non fam; Johnson having in his mind what Thuanus says of the learned German antiquary and linguist, Xylander, who, he tells us, lived in such poverty, that he was supposed fami non fam scribere; and another in French, Degente de fate [fatu] et affam a'argent, instead of Dgout de fame, (an old word for renomme) et ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... to speak six languages, and she certainly speaks Roumanian, French, German, and English. We do not know what the other two may be, but if she speaks the four languages here named as fluently and with as little foreign accent as she does our own, she may fairly claim to be an accomplished linguist. All educated Roumanians speak French, and most of them German, besides their own tongue; indeed French is almost the universal language of the middle classes, whilst those who have been educated here, especially the younger men, naturally ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... said: "I am a farmer, and my name is Linguist. I understand the cries of all beasts and birds. ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... command of Don Domingo Bonechea, in the Aguila frigate, in 1772. He gave so favourable a report of the islands that he was again sent out in 1774, having on board two monks of the order of Saint Francis, a linguist, a portable house, sheep, cattle, and implements. Having landed them at Oheitepeha Bay, as soon as the house was up he set sail to make further discoveries. He then returned to the bay, and six days afterwards died, and was buried, with becoming ceremonies, at the foot of the cross, which was ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... man surpassed him in "deeds of derring-do." He was a modern, a very modern, Knight of the Round Table. He was the possessor of innumerable abstruse, and outlandish accomplishments. He was a scientist, a linguist, a poet, a geographer, a roughly clever diplomat, a fighter, a man with a polyhedric personality, that caught and gave, something from and to every one. And he died dissatisfied, at Trieste, in 1890, at the age of sixty-nine, and Swinburne sang ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... aged 30. "My grandfather might be said to be of abnormal temperament, for, though of very humble origin, he organized and carried out an extremely arduous mission work and became an accomplished linguist, translating the Bible into an Eastern tongue and compiling the first dictionary of that language. He died, practically of overwork, at the age of 45. He was twice married, my father being his third son by the second wife. I believe that two, if not more, of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... writing and drawing. Nobody else uses it.' He stayed in the house six months. The lady was a mistress, aged five-and-twenty, and very beautiful, drinking her life away. The Squire was drunken, and utterly depraved and wicked; but an excellent scholar, an admirable linguist, and a great theologian. Two other mad visitors stayed the six months. One, a man well known in Paris here, who goes about the world with a crimson silk stocking in his breast pocket, containing a tooth-brush and an immense quantity of ready money. The other, a college chum of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Before he could get his breath, Salvatore had begun to talk. He was a strong, ambidextrous talker, whom it was hard to interrupt; and it was not for some moments that Mr. Brewster succeeded in getting a word in. When he did, he spoke to the point. Though not a linguist, he had been able to follow the discourse closely enough to realise that the waiter was dissatisfied with conditions in his hotel; and Mr. Brewster, as has been indicated, had a short way with people who criticised ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the most extraordinary linguist of his day. Lady Burton mentions, I think, in his Life, the number of languages and dialects her husband knew. That Mahometans should seek instruction from him in the Koran, speaks of itself for his astonishing mastery of the greatest linguistic difficulties. With Indian ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Empire; to the translations of the Kalevala by Alex. Castren, Anton Schieffier, L. LeDuc and Ferdinand Barna; and especially to the excellent treatises on the Kalevala, and on the Mythology of the Finns, by Mace Da Charda and Alex. Castren; to Prof. Helena Klingner, of Cincinnati, a linguist of high rank, and who has compared very conscientiously the manuscript of the following pages with the German translation of the Kalevala by Anton Schiefner; to Dr. Emil Reich, a native Hungarian, a close student of the Ugrian tongues, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... aid at critical times in his life; but more than that, his home in Philadelphia was as a second home to the poet in those years before he had settled in Baltimore, when, as he wrote Hayne, he was "as homeless as the ghost of Judas Iscariot." Mrs. Peacock — a good linguist, a highly skilled musician, and withal a most magnetic personality — joined with her husband in his hearty friendship for the newly discovered poet. She was the daughter of the Marquis de la Figaniere, Portuguese minister to this ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... moment, our coffee, rolls, and honey were set before us, and the waiter, being an accomplished linguist, like most of his singularly gifted and enterprising kind, had heard and understood the last sentence. Bursting with gruesome information, he could not resist lightening himself of the burden, for our benefit and his own. "You can see the dead man lying on the snow, far up on the mountain," ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Radcliffe's; these pants, Granby's; this waistcoat, Scarborough's.' His cheerfulness never forsook him; he was the victim of others' mismanagement and profusion, not of his own." John Shakespear, the famous linguist, whose talents were discovered by Lord Moira, who had him educated, was a cowherd on the Langley estate. The poor cowherd afterwards bought the estates for $700,000, and they ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... psychological moment. She treated Mrs. Galley-West with the same impartiality that she showed toward some of the aristocratic members of the Rittenhouse Square set of Philadelphia who honored us with their presence. She was highly educated and an accomplished linguist, so practically all the varieties of Volapuk were alike familiar to her, and she could make Jean, Ivan, Hans, Franz or Johnny equally at home in her presence; as, if she could not quite "hit it off" with ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Ovid, where he introduces the Eccho as a Nymph, before she was worn away into nothing but a Voice. The learned Erasmus, tho' a Man of Wit and Genius, has composed a Dialogue [4] upon this silly kind of Device, and made use of an Eccho who seems to have been a very extraordinary Linguist, for she answers the Person she talks with in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, according as she found the Syllables which she was to repeat in any one of those learned Languages. Hudibras, in Ridicule of this false kind of Wit, has described Bruin bewailing the Loss of his Bear ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... by accident, monsieur," said the other, in correct French, though with a quaint accent which Curtis, himself no mean linguist, put down to a Polish or ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... at one time attached to the English Court as a pensioner of Prince Henry. He is said to have been driven abroad by the severity of his satires. He seems to have had a sweet flow of conversational eloquence, and hence was called 'The Silver-tongued.' He was an eminent linguist, and wrote his dedications in various languages. He published a large volume of poems, very unequal in their value, and inserted in it 'The Soul's Errand,' with interpolations, as we have seen, which prove it not to be his own. His great work is ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Mexican woman from one of the down-stream ranches, sent in by the post trader, who said she could speak the Apache-Mohave language sufficiently well to make Natzie understand the situation, and this frontier linguist strove earnestly. Natzie understood every word she said, was her report, but could not be made to understand that she ought to go. In the continued absence of Mrs. Plume, both the major and the post surgeon had requested of Mrs. Graham that ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... of dukes have become mathematicians; we have known an attorney's clerk, the son of a low publican, become an accomplished linguist in his leisure hours,—but such men are mental miracles, almost monsters: a fellow of Magdalen or New College who works as hard as other men deserves to ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... could not opine; and it annoyed him keenly, for he was, like most society-men, very punctilious regarding the manners of the particular woman who belonged to him. That she was, in fact, an elegant conversationalist, quick and brilliant at repartee, a fine linguist and an intelligent thinker for a woman, he did ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... examination of scholars, and if some of these facts stand that test. On the other hand, it was essential that, as a rule, no one should be sent out on a geographical, anthropological, or ethnographical mission who was not something of a linguist or who was not accompanied by a linguist, and who had not given proof of sympathy with alien races. Hayward fell a victim as much to his temper as to the greed and treachery of Mir Wali, whom he had insulted. An Arabic proverb says ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... was clouded by opium, and you could get little out of him. Besides, by the time I arrived on Naapu, French Eva belonged to the landscape and to history. She was generally supposed to be pure French, and her accent supported the theory, though she was in a small way a linguist. Her English was as good as any one's—on Naapu, where we were by no means academic. She could speak the native tongue after a fashion, and her beche-de-mer was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... largely in passing the bills that called for three years of military service and for heavier artillery. As an officer he won the Legion of Honor and the Cross of War. Besides being a brilliant writer, M. Benazet is also an accomplished linguist, and as President Poincare does not express himself readily in English, and as my French is better suited to restaurants than palaces, he ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... Washington, the subject of our sketch. Major John Whistler was not only a good soldier, and highly esteemed for his military services, but was also a man of refined tastes and well educated, being an uncommonly good linguist and especially noted as a fine musician. In his family he is stated to have united firmness with tenderness, and to have impressed upon his children the importance of a faithful and thorough performance of duty in whatever ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... years ago for defrauding a woman. My father undertook to cure him while in prison and was able to follow him in his subsequent career. This C... was a young man of good family, intelligent, honest, and a good linguist. His countenance was pleasing and bore no trace of precocious criminality. At the age of twenty he developed an unrestrained love of gambling and in order to indulge this vice, promised to marry a rich woman considerably older than himself, ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Languages are more properly to be called vehicles of learning than learning itself, as may be observed in many schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in grammar, are the most ignorant fellows upon earth. True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words. I would wish her no further a linguist than to enable her to read books in their originals, that are often corrupted, and always injured, by translations. Two hours' application every morning will bring this about much sooner than you can imagine, and she will have leisure enough besides to run over the English poetry, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... still "posers" to the most expert classical professors in the leading Universities of Europe, must have been as dark as the Delphic Oracle,—or the Punic speech of the Carthaginian in Plautus's Comedy of Poenulus to everybody (except, of course, the great Oriental linguist, Petit, who knew all about it, for in the second book of his "Miscellaneorum Libri Novem" he explains the whole speech, without the slightest fear of anybody correcting the mistakes into ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... made James Gilmour's acquaintance in the winter session of 1864-5 at Glasgow University. He came to college with the reputation of being a good linguist. This reputation was soon confirmed by distinction in his classes, especially in Latin and Greek. Though his advantages had been superior to most of us, and his mental calibre was of a high order, he was always humble, utterly devoid of pride or vanity. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... time by taking lessons in the Asiki tongue from Jeekie, a language which he had been studying ever since he left England. The task was not easy, as he had no books and Jeekie himself after some thirty years of absence, was doubtful as to many of its details. Still being a linguist by nature and education and finding in the tongue similarities to other African dialects which he knew, he was now able to speak it a little, in ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard |
