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language

It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
	-- Sydney J. Harris

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English
is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion,
English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and
rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
	-- James D. Nicoll

"Sure, it would be nice if Europeans agreed on a single language, but that's
about as likely as Unix users agreeing on a single text editor."
	-- Eloquence (k5)

And the plural of octopus is octopods or octopodes, but unfortunately only me
and thee care.
	-- k5 Rogerborg

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of
writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like
anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I
suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them
in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat ... where in this
metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.
	-- Ursula K. LeGuin

A French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French
language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks them.
	-- Wittgenstein, PI 336