"Linguistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... available criterion is the somewhat poor one of the distribution of the very various languages. Some curious lines of migration are indicated by the occurrence of the same type of language in widely separated regions, the most striking example being the appearance of one linguistic stock, the so-called Athapascan, away up in the north-west by the Alaska boundary; at one or two points in south-western Oregon and north-western California, where an absolute medley of languages prevails; and again in the southern highlands along ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the old classical education have been gallantly fighting a losing battle for over half a century; they are now preparing to accept inevitable defeat. But their cause is not lost, if they will face the situation fairly. It is only lost if they persist in identifying classical education with linguistic proficiency. The study of foreign languages is a fairly good mental discipline for the majority; for the minority it may be either more or less than a fair discipline. But only a small fraction of mankind is capable of enthusiasm for language, for its own sake. The art of expressing ideas ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the philological study of a second dead language. The cause of his failure was that he had not discovered the educational method which could effectually secure his purpose. He had assumed that, in order to introduce the Greek spirit into education, it was sufficient to insist upon the linguistic and literary ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... blasphemously asserted that God was but "a Bogie of the nursery," he unwittingly made a remark as suggestive in point of philology as it was crude and repulsive in its atheism. When examined with the lenses of linguistic science, the "Bogie" or "Bug-a-boo" or "Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only with the fairy "Puck," whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the Slavonic "Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... sir," replied monsieur, who was always glad of an opportunity to exhibit his linguistic powers. "Hvor staae det til?" (How ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... occupy within the Semitic group is a question considerably more difficult to determine. By local position they should belong to the western, or Aramaic branch, rather than to the eastern, or Assyro-Babylonian, or to the southern, or Arab. But the linguistic evidence scarcely lends itself to such a view, while the historic leads decidedly to an opposite conclusion. There is a far closer analogy between the Palestinian group of languages—Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, and the Assyro-Babylonian, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... of the Indian mind, setting forth in the clearest light the state of the aboriginal religion before its contamination by contact with the whites. To the psychologist and the student of myths they are equally precious. In regard to their linguistic value we may quote the language of Brinton, speaking of the sacred books of the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... minute, Eddy! Let's get the words. I always did want a chance at German.—Now you say them slowly and we'll repeat.... Why, man alive, you ought to be proud of your linguistic accomplishments!... Well, I'll begin, and we'll ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... 3rd ser., IV., 1897, p. 509). Early in 1894, Mr. Ray read a paper before the Anthropological Institute (Journ. Anth. Inst., XXIV., p. 15), in which he adhered to our former discrimination of two linguistic stocks and added a third type of language composed of a mixture of the other two, for which he proposed the name Melano-Papuan. These languages, according to Mr. Ray, occur in the Trobriands, Woodlarks and ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... more than a smattering," he replied airily—a truthful answer, inasmuch as a vocabulary consisting simply of "quanty costy" and "troppo" cannot be seriously considered much more than a smattering. Fortunately she made no test of his linguistic attainment, but returned to ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... further hindered from accomplishing much by the imperfections of the language by the aid of which their thinking was done; for science and philosophy have had to make a serviceable terminology by dint of long and arduous trial and practice, and linguistic processes fit for expressing general or abstract notions accurately grew up only through numberless failures and at the expense of much inaccurate thinking and loose talking. As in most of nature's processes, there was a ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... like heaven since the Bottiger goblin [26] has been banished; and our school is also going very well indeed. A professorship has been given to Voss's eldest son, who inherits from his father that fundamental love for antiquity, especially from the linguistic side, which, after all, is the principal thing in a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... is gone, and he is marooned at Salonica. He cannot face the overland route, and he cannot get home all the way by sea just yet. In spite of all his endeavours he cannot become a naturalised Greek and stay there, because of linguistic difficulties. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... 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 back to the older periods loanwords of Scandinavian, French and ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... I believe, the 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 ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... was a universal language among the lettered classes, while the knowledge of Greek, though at no time so completely lost as is sometimes supposed, was a far rarer accomplishment, and was restricted for the most part to a few linguistic scholars. Thus before the revival of learning had made Greek a possible source of literary inspiration, the Vergilian tradition, through the instrumentality of Petrarch and Boccaccio, had already made itself ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Lowell suggested to me in 1869 that this word 'low has no kinship with allow, but is an independent word for which he gave a Low Latin original of similar sound. I have not been able to trace any such word, but Mr. Lowell had so much linguistic knowledge of the out-of-the-way sort that it may be worth while to record his impression. Bartlett is wrong in defining this word, as he is usually in his attempts to explain dialect outside of New England. It does not mean "to declare, assert, maintain," etc. It is nearly the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... that you just received from Fasimba. He belongs to me." Jason abandoned his linguistic ruse and put himself even more on guard, taking a quick look around at the empty sands. This dried up old bird was a lot brighter than he looked and he would ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... 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 ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... from his employment for some reason that he never specified, he had drifted up the coast to Zanzibar, where he turned his linguistic abilities to the study of Arabic and became the manager or head cook of an hotel. After a few years he lost this billet, I know not how or why, and appeared at Durban in what he called a "reversed position." Here it was that we met again, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the plain utterance of conviction. His general characteristics place him altogether within the archaic age. In point of time little anterior to Cicero, in style he is almost a contemporary of Ennius. The very slight increase of linguistic polish during the century and a quarter which comprises the tragic art of Rome, is somewhat remarkable. The old- fashioned ornaments of assonance, alliteration, and plays upon words are as frequent in Accius as in Livius, or rather more so; and the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... conduct and for the discipline of mind. At the same time we must not fall into the Spencerian error of identifying science "with the study of surrounding phenomena," and in making the antithesis between science and linguistic studies one between dealing with real things on the one hand, and ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... 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 fundamental ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... to bring the discussion within the range of those who have no special linguistic equipment, I have hardly ever cited Greek or Hebrew words, and never in the original alphabets. For a similar reason, the verses are numbered, not as in the Hebrew, but as in the English Bible. I have sought to make the discussion read continuously, without distracting the attention—excepting ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... indebtedness to Doctor Legge's "Chinese Classics," 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 ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the south-west, the Neutrals. The latter tribe occupied both the Niagara and Detroit peninsulas, overflowed into the states of Michigan and New York, and spread north as far as Goderich and Oakville in Ontario. All these nations, and the Andastes of the lower Susquehanna, were of the same linguistic stock as the Iroquois who dwelt south of Lake Ontario. Peoples speaking the Huron-Iroquois tongue thus occupied the central part of the eastern half of North America, while all around them, north, south, east, and west, roamed the tribes ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... 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 ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigour 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 ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... not expect to catch such clever rogues by so innocent a ruse? They hardly would confess to a familiarity with Russian. Such an admission would convict them. Indulge them in French. One of the pair has that much linguistic ability. Besides, we have so far conducted our investigations in ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the best treatise of the kind in the language. It abounds in nice criticism and elegant discussion on matters of taste, showing in the author a happy capacity for esthetic discrimination as well as for linguistic attainment. He does not profess to deal with some of the deeper problems of language, but nevertheless makes us feel that they have been subjects of thoughtful study, and, within the limits he has imposed upon himself, he is often profound without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... trait in the treatment of objective life, swiftness of analogy, affects the Polynesian in two ways: the first is pictorial and plays upon a likeness between objects or describes an idea or mood in metaphorical terms; the second is a mere linguistic play upon words. Much nomenclature is merely a quick picturing which fastens attention upon the special feature that attracts attention; ideas are naturally reinforced by some simple analogy. I recall a curious imported flower with twisted inner tube which the natives call, with a characteristic ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... truth, Gentlemen, as this plea contains was admitted last term by your Senate, in separating the English Tripos, in which a certain linguistic familiarity may be not rashly presumed of the student, from the Foreign Language Triposes, divided into two parts, of which the first will more suspiciously test his capacity to construe the books he professes to have studied. I may return ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... 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 mobility of students and teachers, inter alia by ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... thrown or tossed in games of hazard Dr. Culin for convenience has designated as "dice" and he calls the games "dice games." (Ibid., pp. 44, 45.) He found these games among one hundred and thirty tribes belonging to thirty different linguistic stocks. Throughout this wide distribution the "dice" are not only of different forms but are made from a variety of materials: split-cane; wooden or bone staves or blocks; pottery; beaver or muskrat teeth; walnut shells; persimmon, peach or plum stones. All the "dice" of ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... I 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 ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... has done all that was possible, taking a very limited view, however, in fixing upon certain linguistic resemblances in some ancient tongues to the Celtic; but a clear apprehension of the proper place which the Celtic language and its congeners hold in comparative philology, can only be learnt from such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... times, or from the first conflicts of 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 origins, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... many distinct languages and dialects. The languages of the Algonkian family are as diverse as the Indo-European tongues. So are the languages of the Dakotans, the Shoshonians, the Tinneans, and others; so that in North America we have more than five hundred languages spoken to-day. Each linguistic stock is found to have a philosophy of its own, and each stock as many branches of philosophy as it has languages and dialects. North America presents a magnificent field for the study of ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... from the Battlefields of Paraguay (1870) relate to a journey across South America to Peru. Damascus suggested Unexplored Syria (1872), and might have led to much better work, since no consulate in either hemisphere was more congenial to Burton's taste and linguistic studies; but he mismanaged his opportunities, got into trouble with the foreign office, and was removed to Trieste, where his Oriental prepossessions and prejudices could do no harm, but where, unfortunately, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the initial contact himself. The techniques which he had learned in the University of Commerce proved enormously successful. Within ten minutes rapport was established; in twenty the natives had agreed to submit to the linguistic machines. Lord had read accounts of other trailblazing commercial expeditions; and he knew he was establishing a ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... was also a gifted novelist and short-story writer) de la Mare was praised by T. S. Eliot ("the delicate, invisible web you wove") and by W. H. Auden ("there are no good poems which are only for children"). His technical and linguistic skills are not, as Auden rightly points out, a matter of indifference to children, who are in the very business of learning language, as well as other facts of life, and who are particularly sensitive to verbal rhythms, as Iona and Peter Opie have splendidly ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... issue; and his after life was spent in useful and honourable service as chaplain to the seamen at Dover. The rest of the new workers did excellent service for the mission, and most of them lived to an old age in the country. Remarkable for their linguistic capacity stand out William Williams, who translated the New Testament; and Robert Maunsell, who followed with the Old. This remarkable man took all possible pains to gather the correct idioms for his task—sometimes by engaging the Maoris in argument, sometimes by watching them at their sports. ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... independent Albania on the plea of "the right of nationalities" which Austria denied her own Slavs. Professor Masaryk rightly pointed out at that time that an outlet to the sea is a vital necessity for Serbia, that the Albanians were divided into so many racial, linguistic and religious groups and so uncivilised that they could not form an independent nation, and that the whole project was part and parcel of Austria's anti-Serbian policy and her plans for the conquest of the Balkans. Prince Lichnowsky admits that an ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... beyond a certain height; we seek merely to keep them healthy by suitable feeding, exercise, rest, bathing, etc. But in the matter of mental development we have not yet learned that it is impossible for all children to reach the same degree of linguistic or mathematical or artistic development, and we try to bring all of them up to our preconceived standard of what a child should do in each line. The thing that we need to find out is what a particular child can do; and then we must give him the opportunity and the encouragement to ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks— though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language." Further, unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages? The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who place the origin ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... considers it rather surprising that the two languages have not manipulated their respective versions of the word so as to increase still further the phonetic distance between them. Certainly the burden is now to prove that the identification is to be rejected, and, I think, that the soundest linguistic science will refuse ultimately to consider the phonetic discrepancy between the two words as a matter ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... zealously that Saraceni wrote his master that she already appeared to him to be a good Ferrarese.[107] She was present in the Vatican while Alexander carried on the negotiations. He sometimes used Latin for the purpose of displaying his linguistic attainments; but on one occasion, out of regard for Lucretia, he ordered that Italian be used, which proves that his daughter was not a perfect mistress ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... sole happiness," says your wife, after the answers of all the rest, who have sent you spinning through a whole world of linguistic suppositions. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... are marks of a gray antiquity going back to times before Herodotus, before Moses and the book of Genesis, before the Vedas in India, before the Zendavesta in Persia. It has been proved, first, that nearly all the languages of Europe belong to one linguistic family, and therefore that those who speak them were originally of one race. These different languages—seven sister languages, daughters of a language now wholly gone—are the Sanscrit or ancient Hindoo, the Zend or ancient Persian, the Greek, the Latin, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... developed "monosyllabic speech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist. The linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages.... The inflectional speech, the root of the Sanskrit, was the first language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates) of the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... called "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 Mandan ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... directed against the views of the new Tuebingen school. He differs from the older critical school of De Wette, in applying himself more exclusively to the Semitic literature; and cannot be classed with them in any other way than that he represents the effort of independent criticism, linguistic and historic; removed from the dogmatic school, and also from ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... 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 of city ordinances. I have ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... 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 even know definitely how Shakespeare's and Goldsmith's ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... 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 of which it was the mysterious expression ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... 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?" asked one some years ago in the kindergarten days of ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... him in French. French in Dizful! And it appeared that this remarkable Elamite was a Jew, who had picked up in Baghdad the idiom of Paris! He went on to describe himself as the "agent" of a distinguished foreign resident, who, the linguistic old gentleman gave Matthews to understand, languished for a sight of the new-comer, and was unable to understand why he had not already been favored with a call. His pain was the deeper because the newcomer had recently ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that many centuries must have passed between the two periods represented by these two strata of language. These inscriptions are in the Achaemenian dialect, which is the Zend in a later stage of linguistic growth.;" J. Freeman ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... as 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 at once perceive, is symbolism and allegory from beginning ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... Firth of Clyde to Aberdeenshire, Gaelic; in the Lowlands, south and east of the same line, Lowland Scots; over the whole country, among the more educated classes, English. Gaelic is a Celtic language, belonging to an entirely different linguistic group from English, and having close affinities to Irish and Welsh. This tongue Burns did not know. Lowland Scots is a dialect of English, descended from the Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon. It has had a history of considerable ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... of Tamil and Telugu Christian women, their only substitute for 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
... University of the north. 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 every mark of having been most thoroughly ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... 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, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... 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. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the Oriental scholars in England who could do justice to this picture of the mediaeval Arab. Captain Burton is perhaps the only one who joins to the necessary linguistic knowledge that varied practical experience of Eastern life which alone in many cases can supply the true meaning of a troublesome passage or an accurate comment upon it. His aim is to make the book in its English dress not only absolutely ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... must be added. The change of verbal meaning from which the myth is said to arise, is a change opposite in kind to that which prevails in the earlier stages of linguistic development. It implies a derivation of the concrete from the abstract; whereas at first abstracts are derived only from concretes: the concrete of abstracts being a subsequent process. In the words of Prof. Max Mueller, there are "dialects spoken at the present day ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the quartette was Ludwig Huber, at that time the accepted lover of Dora Stock. Huber was three years younger than Schiller,—an impressionable youth, of some linguistic talent, who had his occasional promptings of literary ambition. But his soarings were mere grasshopper flights; steady effort was not his affair and he lacked solid ability. A doting mother had watched and coddled him until in practical affairs he was comically ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... in Russia that its author was recalled and employed in the civil service. He came to this country in 1849, and, after being employed on the staff of The New York Tribune, came to Washington, where his linguistic attainments and the aid of Charles Sumner secured for him a position as translator in the State Department, which he held from 1861 ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Delagoa Bay; the Bechuana group, including the Bamangwato, the Basuto and the Barolongs, as well as the Barotse, far off on the middle course of the Zambesi; the Makalaka or Maholi, and cognate tribes, inhabiting Mashonaland and Manicaland. The linguistic and ethnical affinities of these groups and tribes are still very imperfectly known, but their speech and their habits are sufficiently similar to enable us to refer them to one type, just as we do the Finnic or the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... 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 ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... au-nau-ru-a-mi, "high father," and the moon, je-ru-a-mi, "high mother." The Tupi Indians of Brazil term the moon jacy, "our mother," and the same name occurs in the Omagua and other members of this linguistic stock. The Muzo Indians believe that the sun is their father and the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... fame as the cradle of artistic song and "The Lord's own Conservatory," to climatic and linguistic advantages. Thanks to the mild climate, men and women can spend most of their time in the open air, and their voices are not liable to be ruined by constantly passing from a dry, overheated room into ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the Royal Irish Academy, Archaeology, Linguistic and Literature. References to volumes according ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... a work of art, but as a medium for the display of individual linguistic dexterity; giving no thing its proper name, it delighted in paraphrase, allusion, word play, unexpected comparisons and abundance of metaphors, and revelled in the elusive, delicate, subtle, and complex. Hence conversation turned constantly to love and gallantry; thus ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Thanks to the linguistic sense inherent in the Dutch, and to an educational system that compels the study of languages, English was already familiar to the father and mother. But to the two sons, who had barely learned the beginnings ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... on grammar that have been published recently here and in England. And we have done more. We have gone to the original source of all valid authority in our language— the best writers and speakers of it. That we might ascertain what present linguistic usage is, we chose fifty authors, now alive or living till recently, and have carefully read three hundred pages of each. We have minutely noted and recorded what these men by habitual use declare to be good ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... killed at Paardeberg while I was in Ladysmith, he was my senior by nearly a year, Philip, who 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 ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... to his 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
... time at Denver. Later she studied and taught music, for which 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 ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist. The combination is extremely rare in literature, and in Racine's case it is especially remarkable owing to the smallness of the linguistic resources at his disposal and the rigid nature of the conventions in which he worked. That he should have succeeded in infusing into his tiny commonplace vocabulary, arranged in rhymed couplets according to the strictest and most artificial ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... (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 ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... forts, molto forte!" he observed, mixing French with Italian to show his linguistic ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... subjects by paths of association 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 ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... belief by no means connotes the full import of the term (as Mr. H. H. Bancroft has erroneously stated). The calendar system of Mexico and Central America, which I have shown to be substantially the same throughout many diverse linguistic stocks,[13-[]] had as one of its main objects, astrological divination. By consulting it the appropriate nagual was discovered and assigned, and this was certainly a prominent feature in the native cult and has never ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... extent of the original tribe whence the Indo-European languages have sprung, we can only speculate. It probably was not large, and very likely formed a compact racial and linguistic unit for centuries, possibly for ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... 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 mostly ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... two hemispheres. The official notice came from the captain's own hand. The ship had an American purser and an American chief steward, and there were many English on board, but the gallant little commander preferred to tackle the linguistic problem unaided. On Wednesday, therefore, the board had this announcement pinned to it:—"As she will be crossed the meridian of 180 to-morrow, so to-morrow again." Could, after the first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... existence by the widespread interest in linguistic subjects which is growing on the public, and by the lamentable lack of any organized means for focussing opinion. It responds to that interest, and would supply that want.[30] There is no doubt that public opinion is altogether ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... 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 to renounce their spiritual birthright, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... mere imitation of the theater is nowhere so evident as in this inorganic combination with bits of dialogue or explanatory phrases. The art of words and the art of pictures are there forcibly yoked together. Whoever writes his scenarios so that the pictures cannot be understood without these linguistic crutches is an esthetic failure in the new art. The next step toward the emancipation of the photoplay decidedly must be the creation of plays which speak the language ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... 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 enormously ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... 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 ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... reason why women should not devote themselves to the pursuit of liberal studies. By the time she was thirteen she knew—in addition to Latin—Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German, and several other languages, and was so renowned for her linguistic attainments that she was called, familiarly, the "walking polyglot." When she was fifteen, her father began to invite the most learned men of Bologna to assemble at his house and listen to her essays and discussions upon the most difficult philosophical ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... in doeskin gloves would necessarily pass a judgment on surfaces, but we all know what his judgment would be worth. In drawing-room circles, and for the immediate hour, this ingenious comparison was as damaging as the showing up of Merman's mistakes and the mere smattering of linguistic and historical knowledge which he had presumed to be a sufficient basis for theorising; but the more learned cited his blunders aside to each other and laughed the laugh of the initiated. In fact, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... means forget grammar, but in explaining the classics he always laid most stress upon the contents, and every lesson of his was a clever archaeological, aesthetic, and historical lecture. I listened to none more instructive at the university. Philological and linguistic details which were not suited for the senior pupils who were being fitted for other callings than those of the philologist were omitted. But he insisted upon grammatical correctness, and never lost sight of his maxim, "The school should teach its pupils to do thoroughly whatever they ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... those pursued by 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 between investigation ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... the mixed English and creole speech of the black population one can discern evidence of a linguistic transition. The original French patois is being rapidly ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to say as he drove a hard bargain with the peasant was but half the story. A glance at the runes had shown an awful double consonant, and, as if that were not enough, an appalling modified vowel. By a single word scratched by the untutored hand of a rude warrior the most ingenious linguistic hypothesis of our times was shattered beyond hope of repair. The spearhead was Lombard, and Lombard, dire reflection to one who had gained fame by maintaining the contrary, belonged to the West Germanic group ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the term) occupied the broad expanse from the Rhine to the Dwina and the head-waters of the Dnieper. A century later they had receded as far as the Vistula. Still another century later, about 500, the German linguistic domain was bounded on the east by the Ens, the Bohemian Hills, the upper Main, the Saal and the Elbe. The downfall of the Thuringian kingdom was the occasion of Slavic encroachments even on the left bank of the Elbe between Stendal and Lueneburg. This German recession, which boded the Slavization ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... 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 a ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... 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. I have here given English versions of some of the stories ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... 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
... evident, the Slovenes began to draw nearer to the Croats and the Serbs. It remained only for the Serbs to electrify the Jugo-Slavs—"to avenge Kossovo with Kumanovo"—in order to cement their loyalty to the regenerated Serbs. Religious differences, political rivalries, linguistic quibbles, and the petty foibles of centuries appeared to be forgotten in the three short years which elapsed from Kumanovo to the destruction of Serbia in 1915. The Greater Serbia idea had really perished ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... transplanted all the poetry of other nations to Germany by means of imitations which are real wonders of assimilation; Frederick Schlegel, when, in the Wisdom of the Hindoos he opened out that vast field of comparative linguistic science, which Bopp and so many others have since cultivated with such success; Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Ritter, when they gave a new life to geography by showing the earth in its growth and development and coherence; W. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... 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
... 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
... oddly enough, it was my instinct for pedantry and linguistic learning that drew me to Byron. I became enamoured of the Latin and Greek quotations with which he headed his lyrics in Hours of Idleness, and laboriously I copied them, lying on my belly on the floor, under the lamp light. And under these ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 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
... the most old-time place I ever saw; one might have imagined himself thrown back into the days of the Lancasters. The thatched inn had a hard stone floor, with a layer of loose sand scattered over it as a carpet in the bedroom. My linguistic qualities were put to a severe test in talking with the landlady. But the cable operators were pleasing and intelligent young gentlemen, and I had no difficulty in making them understand how the work was to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... 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 hint of an origin in other than their ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... me upon new lines, and told me a lot about Celtic difficulties and how to overcome them. He spoke Irish like a bird, and, after about three-quarters of an hour, he rushed forth to catch the train, hairy, immense, with some wild wirrasthru of farewell. Imagine a very learned and linguistic ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... when William was 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, occultations, and similar phenomena. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Luther, this 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... has, with almost savage irony, been selected as the technical name, not of law simply, but of legal procedure with all its crookedness.[13] Still it seems more in the ordinary course of things to explain this linguistic identification of law with justice, by supposing conformity to justice to have been the primitive element in the formation of the notion of law, than by supposing 'conformity to law to have been the primitive element in the formation of the notion of justice.' It seems more probable that ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... 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 Political ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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 in the engagement, almost before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... is a—I dink he come from—I dink he is a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, "and if you pleases I will go back at ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... 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 Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... French territory 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, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... investigations, only tries to draw the simple synthesis, and to show at the same time in the zooelogical and botanical system a representation of the zooelogical and botanical history of development. In quite an analogous way, a process took place in the linguistic realm which in independent investigations prepared the way for Darwinism, and now, since Darwin's theory has sought {95} acknowledgment in the realm of natural history, brings again Darwin's ideas to ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... say that I do not expect or intend readers to look out all the references given. It was necessary to provide material by means of which the student might illustrate for himself a Latin usage, if it were new to him, and might solve any linguistic difficulty that occurred. Want of space has compelled me often to substitute a mere reference for an ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... sceptical of the old endeavors to classify races in simple terms, as Madame de Stael attempted to do, for instance, in her famous book on Germany. We endeavor to distinguish, more accurately than of old, between ethnic, linguistic and political divisions of men. We try to look behind the name at the thing itself: we remember that "Spanish" architecture is Arabian, and a good deal of "Gothic" is Northern French. We confess that we are only at the beginning of a true science of ethnology. "It is only in ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... has been of such extraordinary value to man, the lower animals are strikingly deficient. They are not quite devoid of vocal language, though it is doubtful if any of the sounds made by them have a much higher linguistic office than that of the interjection. But emotional sounds, to which these belong, are not destitute of value in conveying intelligence. They embrace cries of warning, appeals to affection, demands for help, calls for food supplies, threats, and other indications ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... Shakespeare. That work has been undertaken by M. Jusserand. In 1898 he gave to the world the results of his investigation in his native language. Subsequently, with a welcome consideration for the linguistic incapacities of Shakespeare's countrymen, he repeated his conclusions in their tongue.[43] The English translation is embellished with many pictorial illustrations of historic interest ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... 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
... wrote only a slight preface, telling something of the source and pointing out special beauties. His notes vary greatly in abundance. Those on Palamon and Arcite, e.g., are brief, explaining terms of chivalry and heraldry, but not giving literary or linguistic comment.] ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... heard that a group of Welshmen, several hundred years before, had disappeared into the western wilds, so, with his usual quick inquiry into matters that interested him, he sent southward, led by Hamblin, in the autumn of 1858, a linguistic expedition, also including Durias Davis and Ammon M. Tenney. Davis was a Welshman, familiar with the language of his native land. Tenney, then only 15, knew a number of Indian dialects, as well as Spanish, the last learned in San Bernardino. They made diligent investigation ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... 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
... like to talk English and as some of these persons did not speak that language we tried to carry on the table conversation in German, but I know that when I tried to explain, in German, to Helfferich the various tax systems of America, I swam out far beyond my linguistic depth. ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... which one might bring one's boots—it made us tough at any rate—and several of us were the sons of London publicans, who distinguished "scraps" where one meant to hurt from ordered pugilism, practising both arts, and having, moreover, precocious linguistic gifts. Our cricket-field was bald about the wickets, and we played without style and disputed with the umpire; and the teaching was chiefly in the hands of a lout of nineteen, who wore ready-made clothes and taught despicably. The head-master and proprietor taught ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... "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 ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... negro, but a negro language will never be his mother tongue. Of how little importance for mankind the so-called race characters are, is shown by the fact that speakers of languages belonging to one and the same linguistic family may exhibit the peculiarities of various races. Thus the settled Osmanli Turk exhibits Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric Turks exemplify the Mongol type. On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... people the full treasury of epical beauty, folklore, and mythology comprised in The Kalevala, the national epic of the Finns. A brief description of this peculiar people, and of their ethical, linguistic, social, and religious life, seems to be called for here in order that the following poem may be ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... A linguistic invasion such as that of English by Old French is almost unparalleled. We have instances of the expulsion of one tongue by another, e.g., of the Celtic dialects of Gaul by Latin and of those of Britain ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... credited to a born 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 my representation. Take again the opinion of so eminent an apologist as Bleek: ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... 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 ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... 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
... more regular than the letters of some of Lauder's contemporaries, in high positions.[40] A word is often spelt in different ways on the same page. There are, however, many constant peculiarities, some of which may have a linguistic interest, thus 'laugh' 'rough' 'enough' 'through' are spelt with a final t. The use of a final but silent t Mr. Mackay in his introduction to Pitscottie,[41] p. cxl, says is a distinct mark of Scots of the middle period. 'Voyage,' 'sponge,' and 'large' ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... excellent Mrs. Marsh had not 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 entrance ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... relapsed into the indifferent versification of Danish ballads and Welsh bards, was severely fleeced in obscure journeyings in Southern Europe, and so gained some experience for future use, vainly sought a post, on the strength of his linguistic attainments, as an assistant in the British Museum Library, and was reduced to writing reactionary political leaders for a Norwich paper; he was, in fact, waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, or, in his own graphic phrase, "digging holes ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... paganism, in Asia they are still obvious. Age and logic have not impaired their vigour, and official theology, far from persecuting them, has accommodated its shape to theirs. This brings us to another point where the linguistic difficulty again makes itself felt, namely, that the word religion has not quite the same meaning in Eastern Asia as in Mohammedan and Christian lands. I know of no definition which would cover Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and the superstitions of African savages, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... 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
... indicated the identification of mound-building peoples as distinct tribes or stocks is a legitimate study, but when we consider the further fact now established, that arts extend beyond the boundaries of linguistic stocks, the most fundamental divisions we are yet able to make of the peoples of the globe, we may more properly conclude that this field promises but a meager harvest; but the origin and development of arts and industries is in itself a vast and profoundly ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell |
