"Linguistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... 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 rules, not only the beauty of true poetry, but the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... early 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 ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... 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 tongue at all. The term Celtic, again, is perfectly clear when ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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
... (Romans, Italians, French), the Slavic races (Russian, Polish, Bohemian), the Teutonic races of England and the Continent, and the Keltic races. These are hence alike called the Indo-European races; and as the same linguistic roots are found in their languages and in the Zend-Avesta, we infer that the ancient Persians, or inhabitants of Iran, belonged to the same great ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... the course which linguistic development has taken. At the first, there was a spoken language only. The next stage was to get this spoken language recorded, not in audible, but in visible symbols. Why should it have been so easy and apparently natural for the old ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... in itself besides, that which the 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 of which it was the mysterious expression or symbol. It produced an impression ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Australia, unaware of this bit of linguistic inside information, have faithfully copied abbreviated names from 17th century documents and subsequent publications, often without the abbreviation point and as a result the family names such as Jansz, Jansen, Jantsen, etc. ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... the size and 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 thousands ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... dismissed 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." ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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 record for speed ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... 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
... The earliest thinkers, indeed, were 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 great waste of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... 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 ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... unreflective life against the difficulties arising out of the philosophical and historical researches of his time.' They had enabled him 'to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science, and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground be not found on which highly educated, reflective, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... some sense phonetic. As china is the Zapotec name of the day, and signifies "deer," and chigh is the Zotzil name for "deer," it is probable that the symbol preserves the old name, while in Maya this old name has been supplanted for some reason, or through some linguistic ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... proportional representation to serve five-year terms) and the 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 ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... is an evil. There are many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but the computing, of our losses and gains, the striking of our linguistic balance, belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say, that English is not a language which teaches itself by mere unreflecting usage. It can only be mastered, in all its wealth, in all its power, by conscious, persistent labor; and therefore, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... are conversant with the language in which the opera is written, how common an experience it is (in concert, also) to be able, in spite of their linguistic knowledge, to understand little of what is being sung, and what a drawback this really is! How many singers there are who seem to turn all their attention to the production of beautiful sounds and neglect in most ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... improvement of methods is sketched on the 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; ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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, dotted here and ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... 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 even know definitely how Shakespeare's ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... 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 ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... politics. On the larger political issues of his day his Americanism was sound and loyal. "It is disheartening," he wrote in his Cambridge journal for 1851, "to see how little sympathy there is in the hearts of the young men here for freedom and great ideas." But his own sympathy never wavered. His linguistic talent helped him to penetrate the secrets of alien ways of thought and speech. He understood Italy and Spain, Holland and France and Germany. He had studied them on the lips of their living men and women and in the books where soldier and historian, priest and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... seule devise. Ils me connaissent, ils ont confidence dans moi. Si, taisez-vous! Si non, vous serez arretee et mise dans la prison, comme une caractere suspicieuse!" Mr. Sheridan exhorted Miss Ogle to this intent with more of earnestness than linguistic perfection; and he rejoiced to see that instantly she caught at her one chance of plausibly accounting for her presence at Bemerside, and of effecting a rescue from this ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... no direct evidence of the alleged early Semitic invasion, and the Sumerian hypothesis of which it is a feature is now regarded by some with less confidence. It is based on linguistic phenomena. Hammurabi, 2250 B.C., reigned over a realm whose subjects were of different tongues, and entrusted his records to two methods of writing. The old Sumerian language, which cannot, in the opinion of the best scholars, be ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... lay before the English-speaking 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 ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... 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
... plain 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
... the Phoeacian king, or the whole telling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageant of the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes. Perhaps the huge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realised, but there is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinating story into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should not complain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting and parting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... comparative grammar. literature, letters, polite literature, belles lettres [Fr.], muses, humanities, literae humaniores [Lat.], republic of letters, dead languages, classics; genius of language; scholarship &c (scholar) 492. V. express by words &c 566. Adj. lingual, linguistic; dialectic; vernacular, current; bilingual; diglot^, hexaglot^, polyglot; literary. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... surely did 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 ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... plays in this volume is again almost wholly dialectic. The linguistic difficulties are especially great in The Rats where the members of the Berlin populace speak an extraordinarily degraded jargon. In the translation I have sought, so far as possible, to differentiate the savour and quaintness of the Silesian dialect from the coarseness ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... three kinds of ambiguity of term or proposition. The first is when there is an equal linguistic propriety in several interpretations; the second when one is improper but customary; the third when the ambiguity arises in the combination of elements that are in themselves unambiguous, as in "knowing letters." "Knowing" and ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... 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
... the Jesuits 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, ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... of translation. Sometimes the translator settled vexed questions by using marginal glosses, a method which might make for accuracy but was liable to become cumbrous and confusing. Like the prefaces, the glosses sometimes contained theological rather than linguistic comment, thus proving a special source of controversy. A proclamation of Henry the Eighth forbids the printing or importation of "any books of divine scripture in the English tongue, with any additions in the margin or any prologue ... except ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... this 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 Latin origin, and such ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... then Victoria 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 ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... 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
... through natural genius or because he spent more time with him, was generally able to act as interpreter. Occasionally there would come a linguistic effort by which even he freely confessed himself baffled, and then they would pass on unsatisfied. But, as a rule, he was equal to the emergency. He was ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... growed." The young Negro possessed the clear eye to see the situation. College trained, his vision was not blinded by proximity to issues of the Civil War, nor by financial dependence, nor by excessive spirituality. The elder Negro possessed the oratorical and linguistic powers to state the case. Also college trained, of long experience, possessing a widespread oratorical clientele, he spoke with a voice that stirred and played upon the heartstrings of all America. Never was such a proposition ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... quality 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
... Deputies - last held 13 June 1999 (next to be held in NA 2003) note: as a result 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 Political parties and leaders entry election results: Senate - percent of vote by party - VLD 15.4%, CVP ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... Germany, and when he had gained a fair knowledge of the German language, he went on to the more difficult task of learning Hebrew and Arabic. This pursuit was due partly to his growing interest in Biblical study, partly to the delight he took in his own linguistic powers. He had an ear of great delicacy; he caught up sounds as by instinct; and his retentive memory fixed the impression. Later he applied the reasoning of the philologist, classified and tabulated his results, and thus was able, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... instinctive 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; unconsciously as regards the further consequences ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... changed his mind later on this point, modestly alleging that he gave way to the insistence of others who deemed his presence indispensable, on account of his knowledge of languages.[40] Whatever his linguistic accomplishments, they did not produce the desired effect, for Vatable's version of the Bible was passed as revised by the committee of Salamancan theologians in 1571, though, for some unexplained reason, their revised ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... Turanian, or lowest class of language, as 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 the words. The Greeks and Romans—that portion of them that made society or ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... 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 ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... myself, I was not deficient in linguistic knowledge. In my family the only language made use of was French. M. Papadopoulos at an early age taught me Greek, which in the East is as important as French in the West. The Germanic tongues terrified me at ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... confidant and firm ally was Consuelo's brother—the alert, the linguistic, the ever-happy, ever-ready Enriquez? It was understood that his presence would not only give a certain mature respectability to our performance—but I do not think we would have contemplated this step without it. During one of ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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 teacher ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... both families set themselves to much unrecorded observation, much unspoken mutual criticism, and the exercise of great patience. It was tiresome for the English to be tied to a language that crippled all spontaneous talk; these linguistic gymnastics were fun to begin with, but soon they became very troublesome; and the Belgians suspected sensibilities in their hosts and a vast unwritten code of etiquette that did not exist; at first they were ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... in his History of the Ojibwa Indians,[1] bases his belief upon traditional evidence that the Ojibwa first had knowledge of the whites in 1612. Early in the seventeenth century the French missionaries met with various tribes of the Algonkian linguistic stock, as well as with bands or subtribes of the Ojibwa Indians. One of the latter, inhabiting the vicinity of Sault Ste. Marie, is frequently mentioned in the Jesuit Relations as the Saulteurs. This term was applied to all those people who lived at the Falls, but from ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... for aid in his linguistic studies, Mr. Goodell formed the acquaintance of Yakob Agha, an Armenian ecclesiastic, who had dared to marry, a privilege not allowed to him as a bishop. That he might be able to defend his course, he began the study of the New Testament, and thus became impressed with ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... his lack of certain required qualifications, and when finally he reaches the field none of these qualities appears, but his skill as an engineer gives him a hold upon thousands whom his presence and God-breathed passion for souls win to Jesus Christ. Carey's unusual linguistic talent, Mary Lyon's teaching gift are not changed but developed and used. The growth produced by the Spirit's presence is strictly along the groove of the natural gift. But note that in this great variety of natural endowment ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... over 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 ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... carriage told us that he was a scholar. He explained by stating that he could converse fluently in four languages, besides his own native Arabic tongue. These languages were Turkish, Russian, Latin, and French, and in addition, he knew enough English to give some information to the tourists. The linguistic ignorance of the occupants of his carriage seemed to impress him with the idea that education in ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... hammer Stands the hero of this drama, And above the wild-duck's clamor, In his own peculiar grammar, With its linguistic disguises, La! the Arctic prologue rises: "Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad, Seein' ez 'twas ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... gingerly upon the edge of the bed. The new-comers let their eyes roll curiously about the chamber, and an embarrassing silence descended. Senor Torres maintained a set smile designed to be agreeable; Professor Herara, serene in the possession of his linguistic acquirements, displayed the insouciance of an undertaker. Together they beamed benignantly, almost patronizingly, upon the young man. Plainly they meant to put him at his ease—but they failed. At length, after clearing his throat impressively, the ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... the Philippine 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 ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... limitations thus 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 interesting theme of study, and when North ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... when they 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. von ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... second year of his course he abandoned the intention of becoming a teacher and took up the engineering curriculum. After three years of absence he returned home, sadly, to see his father die; but, having resolved to settle down in Austria, and recognizing the value of linguistic acquirements, he went to Prague and then to Buda-Pesth with the view of mastering the languages he deemed necessary. Up to this time he had never realized the enormous sacrifices that his parents had made in promoting his education, but he now began to ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... 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 "starter," ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... 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. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... 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 ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... in this 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
... reality it was a long, a monotonous, an exhausting process. Think of the expenditure of hours and eyesight over barbarous alphabets and horrid grammatical details. One must needs have had a mind of leather to endure such philological and linguistic wear and tear. Priestley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but actually toughened under it. The man was never afraid of work. Take as an illustration ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Pacific, while the peculiarities of the cultivated plants of America point to its isolation from all the rest of the world; an isolation which is further established by a radical dissimilarity of all American languages from Old World linguistic stocks. In no language of the New World, for example, is there a vestige of Hebrew, which would support the cherished theory of the migration to this continent of the lost tribes of Israel; nor is there a suggestion of any linguistic element to indicate ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... not stop to consider whether it was likely that the Indian understood the English tongue; but, as it happened, Lone Wolf could use it almost as if to the manner born; and it would have required no profound linguistic knowledge upon the part of anyone to have comprehended the meaning of the young hero. It was one of those situations in which gesture told the meaning more plainly than mere words could have done. But if ever there was an astonished aborigine, Lone ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... 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
... adapted for 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 ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... reply was sent 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 between Baron Burian and the Italian Ambassador at Vienna before negotiations ...
— 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
... 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 liked, by using a heraldic symbol, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... 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 ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... other standpoints of paryaya-naya, which represent grammatical and linguistic points of view, are s'abda-naya, samabhiru@dha-naya, and evambhula-naya. See ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... monstrous absurdity, both from a practical and a scientific point of view." The professor also quotes approvingly Professor Lounsbury as saying that the "spelling reform numbers among its advocates every linguistic scholar of any eminence whatever." Of course, these statements, whether made by Professor March or by the distinguished scholars whom he cites, are strong arguments. That the professor so considers them is attested by the logical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... college, and then taught school for some 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 own tongue. Miss Undereast carried on her musical ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... that science or systematised knowledge is of chiefest value both for the guidance of 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 mere words ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... truth an accomplishment, and like any other accomplishment it may be used for show. But not necessarily. Just as a man may have money without "flashing" it, or an extensive wardrobe without sporting gaudy neckties or wearing a dress suit in the morning, so may he possess linguistic resources without making a caddish exhibition of them. Indeed the more distant he stands from verbal bankruptcy, the less likely he is to indulge ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Europe 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 ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... [Footnote 28: For the linguistic classification of stocks and tribes of the United States, see Appendix, The North Americans of Yesterday, by F. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... opening chapter Sir James Douie refers to the fact that the area treated in this volume—just one quarter of a million square miles—is comparable to that of Austria-Hungary. The comparison might be extended; for on ethnographical, linguistic and physical grounds, the geographical unit now treated is just as homogeneous in composition as the Dual Monarchy. It is only in the political sense and by force of the ruling classes, temporarily united in one monarch, that the term Osterreichisch could be used to include ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... to deal essentially with the fluctuating manifestations of the same fundamental shaping factor which will determine the distribution of urban districts in the coming years. Every boundary of the ethnographical, linguistic, political, and commercial map—as a little consideration will show—has indeed been traced in the first place by the means of transit, under the compulsion of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 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, ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... his wit, dry or damp, we feel a confidence which not even the shock of political campaigns has been able to move. But in respect of grammar we find ourselves in a state of the most painful uncertainty. We have never regarded it as our beloved President's strong point, but we have considered any linguistic defect more than atoned for by the hearty, timely, sturdy, plain sense which appeals so directly and forcibly to the good sense of others. This book calls up a distressing doubt, and a doubt that strikes at vital interests. "Grammar," our President ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... and one in construction of 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 ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... 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. When he was sixteen we learn that ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... followed. Of these the most celebrated was the Saddaniti of Aggavamsa (1154), a treatise on the language of the Tipitaka which became a classic not only in Burma but in Ceylon. A singular enthusiasm for linguistic studies prevailed especially in the reign of Kyocva (c. 1230), when even women are said to have been distinguished for the skill and ardour which they displayed in conquering the difficulties of Pali grammar. Some treatises on the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... 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
... to get all the mud on it; and generally availed themselves of this unparalleled occasion to be witty at the expense of an English lady in sore distress. Indeed, one gay young dog called Jacobus was proceeding from jokes linguistic to jokes practical. Perceiving that Jess only kept her seat on the man's saddle by the exercise of a faculty of balance, it occurred to him that it would be a fine thing to upset it and make her fall upon her face. Accordingly, with a sudden twist of the rein he brought ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... to purely literary matters, the first thing to be remarked upon is the linguistic miracle presented to us. It is useless to dwell upon it in detail, since this is an introduction not to Lucian, but to a translation of Lucian; it exists, none the less. A Syrian writes in Greek, and not in the Greek of his own time, but in that of five or six centuries before, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... remain the 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 ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... would wish to knock at any door in this district, and speak to 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
... vero," 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 ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell |
