Edward Sapir Quotes

35 Sourced Quotes

A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services.

Edward Sapir
Both French and Latin are involved with nationalistic and religious implications which could not be entirely shaken off, and so, while they seemed for a long time to have solved the international language problem up to a certain point, they did not really do so in spirit.

Edward Sapir
In a sense, every form of expression is imposed upon one by social factors, one's own language above all.

Edward Sapir
Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom.

Edward Sapir
Comparison of statements made at different periods frequently enable us to give maximal and minimal dates to the appearance of a cultural element or to assign the time limits to a movement of population.

Edward Sapir
Impatience translates itself into a desire to have something immediate done about it all, and, as is generally the case with impatience, resolves itself in the easiest way that lies ready to hand.

Edward Sapir
These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.

Edward Sapir
One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb.

Edward Sapir
The spirit of logical analysis should in practice blend with the practical pressure for the adoption of some form of international language, but it should not allow itself to be stampeded by it.

Edward Sapir
Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.

Edward Sapir
It would, of course, be hopeless to attempt to crowd into an international language all those local overtones of meaning which are so dear to the heart of the nationalist.

Edward Sapir
More and more, unsolicited gifts from without are likely to be received with unconscious resentment.

Edward Sapir
The attitude of independence toward a constructed language which all national speakers must adopt is really a great advantage, because it tends to make man see himself as the master of language instead of its obedient servant.

Edward Sapir
I am convinced that the stratigraphic method will in the future enable archaeology to throw far more light on the history of American culture than it has done in the past.

Edward Sapir
No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.

Edward Sapir
So far as the advocates of a constructed international language are concerned, it is rather to be wondered at how much in common their proposals actually have, both in vocabulary and in general spirit of procedure.

Edward Sapir
It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

Edward Sapir
National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.

Edward Sapir
Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.

Edward Sapir
Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same.

Edward Sapir
A common allegiance to form of expression that is identified with no single national unit is likely to prove one of the most potent symbols of the freedom of the human spirit that the world has yet known.

Edward Sapir
A logical analysis of reflexive usages in French shows, however, that this simplicity is an illusion and that, so far from helping the foreigner, it is more calculated to bother him.

Edward Sapir
Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Great simplifications are in store for us. … It seems to me that only now that is American linguistics becoming really interesting, at least in its ethnological bearings.

Edward Sapir
Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive — that is, as immodest — as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.

Edward Sapir
What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.

Edward Sapir
A common creation demands a common sacrifice, and perhaps not the least potent argument in favour of a constructed international language is the fact that it is equally foreign, or apparently so, to the traditions of all nationalities.

Edward Sapir
A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative.

Edward Sapir
As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.

Edward Sapir
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

Edward Sapir
A second type of direct evidence is formed by statements, whether as formal legends or personal information, regarding the age or relative sequence of events in tribal history made by the natives themselves.

Edward Sapir