"Spoken language" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever to see in fair printed English. These were the Welsh popular tales called Mabinogeon, a plural word, the singular being Mabinogi, a tale. Manuscripts of these were contained in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and elsewhere, but the difficulty was to find translators and editors. The Welsh is a spoken language among the peasantry of Wales, but is entirely neglected by the learned, unless they are natives of the principality. Of the few Welsh scholars none were found who took sufficient interest in this branch of learning to give these productions to the English public. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... I have often tried to impress on you it really does.—Of course the hieroglyphs, the written words, run into hundreds of thousands; for the literature, you have a vocabulary indeed. But you see that the spoken language depends, to express its meaning, upon a different kind of elements from those all our languages depend on. We have solid words that you can spell: articles built up with the bricks of sound-stuff we call letters: c-a-t cat, d-o-g dog, and so on;—but their words, no; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... way in which Webster schooled himself to become a speaker will repay every one who wishes to use our spoken language effectively. In Webster's youth, a stilted, unnatural style was popular for set speeches. He was himself influenced by the prevailing fashion, and we find him ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... language. A recoil from the Palestinian movement was felt in Europe and in America, and a limited number of circles were formed everywhere in which only Hebrew was spoken. The journal Ha- Zebi ("The Deer"), published by Ben-Jehudah, became the organ of Hebrew as a spoken language, which differs from the literary language only in the greater freedom granted it of borrowing modern words and expressions from the Arabic and even from the European languages, and by its tendency to create new words from old Hebrew roots, in compliance ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... represent objects or ideas, it would follow that there must be in writing as many characters as words in the spoken language. Yet many words, which have the same sound, represent different ideas; and these must be represented also in the written language. Thus the number of the written words far surpasses that of the spoken language. As far as they are used in the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... studious habits, he was equipped with book-French; now, both for economy's sake and for his mental advantage, he struggled with the spoken language, and so far succeeded as to lodge very cheaply in a rather disreputable hotel, and to eat at restaurants where dinner of several courses cost two francs and a half. His life was irreproachable; he studied the Paris of art and history. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... second of time, Richie, boy, I undertake to warrant you fonder of the German tongue than of any other spoken language.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... show them that we, too, have a spoken language, to prove that their language and ours were mutually incomprehensible, and to demonstrate the need for devising a means of communication. At least that was what the book said. It demonstrated nothing of the sort to this crowd. It scared them. The dignitary with ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... Cortes, Spanish master to Louis Philippe's children, a university professor, and director of a polytechnic college in Madrid, etc. His language is a logical one, intended for international scientific use, and chiefly for writing. He does not think a spoken language ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... to a statement of the explanation to which we desire to direct the reader's attention, it may be useful to deal briefly with the questions relating to the spoken language of Lowland Scotland and to its place-names. The fact that the language of the Angles and Saxons completely superseded, in England, the tongue of the conquered Britons, is admitted to be a powerful argument for the view that the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England resulted in a racial displacement. ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... would clear her mind before she started upon her serious reading. She had begun taking lessons in Arabic with Michael who could speak it fluently but could neither read nor write it, the written and spoken language ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... power of a great experience; as some have felt who have been admitted from narrower sects into the communion of the catholic church; or as the old Roman citizen felt. It is, we might fancy, what the coming into possession of a very widely spoken language might be, with a great literature, which is also [27] the speech of the people we have ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... should rank Language. Not only is it the medium of intelligible intercourse, of thought-tranference,[TN-3] but thought itself is powerfully aided or impeded by the modes of its expression in sound. As "spoken language," in poetry and oratory, its might is recognized on all hands; while in "written language," as literature, it works silently but with incalculable effect on the character ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... such that the signals may be interpreted. In learning a language, both the sounds of the words and their associated ideas are mastered, this being necessary to their practical use in exchanging ideas. From spoken language man has advanced to written language, so that the sight of the written or printed word also arouses in the mind the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... engaged in taking careful measurements of the head of his latest experiment, the while he coached the young man in the first rudiments of spoken language, and now the subject of his labors found himself suddenly deserted and alone. He had not yet been without the four walls of the workshop, as the professor had wished to keep him from association with the ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... being responsible, and giving the coup de pouce to every part of the work) I was spared the obviously hopeless business of trying to explain to my collaborator what style I wished a passage to be treated in. These are the times that illustrate to a man the inadequacy of spoken language. Now—to be just to written language—I can (or could) find a language for my every mood, but how could I tell any one beforehand what this effect was to be, which it would take every art that I possessed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... small shrines to the main temple; they, too, are played for the propitiation of the gods, and for the softening of men's hearts. The farces are acted without wigs or masks; the dialogue is in the common spoken language, and there being no musical accompaniment it is quite easy to follow. The plots of the two farces which were played before the Duke of Edinburgh are ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... interesting part of the pamphlet is his stout advocacy of the claim of Americans to make and accept changes of language which grow out of their own conditions. The English language was a common inheritance in England and America, and in the necessary growth of a spoken language, Americans had equal right with Englishmen to contribute to the growth; nay, that the American was not a dialect of the English, but a variation; not a departure from a standard existing in contemporary England, but an independent branch from ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... often than you write. Your habits of speech are likely to become permanent and your errors of speech will creep into your written work. It is important therefore that you watch your spoken language. Occasions will arise when the slang expressions that you so freely use will seem inappropriate, and it will be unfortunate indeed if you find that you have used the slang so long that you have no other words to take their place. An abbreviated ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... three languages used in Judea, beside the Latin, which was confined to a few officials: 1. The Syro-Chaldaic,—the language of business and daily life, the spoken language of the common people. 2. The Greek,—the language of the courts of justice and official documents; the spoken and written language of the foreign traders, the aristocracy, and most of the more cultivated people in the great towns. ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker |
