100 Languages Quotes

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If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then - in truth - it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whisky with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in winter; growing foxgloves, peas and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it.
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
So much in a relationship changes when a partner is seriously ill, helpless yet blameless, and indefatigably needy. I felt old. [p. 99] The animal part of him in pain accepted my caring. But the part of himself watching himself in that pain didn't believe I could ever respect him again. None of this crossed my mind. I couldn't risk knowing it. No one could and continue caregiving. They'd feel so unappreciated and wronged that it would drive them away. [p. 100]
Diane Ackerman (One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing)
If the goal you've set for yourself has a 100 percent chance of success, then frankly you aren't aiming high enough.
Benny Lewis (Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World)
The next day, I am almost afraid. Love? It was more like dragonflies in the sun, 100 degrees at noon, the ends of their abdomens stuck together. I close my eyes when I remember. I hardly knew myself, like something twisting and twisting out of a chrysalis, enormous, without language, all head, all shut eyes, and the humming like madness, the way they writhe away, and do not leave, back, back, away, back. Did I know you? No kiss, no tenderness—more like killing, death-grip holding to life, genitals like violent hands clasped tight barely moving, more like being closed in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming. I groan to remember it, and when we started to die, then I refuse to remember, the way a drunkard forgets. After, you held my hands extremely hard as my body moved in shudders like the ferry when its axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me sealed exactly against you, our hairlines wet as the arc of a gateway after a cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept - clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was the morning after love.
Sharon Olds
Learning a new language, just like opening a new window, allows you to see the world with intimacy.
Pearl Zhu (Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future)
The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.” The question still hangs heavy in the air: If our behavior is not making us happy, why do we act this way?
Derrick Jensen (A Language Older Than Words)
Talking to Clarence can be like talking to a child, although it is much more charming in children.
Diane Schoemperlen (In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters)
IT and business must be partners, must be able to speak the same language, finish each other’s sentences, to solve the well-defined business problems.
Pearl Zhu (Digital It: 100 Q&as)
It begins to dawn on her that she is lackadaisical about other people. They are tremendously important to her for a time and then they are not. She begins to see her life in sections, as separate pockets of time and affiliation.
Diane Schoemperlen (In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters)
It's worth remembering that [having a baby] is not of vital use to you as a woman. Yes, you could learn thousands of interesting things about love, strength, faith, fear, human relationships, genetic loyalty, and the effect of apricots on an immune digestive system. But I don't think there's a single lesson that motherhood has to offer that couldn't be learned elsewhere. If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then-in truth-it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whiskey with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in the winter; growing foxgloves, peas, and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a minute that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer and crippled by it. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Newton, Faraday, Plato, Aquinas, Beethoven, Handel, Kant, Hume, Jesus. They all seem to have managed quite well.
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
Most adults have a vocabulary of around 60,000 words, meaning that children must learn 10 to 20 words a day between the ages of eight months and 18 years. And yet the most frequent 100 words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4000 words account for 98% of conversation.
David Miller
Sonnet of Silence I am the loudest when I am silent, My lips are shut yet I speak treasures. Speech without heart is nothing but noise, Listen to my silence, you'll hear the universe. Words spoken with mere lips reach nowhere, For it's the heart that makes words alive. Tell people who you are without saying a word, Speak from your very core, they'll listen alright. I repeat, silent people have the loudest hearts, For when you speak less you get to listen more. The more you listen the more you are heard, The more you hear the more you get to grow. Set the words on fire, let them all turn to ashes. Tell people who you are without all the speeches.
Abhijit Naskar (Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables)
New Guinea has by far the highest concentration of languages in the world: 1,000 out of the world’s 6,000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas, and divided into dozens of language families and isolated languages as different from each other as English is from Chinese. Nearly half of all New Guinea languages have fewer than 500 speakers, and even the largest language groups (still with a mere 100,000 speakers) were politically fragmented into hundreds of villages, fighting as fiercely with each other as with speakers of other languages. Each of those microsocieties alone was far too small to support chiefs and craft specialists, or to develop metallurgy and writing.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
Much of what she found charming and refreshing about him at the outset of their relationship now bugged the hell out of her.
Diane Schoemperlen (In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters)
She thought she would do something with them someday, although she could not have said what and in fact she never did.
Diane Schoemperlen (In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters)
Joanna has an unmanageable lump in her throat and wonders why it's always the happy memories that make her cry.
Diane Schoemperlen (In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters)
Did she really remember that day so clearly or was she making it up as she went along?
Diane Schoemperlen (In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters)
If I know the things that an individual member of my Dream 100 are saying to their followers, I can model the same language patterns in my messages.
Russell Brunson (Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers)
There are not 100,000 beautiful words in the English language.
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
One small step towards a language is one giant leap towards inclusion.
Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
There are over 100 Avestan words in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, and Avestan is the sacred language of the Zoroastrians, only ever used by Zoroastrians in prayer and worship.
Peter B. Lockhart
Now, it has been independently shown that people hate to lose something more than they enjoy gaining it. For example, they don't mind paying for something with a credit card even when told there is a discount for cash, but they hate paying the same amount if they are told there is a surcharge for using credit. As a result, people will often refuse to gamble for an expected profit (they turn down bets such as "Heads, you win $120; tails, you pay $100), but they will gamble to avoid an expected loss (such as "Heads, you no longer owe $120; tails, you now owe an additional $100"). (This kind of behavior drives economists crazy, but is avidly studied by investment firms hoping to turn it to their advantage.) The combination of people's loss aversion with the effects of framing explains the paradoxical result: the "gain" metaphor made the doctors risk-averse; the "loss" metaphor made them gamblers.
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
But gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge. The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge (“He knows mathematics”) and knowing through observation or experience (“He knows me”), which is gnosis.
Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books))
In 90% of cases, you can start with one of the two most effective ways to open a speech: ask a question or start with a story. Our brain doesn’t remember what we hear. It remembers only what we “see” or imagine while we listen. You can remember stories. Everything else is quickly forgotten. Smell is the most powerful sense out of 4 to immerse audience members into a scene. Every sentence either helps to drive your point home, or it detracts from clarity. There is no middle point. If you don’t have a foundational phrase in your speech, it means that your message is not clear enough to you, and if it’s not clear to you, there is no way it will be clear to your audience. Share your failures first. Show your audience members that you are not any better, smarter or more talented than they are. You are not an actor, you are a speaker. The main skill of an actor is to play a role; to be someone else. Your main skill as a speaker is to be yourself. People will forgive you for anything except for being boring. Speaking without passion is boring. If you are not excited about what you are talking about, how can you expect your audience to be excited? Never hide behind a lectern or a table. Your audience needs to see 100% of your body. Speak slowly and people will consider you to be a thoughtful and clever person. Leaders don’t talk much, but each word holds a lot of meaning and value. You always speak to only one person. Have a conversation directly with one person, look him or her in the eye. After you have logically completed one idea, which usually is 10-20 seconds, scan the audience and then stop your eyes on another person. Repeat this process again. Cover the entire room with eye contact. When you scan the audience and pick people for eye contact, pick positive people more often. When you pause, your audience thinks about your message and reflects. Pausing builds an audiences’ confidence. If you don’t pause, your audience doesn’t have time to digest what you've told them and hence, they will not remember a word of what you've said. Pause before and after you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. After you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. Speakers use filler words when they don’t know what to say, but they feel uncomfortable with silence. Have you ever seen a speaker who went on stage with a piece of paper and notes? Have you ever been one of these speakers? When people see you with paper in your hands, they instantly think, “This speaker is not sincere. He has a script and will talk according to the script.” The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten. Bad speakers create a 10 minutes speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Great speakers create a 5 minute speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Explain your ideas in a simple manner, so that the average 12-year-old child can understand the concept. Good speakers and experts can always explain the most complex ideas with very simple words. Stories evoke emotions. Factual information conveys logic. Emotions are far more important in a speech than logic. If you're considering whether to use statistics or a story, use a story. PowerPoint is for pictures not for words. Use as few words on the slide as possible. Never learn your speech word for word. Just rehearse it enough times to internalize the flow. If you watch a video of your speech, you can triple the pace of your development as a speaker. Make videos a habit. Meaningless words and clichés neither convey value nor information. Avoid them. Never apologize on stage. If people need to put in a lot of effort to understand you they simply won’t listen. On the other hand if you use very simple language you will connect with the audience and your speech will be remembered.
Andrii Sedniev (Magic of Public Speaking: A Complete System to Become a World Class Speaker)
Religious language, on the other hand, is a language of internal transformation; whoever perceives divine reality “becomes what he sees”:  … You saw the spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw [the Father, you] shall become Father.… you see yourself, and what you see you shall [become].68
Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books))
This sense of ‘knows’ has an interesting feature: there’s a word for it in all of the world’s 6,000+ human languages (‘think’ shares this feature). This status is surprisingly rare: an educated person has a vocabulary of about 20,000 words, but fewer than 100 of these are thought to have precise translations in every other language.
Jennifer Nagel (Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
The Ainu have not intentionally forgotten their culture and their language. It is the modern Japanese state that, from the Meiji era on, usurped our land, destroyed our culture, and deprived us of our language under the euphemism of assimilation. In the space of a mere 100 years, they nearly decimated the Ainu culture and language that had taken tens of thousands of years to come into being on this earth.
Kayano Shigeru (Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir)
In this country, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which…we are now fighting, that the judges…stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is prohibited in law.100
Stephen G. Breyer (The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities)
A prohibition on the hoarding or possession of gold was integral to the plan to devalue the dollar against gold and get people spending again. Against this background, FDR issued Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933, one of the most extraordinary executive orders in U.S. history. The blunt language over the signature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaks for itself: I, Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . declare that [a] national emergency still continues to exist and . . . do hereby prohibit the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the . . . United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations.... All persons are hereby required to deliver, on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal reserve bank . . . or to any member of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them.... Whoever willfully violates any provision of this Executive Order . . . may be fined not more than $10,000 or . . . may be imprisoned for not more than ten years. The people of the United States were being ordered to surrender their gold to the government and were offered paper money at the exchange rate of $20.67 per ounce. Some relatively minor exceptions were made for dentists, jewelers and others who made “legitimate and customary” use of gold in their industry or art. Citizens were allowed to keep $100 worth of gold, about five ounces at 1933 prices, and gold in the form of rare coins. The $10,000 fine proposed in 1933 for those who continued to hoard gold in violation of the president’s order is equivalent to over $165,000 in today’s money, an extraordinarily large statutory fine. Roosevelt followed up with a
James Rickards (Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis)
And yet there was something there. Homo sapiens’s small, scattered populations might well have seemed of little consequence in the larger tableau of Africa’s savannah wildlife, but a thoughtful observer of anatomically modern man 100,000 years ago would have marked the potential in such things as Homo’s attention to patterns of social order, the nature of his intense curiosity, and the adumbration of a quality no other animal seemed to possess, which one day would be called intelligence, an ability to assemble things—fiber, the passing hours, sounds—into complex patterns that would one day be called weaving, calendars, language, logistics, and art. It would have been an eerie thing to comprehend, as it is eerie for us today to find in the eyes of a chimp the glimmer of something that for a moment seems human, a look that says, “I know.
Barry Lopez (Horizon)
The Incas’ genius— like that of the Romans—lay in their masterful organizational abilities. Amazingly, an ethnic group that probably never exceeded 100,000 individuals was able to regulate the activities of roughly ten million people. This was in spite of the fact that the empire’s citizens spoke more than seven hundred local languages and were distributed among 2,500 miles of some of the most rugged and diverse terrain on earth.
Kim MacQuarrie (The Last Days of the Incas)
That idea of the state as a ship and its ruler as the helmsman or captain is a very old one in European culture. It is frequently used by Cicero, and indeed our word ‘governor’ comes from the Latin for ‘helmsman’ – gubernator. Even more enticingly, the root of gubernator is the Greek kubernetes, which is also the origin of our word ‘cybernetics’; so the notions of ruling, steering and robotics all coincide in our language – and in this galleon.
Neil MacGregor (A History of the World in 100 Objects)
Only the right hemisphere has the capacity to understand metaphor.100 That might not sound too important – like it could be a nice thing if one were going to do a bit of lit crit. But that is just a sign of the degree to which our world of discourse is dominated by left-hemisphere habits of mind. Metaphoric thinking is fundamental to our understanding of the world, because it is the only way in which understanding can reach outside the system of signs to life itself. It is what links language to life.
Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World)
I also learned how to read my patients' body language and how to use my own body language to communicate my unconditional love and acceptance. I don't cross my arms or my legs- I open myself. I make eye contact, I lean forward, I create a bridge between myself and my patients so that they know I am with them 100 percent. I mirror my patients' states (if they want to sit quietly, I sit quietly too; if they want to rage and scream, I scream with them; I adapt my language to my patients' language) as a sign of total acceptance. p172
Edith Eva Eger (The Choice: Embrace the Possible)
It is often said that what most immediately sets English apart from other languages is the richness of its vocabulary. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists 450,000 words, and the revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000, but that is only part of the total. Technical and scientific terms would add millions more. Altogether, about 200,000 English words are in common use, more than in German (184,000) and far more than in French (a mere 100,000). The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between “I wrote” and “I have written.” The Spanish cannot differentiate a chairman from a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care [all cited in The New York Times, June 18, 1989]. English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget’s Thesaurus. “Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist” [The Miracle of Language, page 54]. On the other hand, other languages have facilities we lack. Both French and German can distinguish between knowledge that results from recognition (respectively connaître and kennen) and knowledge that results from understanding (savoir and wissen). Portuguese has words that differentiate between an interior angle and an exterior one. All the Romance languages can distinguish between something that leaks into and something that leaks out of. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn’t they just?) It’s sgriob. And we have nothing in English to match the Danish hygge (meaning “instantly satisfying and cozy”), the French sang-froid, the Russian glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without the sentiment. At the same time, some languages have words that we may be pleased to do without. The existence in German of a word like schadenfreude (taking delight in the misfortune of others) perhaps tells us as much about Teutonic sensitivity as it does about their neologistic versatility. Much the same could be said about the curious and monumentally unpronounceable Highland Scottish word sgiomlaireachd, which means “the habit of dropping in at mealtimes.” That surely conveys a world of information about the hazards of Highland life—not to mention the hazards of Highland orthography. Of
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)
Sonnet of Languages Turkish is the language of love, Spanish is the language of revolution. Swedish is the language of resilience, English is the language of translation. Portuguese is the language of adventure, German is the language of discipline. French is the language of passion, Italian is the language of cuisine. With over 7000 languages in the world, Handful of tongues fall short in a sonnet. But you can rest assured of one thing, Every language does something the very best. Each language is profoundly unique in its own way. When they come together, they light the human way.
Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
In the Hebrew language, there is no distinction between knowing and doing. Knowing is doing and doing is knowing. In other words, if you aren't doing it, then you don't really know it... The phrase all out literally means "maximum effort." It's giving God everything you've got -- 100 percent. It's loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's not just worshiping God with your words. It's worshiping God with blood, sweat, and tears. It's more than sincere sentiments. It's sweat equity in kingdom causes. You cannot be the hands and feet of Jesus if you're sitting on your butt.
Mark Batterson (All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life)
There were eight simple lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I studied them just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife. Soon found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and say, old doggo, what do you think they're paying me now? $6,500 per year! And say, I find I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on any topic. As a friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no obligation) and valuable free Art Picture to:— SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO. Desk WA Sandpit, Iowa. ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?
Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt)
the Basques. Their language, called Euskara by its speakers, may be the last surviving remnant of the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe and later displaced by Indo-European tongues. No one can say. What is certain is that Basque was already old by the time the Celts came to the region. Today it is the native tongue of about 600,000 people in Spain and 100,000 in France in an area around the Bay of Biscay stretching roughly from Bilbao to Bayonne and inland over the Pyrenees to Pamplona. Its remoteness from Indo-European is indicated by its words for the numbers one to five: bat, bi, hirur, laur, bortz. Many authorities believe there is simply no connection between Basque and any other known language.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)
White supremacists boast about white americans being superior. Let's look at it reasonably, shall we - not that you can reason with fanatics! Most of the third world speaks two or three languages, yet you say, white americans are superior! Dreamers from the third world bear ten times more difficulty to achieve their dream, yet you say, white americans are superior! Humankind's earliest scientific achievements came not from the West, but from the East and the Middle East, yet you say, America is superior - a juvenile country whose very existence is rooted in humankind's worst of atrocities. Well done! You really are superior - in cooking up fiction. The fact of the matter is, excellence has no race. And the only inferior people on earth are the ones who think of others as such.
Abhijit Naskar (Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo)
It may be no more than an intriguing coincidence, but the area of Cro-Magnon’s cave paintings is also the area containing Europe’s oldest and most mysterious ethnic group, the Basques. Their language, called Euskara by its speakers, may be the last surviving remnant of the Neolithic languages spoken in Stone Age Europe and later displaced by Indo-European tongues. No one can say. What is certain is that Basque was already old by the time the Celts came to the region. Today it is the native tongue of about 600,000 people in Spain and 100,000 in France in an area around the Bay of Biscay stretching roughly from Bilbao to Bayonne and inland over the Pyrenees to Pamplona. Its remoteness from Indo-European is indicated by its words for the numbers one to five: bat, bi, hirur, laur, bortz. Many authorities believe there is simply no connection between Basque and any other known language.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)
During his visit to India in December 2010, the soft-spoken Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao seems to have succeeded in convincing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the border dispute between the two countries belongs to the past, won’t be easy to resolve, and requires patience. Instead of using whatever diplomatic language was necessary to call this statement pure poppycock, the even more soft-spoken Dr Singh appears to have succumbed completely. When Mr Jiabao was asked whether he would advise Pakistan to stop terrorist activity, he made it clear that he would not. ‘That’s for the two of you to resolve,’ he bluntly said. Our prime minister obviously tried to flatter his guest in the hope of getting some response which he could sell to the Indian people when he declared that ‘the world will listen when India and China will speak with one voice’. The response he received to this piece of flattery was, ‘Our relationship is greater than the sum of its parts.’ To me the statement is an attractive piece of diplomatic craftsmanship meaning nothing. Without any countervailing advantage, the visit yielded a trade pact which will take the bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015, a complete economic sell-out in a year when the trade deficit was already approximately $20 billion.
Ram Jethmalani (RAM JETHMALANI MAVERICK UNCHANGED, UNREPENTANT)
The process is taking place before our eyes and is already far advanced.” Under present trends, “the number of Jews in Europe by the year 2000 would then be not much more than 1 million—the lowest figure since the last Middle Ages.” In 1900, there were 8 million. The story elsewhere is even more dispiriting. The rest of what was once the diaspora is now either a museum or a graveyard. Eastern Europe has been effectively emptied of its Jews. In 1939, Poland had 3.2 million Jews. Today it is home to 3,500. The story is much the same in the other capitals of Eastern Europe. The Islamic world, cradle to the great Sephardic Jewish tradition and home to one-third of world Jewry three centuries ago, is now practically Judenrein. Not a single country in the Islamic world is home to more than 20,000 Jews. After Turkey with 19,000 and Iran with 14,000, the country with the largest Jewish community in the entire Islamic world is Morocco with 6,100. There are more Jews in Omaha, Nebraska. These communities do not figure in projections. There is nothing to project. They are fit subjects not for counting but for remembering. Their very sound has vanished. Yiddish and Ladino, the distinctive languages of the European and Sephardic diasporas, like the communities that invented them, are nearly extinct.
Charles Krauthammer (Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics)
This week we'll be learning about key elements of high quality picture books. Using the award winner lists in our course materials, select one picture book and share why it received its award. For example, Abuela is listed in the 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know. According to Publishers Weekly, this is why it's so good: "In this tasty trip, Rosalba is "always going places" with her grandmother--abuela . During one of their bird-feeding outings to the park, Rosalba wonders aloud, "What if I could fly?" Thus begins an excursion through the girl's imagination as she soars high above the tall buildings and buses of Manhattan, over the docks and around the Statue of Liberty with Abuela in tow. Each stop of the glorious journey evokes a vivid memory for Rosalba's grandmother and reveals a new glimpse of the woman's colorful ethnic origins. Dorros's text seamlessly weaves Spanish words and phrases into the English narrative, retaining a dramatic quality rarely found in bilingual picture books. Rosalba's language is simple and melodic, suggesting the graceful images of flight found on each page. Kleven's ( Ernst ) mixed-media collages are vibrantly hued and intricately detailed, the various blended textures reminiscent of folk art forms. Those searching for solid multicultural material would be well advised to embark.
B.F. Skinner
A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel. As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively. Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers. Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years previously.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
Of course L has not been reading the Odyssey the whole time. The pushchair is also loaded with White Fang, VIKING!, Tar-Kutu: Dog of the Frozen North, Marduk: Dog of the Mongolian Steppes, Pete: Black Dog of the Dakota, THE CARNIVORES, THE PREDATORS, THE BIG CATS and The House at Pooh Corner. For the past few days he has also been reading White Fang for the third time. Sometimes we get off the train and he runs up and down the platform. Sometimes he counts up to 100 or so in one or more languages while eyes glaze up and down the car. Still he has been reading the Odyssey enough for a straw poll of Circle Line opinion on the subject of small children & Greek. Amazing: 7 Far too young: 10 Only pretending to read it: 6 Excellent idea as etymology so helpful for spelling: 19 Excellent idea as inflected languages so helpful for computer programming: 8 Excellent idea as classics indispensable for understanding of English literature: 7 Excellent idea as Greek so helpful for reading New Testament, camel through eye of needle for example mistranslation of very similar word for rope: 3 Terrible idea as study of classical languages embedded in educational system productive of divisive society: 5 Terrible idea as overemphasis on study of dead languages directly responsible for neglect of sciences and industrial decline and uncompetitiveness of Britain: 10 Stupid idea as he should be playing football: 1 Stupid idea as he should be studying Hebrew & learning about his Jewish heritage: 1 Marvellous idea as spelling and grammar not taught in schools: 24 (Respondents: 35; Abstentions: 1,000?) Oh, & almost forgot: Marvellous idea as Homer so marvellous in Greek: 0 Marvellous idea as Greek such as marvellous language: 0 Oh & also: Marvellous idea but how did you teach it to a child that young: 8
Helen DeWitt (The Last Samurai)
A word of explanation about how the information in this book was obtained, evaluated and used. This book is designed to present, as best my reporting could determine, what really happened. The core of this book comes from the written record—National Security Council meeting notes, personal notes, memos, chronologies, letters, PowerPoint slides, e-mails, reports, government cables, calendars, transcripts, diaries and maps. Information in the book was supplied by more than 100 people involved in the Afghanistan War and national security during the first 18 months of President Barack Obama’s administration. Interviews were conducted on “background,” meaning the information could be used but the sources would not be identified by name. Many sources were interviewed five or more times. Most allowed me to record the interviews, which were then transcribed. For several sources, the combined interview transcripts run more than 300 pages. I have attempted to preserve the language of the main characters and sources as much as possible, using their words even when they are not directly quoted, reflecting the flavor of their speech and attitudes. Many key White House aides were interviewed in-depth. They shared meeting notes, important documents, recollections of what happened before, during and after meetings, and assisted extensively with their interpretations. Senior and well-placed military, intelligence and diplomatic officials also provided detailed recollections, read from notes or assisted with documents. Since the reporting was done over 18 months, many interviews were conducted within days or even hours after critical discussions. This often provided a fresher and less-calculated account. Dialogue comes mostly from the written record, but also from participants, usually more than one. Any attribution of thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person was obtained directly from that person, from notes or from a colleague whom the person told. Occasionally, a source said mid-conversation that something was “off-the-record,” meaning it could not be used unless the information was obtained elsewhere. In many cases, I was able to get the information elsewhere so that it could be included in this book. Some people think they can lock up and prevent publication of information by declaring it “off-the-record” or that they don’t want to see it in the book. But inside any White House, nearly everyone’s business and attitudes become known to others. And in the course of multiple, extensive interviews with firsthand sources about key decision points in the war, the role of the players became clear. Given the diversity of sources, stakes and the lives involved, there is no way I could write a sterilized or laundered version of this story. I interviewed President Obama on-the-record in the Oval Office for one hour and 15 minutes on Saturday, July 10, 2
Bob Woodward (Obama's Wars)
The old order types were simple and straightforward and mainly sensible. The new order types that accompanied the explosion of high-frequency trading were nothing like them, either in detail or spirit. When, in the summer of 2012, the Puzzle Masters gathered with Brad and Don and Ronan and Rob and Schwall in a room to think about them, there were maybe one hundred fifty different order types. What purpose did each serve? How might each be used? The New York Stock Exchange had created an order type that ensured that the trader who used it would trade only if the order on the other side of his was smaller than his own order; the purpose seemed to be to prevent a high-frequency trader from buying a small number of shares from an investor who was about to crush the market with a huge sale. Direct Edge created an order type that, for even more complicated reasons, allowed the high-frequency trading firm to withdraw 50 percent of its order the instant someone tried to act on it. All of the exchanges offered something called a Post-Only order. A Post-Only order to buy 100 shares of Procter & Gamble at $80 a share says, “I want to buy a hundred shares of Procter & Gamble at eighty dollars a share, but only if I am on the passive side of the trade, where I can collect a rebate from the exchange.” As if that weren’t squirrely enough, the Post-Only order type now had many even more dubious permutations. The Hide Not Slide order, for instance. With a Hide Not Slide order, a high-frequency trader—for who else could or would use such a thing?—would say, for example, “I want to buy a hundred shares of P&G at a limit of eighty dollars and three cents a share, Post-Only, Hide Not Slide.” One of the joys of the Puzzle Masters was their ability to figure out what on earth that meant. The descriptions of single order types filed with the SEC often went on for twenty pages, and were in themselves puzzles—written in a language barely resembling English and seemingly designed to bewilder anyone who dared to read them. “I considered myself a somewhat expert on market structure,” said Brad. “But I needed a Puzzle Master with me to fully understand what the fuck any of it means.” A Hide Not Slide order—it was just one of maybe fifty such problems the Puzzle Masters solved—worked as follows: The trader said he was willing to buy the shares at a price ($80.03) above the current offering price ($80.02), but only if he was on the passive side of the trade, where he would be paid a rebate. He did this not because he wanted to buy the shares. He did this in case an actual buyer of stock—a real investor, channeling capital to productive enterprise—came along and bought all the shares offered at $80.02. The high-frequency trader’s Hide Not Slide order then established him as first in line to purchase P&G shares if a subsequent investor came into the market to sell those shares. This was the case even if the investor who had bought the shares at $80.02 expressed further demand for them at the higher price. A Hide Not Slide order was a way for a high-frequency trader to cut in line, ahead of the people who’d created the line in the first place, and take the kickbacks paid to whoever happened to be at the front of the line.
Michael Lewis (Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt)
In 2005, the number was $2.7 trillion. That’s in the new modern language you need to describe a pile of $100 bills 475 miles high. Which is, by the way, beyond the pull of gravity.
Anonymous
published in 1991 led to more than 1,800 further titles, with more than 250 million copies in print, translations in more than 30 languages, distribution in more than 100 countries — all enriching peoples’ lives while making knowledge accessible. Marc Jeffrey Mikulich Vice President, Brand Management, John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons (A Little Bit of Everything For Dummies)
Use Google Sheets as a Multilingual Chat Translator Communicating with someone who speaks and writes in another language isn't the easiest task, but this Google Sheet incorporates Google Translate so you can have a real-time chat conversation with anybody in the world. Over at the tech blog Digital Inspiration, Amit Agarwal created a Google Sheet that's powered by Google Scripts, and translates all language pairs that are supported by Google Translate in real-time. This means that once you save a copy of the Google Sheet to your own Google Drive, you can share it with anyone who writes in another language and have a real-time chat within the document. Just enter your contact's name along with yours in the cells provided, select each participants native language from a drop-down menu, and start typing in the colored fields. It may not be a 100% perfect translation, but it's a great way to communicate quickly with someone in another part of the world. For instructions on downloading the Google Sheet and how to operate it, check out the link below. Use Google Sheets for Multilingual Chat with Spears of Different Languages | Digital Inspiration
Anonymous
In fact, evidence of ground pigment use in southern Africa dates to well over 100,000 years ago. Therefore, we may also have an early date for the use of language.
Anonymous
the Passion Your customers can sense the passion of your people, even if they don’t process it consciously. The body language, the speech patterns, and other cues will give your customers the confidence that the person they are dealing with truly believes in your product. If you want your customers to love your brand, when you are looking at resumes, go beyond the facts and look for passion!
Roger Dooley (Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing)
The rules of quantum mechanics allow attention to influence brain function.The release of neurotransmitters requires calcium ions to pass through ion channels in a neuron. Because these channels are extremely narrow, quantum rules and the Uncertainty Principle apply. Since calcium ions trigger vesicles to release neurotransmitters, the release of neurotransmitter is only probabilistic, not certain. In quantum language, the wave function that represents “release neurotransmitter” in a superposition with the wave function that represents release neurotransmitter” each has a probability between 0% and 100% of becoming real. Neurotransmitter release is required to keep a thought going; as a result, whether the “wash hands” or “garden” thought prevails is also a matter of probability. Attention can change the odds on which wave function, and hence which thought, wins.
Schwartz Jeffrey M.
A $100,000,000 venture capital fund was set up solely for products using a specific computer language.
Cay S. Horstmann (Core Java, Volume 1: Fundamentals)
Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all written in Greek. But Jesus probably did not speak Greek. He was a Jewish peasant. He might have known a little Greek, but his normal tongue would have been the Semitic dialect commonly spoken by the peasants of Palestine in the first century CE, Aramaic. The original oral tradition associated with Jesus would have been communicated among the peasants of Galilee also in Aramaic. Now, here is the problem. When we compare the same stories in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they agree not just in general or in gist, but often word for word, verbatim. Not 100 percent verbatim, but often as much as 80 percent, and sometimes even more. How shall we explain this? Does a theory of oral transmission work? Say a set of stories circulated orally in Aramaic; they were told and retold in great variety. They usually communicated the gist but were never word for word the same. Then, gradually, bilingual listeners began to repeat the stories, now sometimes in Aramaic, sometimes in Greek. Greek versions began to circulate orally, told and retold in great variety, usually communicating the gist but never being told word for word the same. Imagine the various ways in which any particular story might have been told, in two different languages, by dozens of different people, in myriad different contexts. Now imagine a story from this oral tradition beginning with Jesus, spreading around in Aramaic, then trickling over into Greek, and spreading around again in the new language; finally one particular version falls on the ears of, say, the author of Matthew, who includes it in his gospel. Now imagine that a different author, say, the author of Luke, hears the same story, but a version of it that has taken a different route through that complex process of being passed on, and he also decides to include it in his gospel. What are the chances that these two versions of the story will agree with one another, in Greek, nearly verbatim? A clever mathematician could perhaps compute the odds. Let us just say, they would be astronomical. But that’s not all. Jesus was an aphorist and a storyteller. How many times would he have told one of his parables, a good one like the Sower? Dozens of times? Probably. But when a gospel writer includes a parable in his narrative, he can only really use it once. If he were to repeat it as Jesus actually had done, over and over again, that would be tedious. He has to choose one place to put it and one way to tell it. Now, when the authors of Matthew and Mark include the Parable of the Sower in their gospels, they both just happen to portray Jesus telling it right after a scene in which Jesus is accused of having a demon, Beelzebul, so that his family must come to try and take him away. And that story, in both gospels, follows close after a story in which Jesus is healing and exorcizing multitudes. And that story, in both gospels, follows one in which Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. And before that, in both gospels, there is a story about Jesus and his disciples passing through the grain fields of Galilee, feeding themselves from the gleanings. It is not just that Matthew, Mark, and Luke share a large number of stories, sayings, and parables, or that these common traditions often agree almost verbatim from gospel to gospel. They also present these things in the same order. Could oral tradition account for all of that? Never.
Stephen J. Patterson (The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins)
For what the world spends on defense every 2.5 hours, about $300 million, smallpox was eliminated back in the late seventies. For the price of a single new nuclear-attack submarine, $726 million to $1 billion, we could send 5 to 7.5 million Third World children to school for a year. For the price of a single B-l bomber, about $285 million, we could provide basic immunization treatments, such as shots for chicken pox, diphtheria, and measles, to the roughly 575 million children in the world who lack them, thus saving 2.5 million lives annually. For what the world spends on defense every forty hours, about $4.6 billion, we could provide sanitary water for every human being who currently lacks it. Looking at it another way, the roughly $290–$300 billion that the United States [spent] on defense in 1990 is greater than the total amount that Americans contribute to charity each year, about $100 billion, plus total federal, state, local, public, and private expenditures for education, roughly $150 billion, plus NASA’s entire budget of $7.6 billion, plus federal and state aid to families with dependent children, $16.3 billion, plus the cost of the entire federal judiciary and the Justice Department combined, $5.5 billion, plus federal transportation aid to state and local governments, $17.5 billion. … A single Stinger missile costs $40,000, or roughly 30 percent more than the income of the average American family, nearly twice more than the income of the average black American family, and about 400 percent more than the so-called poverty line … [and] the price of 2,000 rounds of 7.62-mm rifle or machine-gun ammunition, about $480.00, is slightly more than what the average Social Security beneficiary receives every month.” How do we wrap our minds around these priorities? Or
Derrick Jensen (A Language Older Than Words)
Perhaps it is the increasing abstraction of ourselves from the world, to which language contributes, that explains why “fifteen years ago people could distinguish 300,000 sounds; today many children can’t go beyond 100,000 and the average is 180,000. Twenty years ago the average subject could detect 350 shades of a particular color. Today the number is 130.”13 By naming the world, abstracting it and reducing it, we impoverish our perception of it. Language
Charles Eisenstein (The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self)
This little book aims to introduce the Thai language. It is intended for those who know nothing about it, but are keen to learn. We use the method of selecting 100 key words, and using these to make up sentences and present a range of expressions, so that you can “say 1000 things.
Stuart O. Robson (Instant Thai: How to Express 1,000 Different Ideas with Just 100 Key Words and Phrases! (Thai Phrasebook) (Instant Phrasebook Series))
For example, in Spain, the Barcelona Age Factor (BAF) project studied the effects of changing the age of beginning to teach English to Catalan/Spanish bilingual students. When the starting age for teaching English was lowered, Carmen Muñoz and her colleagues took advantage of the opportunity to compare the learning outcomes for students who had started learning at different ages. They were able to look at students’ progress after 100, 416, and 726 hours of instruction. Those who had begun to learn later (aged 11, 14, or 18+) performed better on nearly every measure than those who had begun earlier (aged 8). This was particularly true of measures based on metalinguistic awareness or analytic ability. On listening comprehension, younger starters showed some advantages. Muñoz suggests that this may be based on younger learners’ use of a more implicit approach to learning while older learners’ advantages may reflect their ability to use more explicit approaches, based on their greater cognitive maturity. She points out that, in foreign language instruction, where time is usually limited, ‘younger learners may not have enough time and exposure to benefit fully from the alleged advantages of implicit learning’ (Muñoz 2006: 33).
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
Learning planning Once goals have been set, we need to focus our attention on the means of achieving them. We must align the two or three hours’ a week class time with the students’ personal goals as much as possible, of course, but not to the detriment of the 100 plus remaining hours of waking time which could potentially be directed towards practising English. As teachers, then, we need to think about learning planning, not just lesson planning. By dedicating just 2 or 3 per cent more waking time to English, students can effectively double their English language life! Any impact this has will be far greater than just having a successful lesson. So what can teachers do to help make this happen? With just a few sessions devoted to learning planning early on in a course of study, followed up with occasional check-ups, students can set off on a path to much greater success than relying on the lessons alone. Lesson time well spent!
Daniel Barber (From English Teacher to Learner Coach)
From prehistoric cave paintings to the map of the London Underground, images, diagrams and charts have long been at the heart of human storytelling. The reason why is simple: our brains are wired for visuals. ‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it speaks,’ wrote the media theorist John Berger in the opening lines of his 1972 classic, Ways of Seeing[1]. Neuroscience has since confirmed the dominant role of visualisation in human cognition. Half of the nerve fibres in our brains are linked to vision and, when our eyes are open, vision accounts for two thirds of the electrical activity in the brain. It takes just 150 milliseconds for the brain to recognise and image and a mere 100 milliseconds more to attach a meaning to it[2]. Although we have blind spots in both of our eyes – where the optic nerve attaches to the retina – the brain deftly steps in to create the seamless illusion of a whole[3]. As a result, we are born pattern-spotters, seeing faces in clouds, ghosts in the shadows, and mythical beasts in the starts. And we learn best when there are pictures to look at. As the visual literacy expert Lynell Burmark explains, ‘unless our words, concepts and ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information…Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched[4]. With far-fewer pen strokes, and without the weight of technical language, images have immediacy – and when text and image send conflicting messages, it is the visual messages that most often wins[5]. So the old adage turns out to be true: a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
Prior to European contact, the Americas were home to nearly 100 million Indigenous people, who between them spoke some one thousand to two thousand languages. The number of different plants they relied upon was enormous. Across North America, it is estimated that pre-contact people used over twenty-six hundred different species, nearly half exclusively for medicine. Less than one hundred of these plants were cultivated. The rest grew wild.
Gina Rae La Cerva (Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food)
...SQL is very far from being the “perfect” relational language—it suffers from numerous sins of both omission and commission. ...the overriding issue is simply that SQL fails in all too many ways to support the relational model properly. As a consequence, it is not at all clear that today's SQL products really deserve to be called “relational” at all! Indeed, as far as this writer is aware, there is no product on the market today that supports the relational model in its entirety. This is not to say that some parts of the model are unimportant; on the contrary, every detail of the model is important, and important, moreover, for genuinely practical reasons. Indeed, the point cannot be stressed too strongly that the purpose of relational theory is not just “theory for its own sake”; rather, the purpose is to provide a base on which to build systems that are 100 percent practical. But the sad fact is that the vendors have not yet really stepped up to the challenge of implementing the theory in its entirety. As a consequence, the “relational” products of today regrettably all fail, in one way or another, to deliver on the full promise of relational technology.
C.J. Date (An Introduction to Database Systems)
Hey! STOP USING MY LANGUAGE! The ENGLISH language you use? That’s 100% created by whites for whites to communicate with other whites about white-people stuff and I am HIGHLY OFFENDED.
J. Micha-el Thomas Hays (Book Series Update and Urgent Status Report: Vol. 3 (Rise of the New World Order Status Report))
Consulates monitor American welfare programs and make sure Mexicans make the most of them. Some programs are closed to illegal immigrants but food stamps (the program is known since 2008 as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) are not. Many illegal immigrants hesitate to apply for them for fear their status will be discovered and they will be deported. Mexican Consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro of Santa Ana in Orange County, California, went on Spanish-language television to tell Mexicans it was safe to apply. “It won’t affect your immigration status,” he explained. More than 1,200 people applied for food stamps the next day. Consulates also have a program called Ventanillas de Salud (Health Windows), which publicizes American hospitals and clinics that treat illegal immigrants for free. In 2007, the consul in Los Angeles proudly noted that 300,000 Mexicans in the area had benefited from the consulate’s medical advice. Cost to taxpayers for medical treatment for illegal immigrants in Los Angeles Country runs to about $400 million a year. In 2005, as it does every year, the consulate in Los Angeles gave the school district nearly 100,000 textbooks. The history books are the ones used in Mexico. They refer to the American flag as “the enemy flag” and say “we love our country because it is ours.” In Salinas, California, the consul general for the area organized a “Mexican Flag Day” to promote Mexican patriotism at an American public school.
Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
Aristotle names over 170 species of birds, 169 species of fishes, 66 types of mammals, and 60 types of insects, making him the father of ichthyology and entomology as well as biology. His writings contain references to the internal organs of more than 100 creatures from cows and deer to lizards and frogs, and most in such detail that the dissector could only have been Aristotle himself.10 He is also the inventor of the language of science. Words like genus and species, hypothesis and analysis,
Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization)
this Londonised a Caribbean tradition of story telling and use of language that had previously been the preserve of reggae. While that was to prove pivotal in the evolution of jungle, more immediately it was an important step for young black London in general.
Lloyd Bradley (Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital)
As a solopreneur and small business owner, you don’t have the capacity to target so many different customer segments. It’s ideal to focus on 1–2 segments at most so that you can focus on speaking the right language to the right customer because each segment will have different triggers that make them buy.
Meera Kothand (Your First 100: How to Get Your First 100 Repeat Customers (and Loyal, Raving Fans) Buying Your Digital Products Without Sleazy Marketing or Selling Your Soul)
On the Rausing Project’s Web site, they put part of their rationale for the interest in endangered languages this way: Today, there are about 6,500 languages and half of those are under threat of extinction within 50 to 100 years. This is a social, cultural and scientific disaster because languages express the unique knowledge, history and worldview of their communities; and each language is a specially evolved variation of the human capacity for communication.
Daniel L. Everett (Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures))
I claim that modern text (including hypertext) is essentially the same in structure as the earliest spoken/gestural language circa 100,000 years ago. We need language that handles complexity much better. Linear text is bad for that, documents are bad. These old tools do not allow collective thinking about complex problems.
Frode Hegland (The Future of Text 1)
Once the language was in the actors’ minds, and their bodies were freed from blocking, and in relationship to real architecture, they became virtuosic. Metaphor suddenly had a more intimate relationship with reality. The actor was real, the staircase was real, the emotion was real, and the language floated on top.    
Sarah Ruhl (100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater)
Gain a language and you gain a second lens through which to question and understand the world.
Timothy Ferriss (The 4 Hour Workweek, Expanded And Updated: Expanded And Updated, With Over 100 New Pages Of Cutting Edge Content)
Imagine if Earth’s 7.7 billion people were shrunk to a village of 100: » 26 villagers would be children (14 years old or younger). 5 villagers would come from North America, 8 from Latin America, 10 from Europe, 17 from Africa, and 60 from Asia. » 31 would be Christians, 24 Muslims, 15 Hindus, and 7 Buddhists. 7 villagers would represent every other religion, and 16 wouldn’t identify with a religion. » 7 people would speak English as a first language, and another 20 would speak it as a second. 14 villagers would be illiterate; 7 would have a college degree. » 29 people would be overweight, and 10 would be going hungry.
Chip Heath (Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers)
thepsychchic chips clips i How often are we actually in control, I wondered? And how does the perception of being in control in situations where luck is queen actually play out in our decision making? How do people respond when placed in uncertain situations, with incomplete information? 13 Personal accountability, without the possibility of deflecting onto someone else, is key. 41 There’s never a default to anything. It’s always a matter of deliberation. 56 Erik: You have to have a clear thought process for every single hand. What do I know? What have I seen? How will that help me make an informed judgment about this hand? 74 … find the fold … 86 Erik: There’s nothing like getting in there and making a bunch of mistakes. 88 Erik: Pick your spots. 91 Erik: Have you ever heard the expression ‘snap fold’? A snap fold, you do it immediately. You’re thrilled to let it go. So. snap fold. This lets you shove with basically the same enthusiasm. It tells you which hands to go with when you have different amounts of big blinds. 98 There’s a false sense of security in passivity. You think that you can’t get into too much trouble—but really, every passive decision leads to a slow but steady loss of chips. And chances are, if I’m choosing those lines at the table, there are deeper issues at play. Who knows how many proverbial chips a default passivity has cost me throughout my life. How many times have I walked away from situations because of someone else's show of strength, when I really shouldn't have. How many times I've passively stayed in a situation, eventually letting it get the better of me, instead of actively taking control and turning things around. Hanging back only seems like an easy solution. In truth, it can be the seed of far bigger problems. 100-101 Gambler's fallacy -- the faulty idea that probability has a memory. 107 Frank Lantz, NYU Game Center, former poker player: Part of what I get out of a game is being confronted with reality in a way that is not accommodating to my incorrect preconceptions. 109 Only play within your bankroll. 126 Re: Ladies Event: Yes, I completely understand the intention, but somehow, segregating women into a separate player pool, as if admitting that they can’t compete in an open player pool, feels equal parts degrading and demoralizing. … if I’m known as anything in this game, I want to be known as a good poker player, not a good female player. No modifiers need apply. 127 Erik: Bad beats are a really bad mental habit. You don’t want to ever dwell on them. It doesn’t help you become a better player. It’s like dumping your garbage on someone else’s lawn. It just stinks.” 132-33 No bad beats. Forget they ever happened. 136 As W H Auden told an interviewer, Webster Schott, in a 1970 conversation: "Language is the mother, not the handmaiden of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.” The language we use becomes our mental habits—and our mental habits determine how we learn, how we grow, what we become. It’s not just a question of semantics: telling bad beats stories matters. Our thinking about luck has real consequences in terms of our emotional well-being, our decisions and the way we implicitly view the world and our role in it. 133
Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win)
With about “100 billion neurons,” the adult brain processes continuous data coming in from the senses, “to store decades of memories, faces, and places; to learn languages; and to combine information in a way that no other individual on this planet has ever thought of before. This is a remarkable achievement for just three pounds of soft tissue!
Muriel I. Elmer (The Learning Cycle: Insights for Faithful Teaching from Neuroscience and the Social Sciences)
I once heard that all reactions to life could be summed up in one of three words every child knows: yikes, yum and yuk. The 100,000 other words in the English language are just refinements and explications of the basic emotions conveyed by these three words. “Yikes” expresses the primary negative but protective emotion of fear; “yum” and “yuk” are the simplest ways to express the fundamental judgments of good and bad which underlie all of life’s experiences.
Barbara Alldritt (Ya Gotta Laugh)
It is relatively more difficult to pick up signals that an adult is lying than it is to determine if a child is lying. Adults are more able to try to cover up signs that they may be lying and are more analytical in learning the behaviors that a liar might present so that they can exhibit opposite behaviors. A person who wants to intentionally lie to manipulate others may know some of the signs that they might do while they are lying and try to fight those signals so that you don’t pick up on them while they are lying. The best tactic to use on an adult is to look at a collective of behaviors that the person is displaying while you are asking him or her a direct question. Body language is one of the easiest ways to tell whether an adult is lying. If they try to set something down in-between them and you, this is a defense measure that often indicates they are trying to distance themselves from you because you are making them uncomfortable with your questions. If they point their legs or feet at the door or lean sideways away from you, this is because they want to leave the room and get away from your interrogation.
W. Kenn (100 Ingenious Ways To Detect Lies: How to Spot a Liar Like a Pro)
von Ahn, PhD, (TW: @LuisvonAhn, duolingo.com) is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Duolingo, a free language learning platform with more than 100 million users.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)