"Linguistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the statements of Professor Mueller, as he represents another and a typical aspect of the case. He denies the existence of a "Turanian" family of tongues, such as Mueller sought to constitute in Bunsen's "Outlines"; pronouncing with great decision, and on grounds both philosophical and linguistic, against that notion of monosyllabic origin which assumes the Chinese as truest of all tongues to the original form and genius of language, he is even more decided that not the faintest trace can be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Knowing the linguistic attainments of Marquette and his sincerity, one must credit this first example of eloquence and poetry of the western Indians, cultivated of life amid the elemental forces of the water, earth, and sky. [Footnote: It was of these same prairies, rivers, and skies, these same elemental ever-present ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... millionaires (American) paid a thousand francs a night for a bedroom and five louis for a glass of beer. Now, in order to derive such profit from the Anglo-Saxon a knowledge of English was indispensable. He resolved to learn the language. How he did so, except by sheer effrontery, taking linguistic toll of frequenters of the cafe, would be a mystery to anyone unacquainted with Aristide. But to his friends his mastery of the English tongue in such circumstances is comprehensible. To Aristide the impossible was ever the one thing easy of attainment; the possible the one thing he never ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... a test of a certain type of inventiveness, namely linguistic invention. Specifically, it tests the pupil's ability to construct words ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... a work on the meaning of words which has come down to us in a later abridgment; Aulus Gellius, who, toward the end of the second century, compiled a huge scrap-book on a variety of subjects, many of them of great linguistic interest, and, with the exception of a few chapters, still extant; Priscianus Caesariensis, who wrote under Justinian at Constantinople eighteen books of grammatical commentaries which form the most complete grammar of antiquity; and Aelius Donatus (A.D. 333), whose elementary treatise was ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... she had a marked gift. The next important step brought her to New York, where she gained in a competitive examination the position of secretary in the office of the Street Cleaning Department. Her linguistic accomplishments (for she had studied several foreign languages) stood her in good stead, and during the illness of her chief she practically managed the department and "bossed" fifteen hundred Italian labourers in their own tongue. Miss Undereast carried on her musical studies ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Persia, Turkey, and Mesopotamia, all form one great hazy country, almost a myth, called the land of the Turks. They say "Tur's," but that's a linguistic digression. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... said a very great Lord Mayor, "e ben traviata." His lordship's linguistic slip served him right. Latin is fair play, though some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in The Mill on the Floss, who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School "a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... "Bowery Tough,"' admitted Pinchas; and the table roared again, partly at the rapidity with which this linguistic genius had picked up the local slang. 'But as our pious lunatics think there are many meanings in every letter of the Torah,' went on the pleased poet, 'so there are meanings innumerable in every letter of my name. If I am playwright as well ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... arrived at that point; what some people call the "stilted" forms and phrases of fifty or almost a hundred years earlier clung to her still. The resulting lingo is far better than that part of the lingo of to-day where literary and linguistic good manners have been forgotten altogether: but it is distinctly deficient in ease. There are endless flourishes and periphrases—the colloquialisms which Swift and others had denounced (and quite properly) in their ugliest and vulgarest forms are not even permitted ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... vocabulary outside the Clan van de Marck. Doubtless it is of Yankee origin, and hence old English. It may, of course, be derived according to Alice-in-Wonderland principles from "skip" and "hither" or "thither" or all three; but the claim is here made that it comes, like monkeys and men, from a common linguistic ancestor.—G.v.d.M. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... nothing else than language reduced to a system of common terms that have been agreed upon in the interests of society. People have entered into a linguistic compact, an agreement that certain words and combinations of words shall be understood to mean certain things. The tradesman must understand the purchaser or there can be no exchange. The ticket-agent must understand the prospective ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... central dialect has not only become the medium in which poet and philosopher, historian and critic address the nation, but it may be said to have entirely superseded the Northern and Southern forms. Whatever local or linguistic interest may be manifested for the works of Groth in the Ditmarsch Platt-Deutsch, or for the sweet Alemannic songs of Hebel, the centralizing tongue is that in which Schiller ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... any liberties taken with dates or facts, I deem certain linguistic anachronisms, of which Strindberg not rarely becomes guilty. Thus, for instance, he makes the King ask Bishop Brask: "What kind of phenomenon is this?" The phrase is palpably out of place, and yet it has been used so deliberately that nothing was left ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms. Most of the strangers they see on the islands are philological students, and the people have been led to conclude that linguistic studies, particularly Gaelic studies, are the chief occupation of the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... frightful discord and pains, might have slowly constructed one language before this earth grew cold, this race will create literally hundreds, each complete in itself, and many of them with quaint little systems of writing attached. And the owners of this linguistic gift are so humble about it, they will marvel at bees, for their hives, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... Christianity with Heathenism in Iceland; and this leaves them far behind us.[160] On the other hand, the work which we have in Provencal before the extreme end of the eleventh century is not finished literature. It has linguistic interest, the interest of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... from Rome on April 21, 1915. It declared that these additional concessions failed to "repair the chief inconveniences of the present situation, either from the linguistic and ethnological or the military point of view." Austria, he pointed out, seemed determined to maintain positions on the frontier that were a perpetual threat to Italy. There were three more conversations ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... historical and linguistic merits, the document which is presented in this volume is one of the most important in aboriginal American Literature. Written by a native who had grown to adult years before the whites penetrated to his ancestral home, himself a member of ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... Macedonia that has engendered so much heat and caused so much blood to be spilt. The dispute as to whether it is rather Serb or Bulgar has caused interminable and most bitter controversy. The truth is that it was neither the one nor the other, but that, the ethnological and linguistic missionaries of Bulgaria having been first in the field, a majority of the Macedonian Slavs had been so long and so persistently told that they were Bulgars, that after a few years Bulgaria could, with some truth, claim that this ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... permanence. It would be affectation to claim that Plautus is nowadays widely read outside of the inner circle of scholars; and there he is read almost wholly on account of his unusual fertility and interest as a field of linguistic study. Yet he must always remain one of the great outstanding influences in literary history. The strange fate which has left nothing but inconsiderable fragments out of the immense volume of the later Athenian Comedy, raised Plautus to a position co-ordinate with that of Aristophanes ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Merci!...C'est que l'ame, c'est toute la musique!" "And he pressed my hands," says Charles Maurice, "as if I had discovered a new merit in his rare talent." This specimen of Bellini's conversation is sufficient to show that his linguistic accomplishments were very limited. Indeed, as a good Sicilian he spoke Italian badly, and his French was according to Heine worse than bad, it was frightful, apt to make people's hair stand ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... her manners were so modest, so unexceptionable in every way, that no one not in the secret would or could have suspected her real business, which was to secure a succession of temporary husbands in the most respectable manner, and without leaving the hotel. Her linguistic accomplishments gave her a wide field of choice, and representatives of various nations succeeded each other at irregular but never very long intervals. As I shall be dead when this is published, perhaps ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... their whole conception of national mission and national life, especially their legislation,[325] for which he anticipated larger and more Catholic aims than obtain in Europe, hampered as it is by countless political and linguistic boundaries and barred thereby from any far-reaching unity ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... fortifications. This was the scientific part, and was the heaviest part of the curriculum. Then, besides a little English, mental philosophy, moral philosophy, and elementary law, there were two years' study of the French and one of Spanish. This was the only linguistic study, and began with the simplest elements. At the close of the war there was no instruction in strategy or grand tactics, in military history, or in what is called the Art of War. The little book by Mahan on Out-post Duty was the only text-book in Theory, outside the engineering proper. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Pitt's appeal for American liberty, the Farewell of Washington, or the Address at Gettysburg? Until Edison made his wonderful invention in 1877, the human race was entirely without means for preserving or passing on to posterity its own linguistic utterances or any other vocal sound. We have some idea how the ancients looked and felt and wrote; the abundant evidence takes us back to the cave-dwellers. But all the old languages are dead, and the literary form is their embalmment. We do not ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... analysis of the peculiar traits of its mountain population, which included presently their remarkable idiosyncrasies of speech. When he was fairly launched on this theme, which was of genuine interest to him, for he had long fostered a linguistic fad, all danger of awkward silence or significant pauses was eliminated. He found that Briscoe could furnish him with some fresh points in comparative philology, to his surprise and gratification, for he never expected aught bookish of his host. But like men of ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to despise your linguistic descent. English is English—our language; and all its history to be venerated ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... eighteenth century, just as many of the so-called "Americanisms" of older parts of the country, including Virginia and New England, are Elizabethan. The early English and French colonists, coming to this country with the language of their times, dropped, over here, into a linguistic backwater. In the mother countries language continued to renew itself as it flowed along, by elisions, by the adoption and legitimatizing of slang words (as for instance the word "cab," to which Dean Swift objected on the ground that it was slang for "cabriolet"), and by all the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... afternoon following Renson's linguistic troubles that "the boss" came jogging into Paraiso on his sturdy mule. In his eagerness to "clean up" the territory we fell to corraling negroes everywhere, in the streets, at work, buying their supplies at the commissary, sleeping in the shade of wayside ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... nomenclature. The very unfortunate name "shadowgraph" has been suggested and largely used in the newspapers, and even in medical journals. It has only the merit of clearness as to its meaning to English-speaking persons. It is, however, an abominable linguistic crime, being an unnatural compound of English and Greek. "Radiograph" and its derivatives are equally objectionable as compounds of Latin and Greek. The Greek word for shadow is "skia," and the proper rendering, therefore, of shadowgraph is ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... full Consular pension, it would have been easy for the Government, if they had been so minded, to have made up to him the sum—only a few hundred pounds a year—from the Civil List, on the ground of his literary and linguistic labours and services. It should be added that this petition was refused both by Liberal and Conservative Governments, for Lord Salisbury's second Administration came into office before the Burtons left England. But there ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... in the verb kuhkinneau, or kehkinnoo, "he marks, observes, takes knowledge, instructs, or imitates";[18] hence, "he interprets," and therefore indicating by a free translation "an interpreter or teacher"; this word in its primitive form occurs in all dialects of the same linguistic family—that is, the Algonquian—in an infinite number of compounds, denoting "a scholar; teacher; a thing signified; I say what he says, i. e., repeat ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... subject cannot be successfully pursued in many cases without a reading knowledge of the three other great mathematical languages; viz., French, German, and Italian. Hence the study of graduate mathematics necessarily presupposes some linguistic training in addition to an acquaintance with the elements of ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... pianists are wonderfully well read, many being acquainted with the literature of three or more tongues in the original. Indeed, it is not unusual to find them skipping through several languages during ordinary conversation without realizing that they are performing linguistic feats that would put the average college graduate to shame. They are familiar with art, science, politics, manufactures, even in their most recent developments. "What is your favorite type of aeroplane?" ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... education by encouraging co-operation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organization of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity. 2. Community action shall be aimed at: - developing the European dimension in education, particularly through the teaching and dissemination of the languages of the Member States; - encouraging ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... FRENCH PLAYS, ST. JAMES'S THEATRE."—It is hard on the indefatigable M. MAYER, but when Englishmen can so easily cross the Channel, and so willingly brave the mal-de-mer for the sake of a week in Paris, it is not likely that they will patronise French theatricals in London, even for their own linguistic and artistic improvement, or solely for the benefit of the deserving and enterprising M. MAYER. Even if it be mal-de-mer against bien de Mayer, an English admirer of French acting would risk the former to get a week in Paris. We are sorry ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... been able to follow him in this path; for in the present state of linguistic chaos and decomposition few writers have the necessary knowledge of Russian, the taste and the sense of measure, to write anything like his pure and flexible Russian. In the hands of others it degenerates into slang, or into some personal jargon closely ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... National Council of Provinces (90 seats, ten members elected by each of the nine provincial legislatures for five-year terms; has special powers to protect regional interests, including the safeguarding of cultural and linguistic traditions among ethnic minorities); note-following the implementation of the new constitution on 3 February 1997 the former Senate was disbanded and replaced by the National Council of Provinces with essentially no change in membership and party affiliations, although the new institution's ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... forts, molto forte!" he observed, mixing French with Italian to show his linguistic ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... military ardour, John Fletcher turned his thoughts again to study. His linguistic powers were great; it was to him a cheerful distraction to join a party of students who were proceeding to England to become familiar with ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... therefrom that the Cross Lay of which fragments were inscribed on the Ruthwell monument was the work of Caedmon, "the Milton of North England in the seventh century." But according to the evidence of the latest expert who has examined the cross, Caedmon's name has never been on it, and both linguistic and archaeological considerations assign the inscription to the tenth century, and probably to the latter half of it. This critic declares that there is "no shadow of proof or probability that the inscription represents ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... same tongue, and that at the end of the nineteenth century there would not be the slightest perceptible cleavage, or threat of ultimate divergence. No doubt there were forces obviously tending to preserve the linguistic unity of the two nations. There was the English Bible for one thing, and there was the whole body of English literature. The Americans, it might have been said, could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Pantheism, because, if God is not ourselves, there is something other than God. But the man who deliberately justified the loose phraseology of the Bible about infinite Being, by the plea that it was language "thrown out" at an object infinitely transcending linguistic expression, ought not himself to be pinned to the implications logically deducible from his own words "thrown out" at the same transcendant object. And, though Matthew Arnold was too literary to be a Pantheist, that is, though he thought more of forms of expression than of ultimate reality, his ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... words, whether from the ancient or from the modern languages, savors of pedantry and affectation. The ripest scholars, in speaking and writing English, make least use of foreign words or phrases. Persons who indulge in their use incur the risk of being charged with a desire to exhibit their linguistic attainments. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... much conversation with vanquished foes. They usually confine their attentions to scowling, torturing, and ultimately to killing and scalping them. The Dogribs who had captured Cheenbuk could not speak the Eskimo tongue, and being unaware of his linguistic powers, did not think it possible to speak to him, but one of their number stood by him on guard while the others dug a grave and buried the Indian ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ungava, with the exception of two or three, speaks any but his mother tongue, and they have no ambition, apparently, to extend their linguistic acquirements. It is, indeed, a lonely life for the trader, who but once a year, when his ship arrives, has any communication with the great world which he has left behind him. No white woman is here with her softening influence, no physician or surgeon to treat the sick and injured, ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... work is of more than moderate significance. It was accepted for publication by the prestigious Propaganda Press; and, even if those more familiar with Japanese than the editorial board of that Press might have had serious reservations concerning the linguistic accuracy of the text, it is reasonable to assume that the Press judged it to be a good example of grammatical description. It thus represents a grammar of a non-European language which suited the requirements of the day for publication ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... tongue, vernacular; 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
... must keep in our mind's eye the linguistic geography of Italy, just as we must remember the political geography of the peninsula in following Rome's territorial expansion. Let us think at the outset, then, of a little strip of flat country on the Tiber, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... I did not open my mouth for speech. Probably it never dawned upon them that I understood a word of their tongue. We Anglo-Saxons abroad have not a reputation for being polyglot, and I never advertise my own small linguistic attainments unless specially called upon to do so. I do not care particularly for the trouble of talking myself, and one scores sometimes by a taste for silence. I made rather a good point that way once in a ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... of the 1993 constitutional revision that furthered devolution into a federal state, there are now three levels of government (federal, regional, and linguistic community) with a complex division of responsibilities; this reality leaves six governments each with its own legislative assembly; for other acronyms of the listed parties see ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... as well as cultural and linguistic differences between its Polynesian inhabitants and those of the rest of the Cook Islands, have caused it to be separately administered. The population of the island continues to drop (from a peak of 5,200 in 1966 to about 2,150 in ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Jew and Palestinian." Luthardt maintains "that the style of the Gospel betrays the born Jew, and certainly not the Greek," but the force which he intends to give to all this reasoning is clearly indicated by the conclusion at which he finally arrives, that "the linguistic gulf between the Gospel and the Apocalypse is not impassable." [29:1] This result from so staunch an apologist, obviously to minimise the Hebraic character of the Apocalypse, is not after all so strikingly different from ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... cottage black sorrow reigned throughout the night. There were tears and linguistic prayers. There were tinklings of little bells, while humans called shrilly to vulgar officials along the wires. From a mass of incoherence the officials learned that some evil-hearted ruffian had entered the thirty-thousand-dollar garden and had ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... Germans define by the word Stimmung. A number of young polyglots examined for a long time various languages of Europe to find a word which would answer best to the German Stimmung, till Maryan first, possessing the greatest linguistic capacity, came on the Polish expression nastroj (tone of mind). Yes, they agreed, universally, that the baron's dwelling produced a tone of mind; an impression not of what was in it, but of something ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... peoples have intermarried freely, and it is hard to think of the Tewas otherwise than as "one kind of Hopi." However, they are of a distinctly different linguistic stock, speaking a Tewa language brought from the Rio Grande, while the Hopi speak a dialect of ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... from Spain to seek refuge in the Papal States, and took up residence at Cesena. There he began work on a tremendous universal history of the spiritual development of man, into which he wove the results of his philosophical, social and linguistic studies. These last were of particular importance, and Hervas is regarded as the true founder of the science of linguistics and comparative philology. In 1785 he published the eighteenth volume of his massive work, the Origine, formazione, meccanismo, ed armonia degl' idiomi, in which ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... correspondent called upon General Hawkins, giving him an opportunity, if he felt so disposed, of "jumping," in his turn, on his excitable opponent. The General did feel "so disposed," and proceeded, in popular parlance, to "see" Mr. J. McNeill Whistler and "go him one better." In this species of linguistic gymnastics, by the way, the military Commissioner asks no odds of any one. He began by gently remarking that Mr. Whistler, in his published remarks, had soared far out of the domain of strict veracity. This was not bad for a ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... Regions of the Desire World, there is the same diversity of tongues as on earth, and the so-called "dead" of one nation find it impossible to converse with those who lived in another country. Hence linguistic accomplishments are of great value to the "Invisible Helpers", of whom we shall hear later, as their sphere of usefulness is ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... since Mr. Spencer asked his suggestive question, "what knowledge is of most worth," the question of educational values has been raised and the curriculum has come under close scrutiny. The result has been a modification. The purely linguistic and literary, that which does not function directly for preparation in life and society, is slowly giving way to that which deals with the facts and forces of nature and ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the origins of mythology. The stories and incidents common to all the European field were thought likely to be original mythopoeic productions of the Indo-European peoples just in the same manner as the common roots of the various Aryan languages indicated their original linguistic store. ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... progress was the attention which he began to turn at this time to biblical and theological studies. He was thankful in later years that he had deferred such inquiries to a time when he was capacitated for them by a calm and sound judgment, and a solid basis of linguistic and historical knowledge. He had always looked forward to holy orders, and regarding the life of a clergyman as his appointed work, he considered that an honest, a critical, and an impartial study of the Bible ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... these books have contributed something of value and importance to the subject. Dr. Knapp's work it is easiest to praise because he is dead.[2] His biography of Borrow was the effort of a lifetime. A scholar with great linguistic qualifications for writing the biography of an author whose knowledge of languages was one of his titles to fame, Dr. Knapp spared neither time nor money to achieve his purpose. Starting with an article in The Chautauquan Magazine in 1887, which was reprinted ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... "wahtoo." At the first bite, I began to learn the Mandan tongue. I swallowed a chunk whole, and then enlightened the Kid as to a portion of the Mandan language. "Wahtoo," said I, "means 'indigestible'; it is an evident fact." Then, being strengthened by our linguistic triumph, we fell upon the dark brown substance again. But almost anything has its good points; and I can conscientiously recommend ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Eastern Asia," and "possessing a literature in vastness and antiquarian value surpassed by no other." He goes on to say that the translations hitherto made "have conveyed to us a faint notion of the compass, variety, solidity, and linguistic beauties of that literature." Such statements as these admit, unfortunately, of rhetorical support, sufficient to convince outsiders that at any rate there are two sides to the question, a conviction which could only be effectually dispelled by placing before them a few thousand volumes translated ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... comrades that he had put his meaning through to me. They clearly were impressed by his prowess. This cheered him up. He went on to further linguistic feats. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... him who opened it in his native tongue, would have to pass five years of his life between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician, Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have served in one army or ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... consensus of opinion, had its origin in the far North, where many tribes of the family still live. Based on the creation legends of the Navaho and on known historical events, the advent of the southern branch of this linguistic group—the Navaho and the Apache tribes—has been fixed in the general region in which they now have their home, at about the time of the discovery of America. Contrary to this conclusion, however, the legend of their genesis gives no ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... is now Earl Ladislaw and who was about eighteen months younger than I, Mary, my contemporary within eight days, and Guy, whom we regarded as a baby and who was called, apparently on account of some early linguistic efforts, "Brugglesmith." He did his best to avenge his juniority as time passed on by an enormous length of limb. I had more imagination than Maxton and was a good deal better read, so that Mary and I dominated most of the games of Indians ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... of that order, in 1577. He was distinguished, in his labors among the natives, for gathering the converts into reductions (villages in which they dwelt apart from the heathen, and under the special care of the missionaries), for establishing numerous primary schools, for his linguistic abilities—being one of the first to form a grammar and vocabulary of the Tagal language—and for the ethnological researches embodied in the memoir which is presented in our text. He died at Lilio, in the province of La Laguna, in 1590. See account of his life in Santa ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... Dalmatia, where one extremely self-conscious nation and language is present in the towns and another in the surrounding country, or Asia Minor, where no definite national boundaries, no religious, linguistic, or social homogeneities have ever established themselves since the Roman ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... German edition of 1529, instead of "in Gott, in Christum." (W. 30, 1, 493.) In Rhau's edition of 1532 and 1535 the morning and evening prayers are added, probably only as fillers. The changes in Rhau's edition of 1538, styling itself, "newly corrected and improved," consist in linguistic improvements and some additions and omissions. Albrecht believes that most, but not all, of these changes were made by Luther himself, and that the omissions are ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Berlin was a big, upstanding chap, half Russian and half Swiss, and therefore qualified by his breeding to speak many languages; for the Russians are born with split tongues and can give cards and spades to any talking crow that ever lived; while the Swiss lag but little behind them in linguistic aptitude. It seemed such a pity that this man was not alive when the hands knocked off work on the Tower of Babel; he could have put the job through without extending himself. No matter what the nationality of a guest might ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... transcriptions from Egyptian into Greek, with respect to our knowledge of the Egyptian language. As the Egyptians did not write down their vowels, the vocalisation of the language was hardly yet known. But results of much importance were gained—first, of a palaeographical, and, secondly, of a linguistic character. We now know exactly how they wrote in the third century B.C., and we have also learnt what was the Greek used by the respectable classes of that epoch. The Greek was far purer and better than that of the Septuagint would lead ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... been ancient history, to illustrate the classical authors he had been reading; and the result had been a want of mental balance; he knew nothing of the modern world or the movement of European history; the whole education had in fact been linguistic and literary; it had sacrificed everything to accuracy, and to the consideration of niceties of expression. It might have been urged that this was in itself a training in the art of verbal expression; but here it seemed to Hugh that the whole of the training had confined itself to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... described was not, however, the original seat of those nations. They belonged to that linguistic family which is known to ethnologists as the Huron-Iroquois stock. This stock comprised the Hurons or Wyandots, the Attiwandaronks or Neutral Nation, the Iroquois, the Eries, the Andastes or Conestogas, the Tuscaroras, and some smaller bands. The tribes of this family ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... have collected the Haitian myths, chiefly from the manuscript Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentales of Las Casas, in an essay published in 1871, The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... will retain duality of language, both Dutch and British being in official use. There was no other method open. The Dutch language is probably doomed to extinction within three or four generations. It is, in truth, not one linguistic form, but several: the Taal, or kitchen Dutch of daily speech, the "lingua franca" of South Africa; the School Taal, a modified form of it, and the High Dutch of the Scriptural translations brought with the Boers from Holland. Behind this there is no ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... is brought to an end, when the clan remains stationary upon some piece of territory surrounded by a strip of forest-land, or other boundaries natural or artificial, then the clan becomes a mark-community. The profound linguistic researches of Pictet, Fick, and others have made it probable that at the time when the Old-Aryan language was broken up into the dialects from which the existing languages of Europe are descended, the Aryan tribes were passing from a purely pastoral stage of barbarism into ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... oratory. With a fellow classicist he entered into a solemn compact to hold all their conversation, even on the most trivial topics, in Latin, with heavy penalties for careless lapses into English. Probably the linguistic result would have astonished Quintilian, but the experiment at least had a certain influence in improving the young man's Latinity. Another favourite dissipation was that of translating English masterpieces into the ancient tongue; there still survives among ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Agassiz, have an underlying bond of unity with them, but which are generally carried on without reference to principles governing the investigation of every organism and all organic life. I have in mind, particularly, the spread of literary and linguistic study in America during the last few decades, and the lack of a common standard of judgment among those who engage in such study. Most persons do not, in fact, discern the close, though not obvious, relation ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... of mounts was required. By this time Honeyman knew the horses of each man's mount, so all we had to do was to sing out our horse, and Billy would have a rope on one and have him at hand before you could unsaddle a tired one. On account of our linguistic accomplishments, Quarternight and I were to be sent across the river to put the cattle in and otherwise assume control. On the Mexican side there was a single string of high brush fence on the lower side of the ford, commencing well out in the water and running back about two hundred yards, thus ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... the "Ladies' Home Journal" and "Modern Priscilla." She is also the teacher of the women's class, made up of the wives of the theological students. A Tamil woman in a Telugu country, she, too, must have known a little of the linguistic woes of the foreign missionary. Those days, however, are long past, and she now teaches her daily classes in fluent and easy Telugu. There are also weekly trips to nearby hamlets, where the women-students are guided by her into the ways of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... to find my old friend with a lighter step and a lighter heart than in many a day. The parrot had learned to speak Canadian French to the extent of demanding his crackers and water in the lingo of the habitant. Whether he will yet stretch his linguistic acquirements to the learning of Iroquois I shall not say. It is at least possible. The two are inseparable. The last time I went to see them, no one answered my knock on the door-jamb. I raised the curtain that serves for a door, and looked in. Mrs. Ben Wah was asleep upon the bed. Perched ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... community of language and customs, and still more the strong political influence which for nearly a century had been exercised by the Burgundian dynasty, which had united most of these low countries under its sway, had cemented a feeling of solidarity which did not even halt at the linguistic frontier in Belgium. It was still rather a strong Burgundian patriotism (even after Habsburg had de facto occupied the place of Burgundy) than a strictly Netherlandish feeling of nationality. People ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... The demands of the Reformers are summed up by Quick as follows: "First, that the study of things should precede, or be united with, the study of words; second, that knowledge should be communicated, where possible, by appeal to the senses; third, that all linguistic study should begin with that of the mother tongue; fourth, that Latin and Greek should be taught to such boys only as would be likely to complete a learned education; fifth, that physical education should be attended ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... take no interest whatever in the history or literature of Greece and Rome; and the examination system undoubtedly tends to foster this bastard type of humanism. But when, as a result of his school and University training, a scholar has passed the linguistic portals and found pleasure in the worlds beyond, we may say of him that his education has fostered the growth of one of his expansive instincts,—perhaps the most important of all, but still only one. When Science is effectively taught, the growth of the inquisitive instinct is ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... that, while his own centre was in the middle, he did not seek it in the middle for the things of which he wrote; but I remember that, at the moment in which the words were spoken, they impressed me as full of penetration. Mr. Browning had so much confidence in M. Milsand's linguistic powers that he invariably sent him his proof-sheets for final revision, and was exceedingly pleased with such few corrections as his ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps. (53. See some good remarks on this head by Prof. Whitney, in his 'Oriental and Linguistic Studies,' 1873, p. 354. He observes that the desire of communication between man is the living force, which, in the development of language, "works both consciously and unconsciously; consciously as regards the immediate end to be attained; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Bolton. "To begin with, I am a member of the faculty of the University of Reuton, situated, as you no doubt know, in the city of the same name. For a long time I have taken a quiet interest in our municipal politics. I have been up in arms—linguistic arms—against this odd character Cargan, who came from the slums to rule us with a rod of iron. Every one knows he is corrupt, that he is wealthy through the sale of privilege, that there is actually a fixed schedule of prices for favors in the way ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Clifford Marsh had joined in conversation with the Germans; his use of their tongue was far from idiomatic, but by sheer determination to force a way through linguistic obstacles, he talked with a haphazard fluency which was amusing enough. No false modesty imposed a check upon his eloquence. It was to the general table that he addressed himself on the topic that had arisen; in an English dress his ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... period, and interest the common observer but little even today. The history of most of the cultivated plants is very obscure, [66] and even the most skillful historians, by sifting the evidence afforded by the older writers, and that obtained by comparative linguistic investigations have been able to do little more than frame the most general outline of the cultural history of the most common and most widely ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... work is to serve as an introduction to the study of the historical development of the English language. The scope of the book is sufficient to give the student an insight into the main linguistic phenomena. While the method of discussion is concise, care has been taken to include all words the history of which bears on the development of the language at large. The authors have, in the first place, traced ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... of America and Asia that the strongest proofs of a like origin is found. The Tshuktshi of Northern Asia, the Esquimaux of America, and the Namollo, all bear a very close relationship, especially in linguistic characteristics. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... what she said into English, the translation turns out to be but a sonorous paraphrase. Her French was of that mixed creole sort, a blending of linguistic elegance and patois, impossible to imitate. Like herself it was beautiful, crude, fascinating, and something in it impressed itself as unimpeachable, despite the broken and incongruous diction. Rene felt his soul cowering, even slinking; but he fairly maintained a good face, and went ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... his linguistic ellipses Quarrier leaned forward and caught his arm in a grip of steel. Another man had entered the room. Mortimer, made partly conscious by the pain of Quarrier's vise-like grip, was sober enough to recognise the impropriety ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... Rada (Herrada) also went with Legazpi to the Philippines, from Mexico. He was born at Pamplona, July 20, 1533, and at the age of twenty became an Augustinian friar; he was noted for his mathematical and linguistic ability. In 1572, he was provincial of his order in the Philippines, and was sent as ambassador twice to China and once to Borneo. On his return voyage from this latter mission, he died at sea, in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... the shade. In so far certainly there is an improvement; inadequate efforts occur in this epoch far less frequently; performances in their kind complete and thoroughly pleasing occur far oftener than before or afterwards; in a linguistic point of view Cicero calls the age of Laelius and Scipio the golden age of pure unadulterated Latin. In like manner literary activity gradually rises in public opinion from a trade to an art. At the beginning of this period the preparation of theatrical pieces at any rate, if ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... (Luke 19:10). Our rule has been to endeavour to give to the terms of Jesus the connotation he meant them to carry. The scholar will linger over the "Son of Man"—a difficult phrase, with a literary and linguistic history that is very complicated. For the present purpose the significant words are at the other end of the sentence. What does Jesus mean by "lost"? It is a strong word, the value of which we have in some degree lost through familiarity. And whom would he describe as "lost"? We have once ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... imposed certain limitations not only as to individual poems but also as to poets. Thus I felt that I must exclude Novalis, Hlderlin, Brentano, Annette von Droste, Nietzsche and Dehmel. My standard of difficulty—aside from matters purely linguistic—was: Could a similar poem in English be read and appreciated by the same class of students? Moreover I tried out in a class of fourth semester German all poems that seemed to offer special difficulties and have made use of the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Other facial characteristics suggest that a Mongolian racial connection is highly improbable; the prominent Sumerian nose, for instance, is quite unlike the Chinese, which is diminutive. Nor can far-reaching conclusions be drawn from the scanty linguistic evidence at our disposal. Although the languages of the Sumerians and long-headed Chinese are of the agglutinative variety, so are those also which are spoken by the broad-headed Turks and Magyars of Hungary, the broad-headed and long-headed, dark and fair Finns, and the brunet ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... went to bed. I slept pretty poorly. Man-eaters played a major role in my dreams. And I found it more or less appropriate that the French word for shark, requin, has its linguistic roots in the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Abel's essay, "Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworter" (1884, the following examples of such words in England are given: "gleam—gloom"; "to lock—loch"; "down—The Downs"; "to step—to stop." In his essay on "The Origin of Language" ("Linguistic Essays," p. 240), Abel says: "When the Englishman says 'without,' is not his judgment based upon the comparative juxtaposition of two opposites, 'with' and 'out'; 'with' itself originally meant 'without,' as may still be seen in 'withdraw.' 'Bid' includes the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... to me that the selections above given convey an idea of some of the more important linguistic features of the Passamaquoddy language, but it is needless to reiterate that these results and observations are merely experimental. In another place I hope to reproduce the stories in the original, by phonetic methods. ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... church in Philadelphia, used to do until some person without any sense of humor undertook to set him straight. We trust that no misguided person may ever undertake to correct Polly's English or Miss Cassandra's French, for as Walter says, "To hear those two exchanging linguistic courtesies is one of the experiences that make life and travel worth while, and the most amusing part of it is that the Quaker lady is as unconscious of the humor of the situation ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... of Benares was reinforced in 1826 by the arrival of the Rev. James Robertson. He was a man of linguistic talent, and was full of plans for setting up the standard of the Cross and assailing the idolatry around him. He opened a number of schools in various parts of the city, and organized a system of Bible-reading in the streets. Seven men, chosen ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Archdeacon Gray's work on "China," Doolittle's "Social Life of the Chinese," Denys's "Chinese Folklore," Mayers's "Chinese Reader's Manual," Sir John Davis's "Poetry of the Chinese," as well as to the important linguistic, religious and topographical writings of Doctor Edkins of Peking, and particularly to the late Professor S. Wells Williams, of Yale College, whose work on the Middle Kingdom contains more information of value than any other single volume in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... improbable that this narrative, had Maitland told it ever so movingly, would have entirely satisfied the suspicions of the Commissaire of Police. It might even have prejudiced that official against Maitland. Moreover, the Fellow of St. Gatien's had neither the presence of mind nor the linguistic resources necessary to relate the whole plot and substance of this narrative, at a moment's notice, in a cold police-office, to a sceptical alien. He therefore fell back on a demand to be allowed to communicate with the English ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... replied monsieur, who was always glad of an opportunity to exhibit his linguistic powers. "Hvor staae det ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... which the author of Wild Wales made to the birth-place, or the burial-place as it might be, of bard after bard, and by the short but masterly accounts which he gives of the objects of his search. Of none of the numerous subjects of his linguistic rovings does Borrow seem to have been fonder, putting Romany aside, than of Welsh. He learnt it in a peculiarly contraband manner originally, which, no doubt, endeared it to him; it was little known to and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... stone deaf. He didn't even hear that rifle going off. The only one of this gang that has brains enough to pour sand out of a boot with directions on the bottom of the heel, and he's a total linguistic loss." ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... hypothesis that both Greek and Latin are retained. Personally I would retain Latin for most, but give up Greek altogether in the majority of cases. I would teach all boys French thoroughly. I would try to make them read and write it easily, and that should be the linguistic staple of their education. Then I would teach them history, mainly modern English history, and modern geography; a very little mathematics and elementary science. Such boys would be, in my belief, well-educated; and they would never be tempted to disbelieve in ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the most recent researches in both hemispheres tend to reduce materially their influence. The cultures in question did not begin at one point and radiate from it, but arose simultaneously over wide areas, in different linguistic stocks, with slight connections; and only later, and secondarily, was it successfully concentrated by some one tribe—by the agency, it is now believed, of cognatic rather than ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... beyond the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With Cardington conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a more ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... perhaps even some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, in its details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... only fourteen years ago (1871) there is a noticeable difference in the inhabitants, to me the most acceptable being their great linguistic superiority over the people on the French side of the border. I linger in Saarburg only about thirty minutes, yet am addressed twice by natives in my own tongue; and at Pfalzburg, a smaller town, where I remain over night, I find ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... prepared with special reference to the wants of the collector, being printed on bond paper and bound in flexible cloth. It was widely distributed and, like that of Mr. Gibbs, resulted in the collection of valuable linguistic material. ...
— Catalogue Of Linguistic Manuscripts In The Library Of The Bureau Of Ethnology. (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (Pages 553-578)) • James Constantine Pilling
... offer no opinion as to how far it is worth attempting at school.[1] But fluent reading of French is a thing within the reach of practically any boy, and even the stupid boy, if he concentrates upon this, to the exclusion of other and more difficult linguistic tasks, will make such unmistakable progress that his ambitions may well be roused. And the accomplishment is one that can quickly be made useful. For instance, probably the best general history of Europe is still Guizot's book, and its French ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... several times recur verbatim, e.g., "I am the Lord, and none else, I do not give mine honour to any other, I am the first and the last," are easily accounted for by the Prophet's endeavour and anxiety to impress upon the desponding minds truths, which they were only too apt to forget. If other linguistic peculiarities occur, which cannot be explained from the subject, it must be considered that the second part is not by any means a collection of single prophecies, but a closely connected whole, which, as such, must necessarily have its own peculiar usus ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... "line," and among them they ground out instruction in shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, English grammar, spelling, composition (with a special view to the construction of deceptive epistles), and commercial geography. Once or twice a week, language-masters from a linguistic mill down the street were had in to chatter the more vulgar phrases of French, German, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... We need suppose no linguistic impediments to intercourse. The whole world will surely have a common language, that is quite elementarily Utopian, and since we are free of the trammels of convincing story-telling, we may suppose that language to be sufficiently our own to understand. Indeed, should we ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... about fifteen that his attention began to be turned towards scientific subjects. These were at first regarded rather as a relaxation from the linguistic studies with which he had been so largely occupied. On November 22nd, 1820, he notes in his journal that he had begun Newton's "Principia": he commenced also the study of astronomy by observing eclipses, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... back to England on a matter of business, I cut short my stay in Paris, and arrived at Hollins without having advanced much as an artist, but with an important linguistic acquirement. The value of French to me from a professional point of view is quite incalculable. The best French criticism on the fine arts is the most discriminating and the most accurate in the world, at least when it is not turned aside from truth by the national jealousy of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Archipelago, except the Negrito, is from that same old tongue. Mr. Homer B. Hulbert[41] has recorded vocabularies of ten groups of people in Formosa; and those vocabularies show that the people belong to the same great linguistic family as the Bontoc Igorot. Mr. Hulbert believes that the language of Korea is originally of the same stock as that of Formosa. In concluding his article ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... The six Angas or subordinate branches of the Vedas are 1. Siksha, the science of proper articulation and pronunciation: 2. Chhandas, metre: 3. Vyakarana, linguistic analysis or grammar: 4. Nirukta, explanation of difficult Vedic words: 5. Jyotishtom, Astronomy, or rather the Vedic Calendar: ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and Lycian were probabIy independent of the Greek in origin, so, too, at the opposite end of the Mediterranean was the Iberian. On the other hand, the Phrygian was very closely akin to the Greek in alphabet as well as in linguistic character. The Greek alphabet, with which it was most closely connected, was the Western, for 1he evidence is strongly in favour of the form @ having the value of ch, not ps, in Phrygian, as it certainly has in the Etruscan inscription found on Lemnos in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Room. We looked, and beheld The Clever Man, thoroughly and efficiently angry, addressing, threatening and frightening generally a constantly increasing group of fellow-prisoners. After dismissing with a few sharp linguistic cracks of the whip certain theories which seemed to be advanced by the bolder auditors with a view to palliating, persuading and tranquilizing his just wrath, he made for the nearest paillasse, turned it topsy-turvy, slit it neatly and suddenly from stem to stem with a jack-knife, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... he was particularly objectionable at the Boosters' Club lunch next day. They were addressed by a congressman who had just returned from an exhaustive three-months study of the finances, ethnology, political systems, linguistic divisions, mineral resources, and agriculture of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Bulgaria. He told them all about those subjects, together with three funny stories about European misconceptions of America and some spirited ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... industry; but Webster was decided, practical, strongly self-reliant, and always satisfied with doing the best that could be done with the time and means at command. Percival was timid and cautious, and, from the very breadth of his linguistic attainments, undecided. He often craved more time for arriving at conclusions. When he happened to differ from the great lexicographer, he would never yield an iota of his ground. These differences led to an early rupture ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the opening of the school year that they devote the year to inculcating in their pupils the qualities of thoroughness, self-control, courage, and reverence. The faces of the teachers, at such a proposal, would undoubtedly afford opportunity for an interesting study and the linguistic reactions of some of them would be forcible to the point of picturesqueness. The traditional teachers would demand to know by what right he presumed to impose upon them such an unheard-of program. Others might welcome the suggestion as a ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... and bring together all the most select illustrations from languages generally. So for Logic and for Taste. These subjects are far too serious to be imparted in passing allusions while the pupil is engaged in struggling with linguistic difficulties. They need a place in the programme to themselves; and, when so provided for, the small dropping contributions of the language teacher ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... It was a really surprising feat for so young a man—he was little over twenty-five when appointed—to have accomplished in so short a time; the more so as he was working single-handed: in other words, was doing unaided the work, both literary and linguistic, which in other colleges was commonly distributed between two or three. And I speak with intimate knowledge when I say that the Leeds students who presented themselves for their Honours Degree at the end of that time bore ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... Brimmer, I'll bet a cooky," said Mrs. Markham, whose linguistic deficiencies had debarred ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... sounds, and no longer call up vivid conceptions. An author who has the skill and the courage to undertake this repolishing and resharpening of the tools of language is, indeed, a public benefactor; but it requires the finest linguistic taste and discrimination to do it with success. Most authors are satisfied if they succeed in giving currency to one happy phrase involving a novel use of the language, or to an extremely limited number; I know of no one who ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of our duty, we are imperilling the purity of our own language, and we are deserting the wholesome tradition of English—the tradition which empowered us to take at our convenience but to refashion what we had taken to suit our own linguistic habits. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... strength in himself; he was a retired Italian politician and spoke so many languages that when he got excited he mixed them thoroughly, utterly routing all contestants in any arguments that might come up. He was a human geyser, and when his linguistic power got under full headway he fairly tore up all the tongues by their roots and trampled them under foot in the rush of his stinging invective. Although of Italian origin, "Gassy" was born near the site of the Tower ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... of the ablative, when the ablative was absolutely necessary, aroused once more the hilarity of the audience, and proved that Sister Claire's devil was just as poor a Latin scholar as the superior's, and Barre, fearing some new linguistic eccentricity on the part of the evil spirit, adjourned the meeting ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... you wish to see how some remarkable signification of a term has arisen you will generally find it as a progression through gradually remoter similarities to complete dissimilarity. All such extraordinary alterations which a word has undergone in the course of long usage, and for which each linguistic text-book contains numerous examples, may, however, develop with comparative speed in each individual speaker, and if the development is not traced may lead, in the law-court, to ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... folktales of the different tribes, or, which is more important for our present purpose, of the main divisions, eastern, central, and western, which the analysis of initiation ceremonies gives us—a tripartite division which Curr also makes on the linguistic side, though Mathew's map shows considerable intermixture in this respect. Until we know to what extent the Urabunna or the Ikula have folktales in common with the Victorian area, or,—which is perhaps more important, though we do not seem to hear of any communication on this line,—how ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... color-vision, and glide into X-rays and recent physical speculations; others may think of blue ribbons, or of the blue flowers on a friend's hat, and proceed on lines of personal reminiscence. To others, again, etymology and linguistic thoughts may be suggested; or blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for melancholy, and a train of associates connected with morbid psychology may ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... pride. The dignity of literature was constantly in his mind as he wrote; and he did not always write the better for it. Books in his day and in his eyes were still rather solemn things to be kept above the linguistic level of conversation. Dryden and Addison had already begun to make the great discovery that the best prose style has no conscious air of literature about it; but the new doctrine had not reached the {193} mass either of writers or readers. And it never completely reached Johnson. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... American Race: A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America. pp. 392. New ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton
... a way that the lines of cleavage of race continually run at right angles to the lines of cleavage of speech; there being communities practically of pure blood of each race found speaking each language. Aryan and Teutonic are terms having very distinct linguistic meanings; but whether they have any such ethnical meanings as were formerly attributed to them is so doubtful, that we cannot even be sure whether the ancestors of most of those we call Teutons originally spoke an Aryan ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... translations. This is the 'Faust' of Bayard Taylor, which indeed may be read as a poem in itself. But then Taylor had advantages possessed by few translators. An American by birth, his mother was a German, and he spent a part of his life in Germany. From his birth he was bilinguous; and added to this linguistic advantage were his profound scholarship and poetic gift. There are numerous editions of his work, but only one—so far as I am aware, in this country at least—worthy of its great merit, namely, that which appeared in two octavo volumes in 1871. It is an edition ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... suppose that, what ever may be the correct definition of "consciousness," "consciousness" is not the essence of life or mind. In the following lectures, accordingly, this term will disappear until we have dealt with words, when it will re-emerge as mainly a trivial and unimportant outcome of linguistic habits. ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... dull and too difficult for him. Above all it was too negative and unrelated to anything but the brain for the man who wrote "Lines to Six- foot-three" and consorted with Gypsies. He had taken atheism along with Taylor's literary and linguistic teaching, perhaps with some eagerness at first as a form of protest against conventionally pious and respectable Norwich life. The Bible Society and Mrs. Clarke and her friends came radiant and benevolent to his "looped and windowed" ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Professor Max Muller tells us, preserves its root-words for ever, tacking one to another, but never losing the full sound of each; while all sorts of word "jerry mandering" liberties go on in the highest class. I ventured to propound my theory to my linguistic friend, Mr. Hyde Clarke; but he found so many divergencies in Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and what not, that I was driven to a partial reconstruction. It was the busy as well as civilized race that scamped ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... phrases and expressions of doubtful parsing, as well as to all words and usages which have a strained or unfamiliar sound. The human memory is not to be trusted too far, and most minds harbour a considerable number of slight linguistic faults and inelegancies picked up from random discourse or from the pages of newspapers, magazines, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... indeed throughout the poem, the main difficulties with which we meet depend far more on interpretation than on the mere "construing" of the words; and even if it were otherwise, all purely linguistic difficulties have been so fully dealt with over and over again in commentaries and translations that it would, as has been said, be quite superfluous to enter here upon any discussion of them. The opening canto, as every reader will ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler |
