Edward Sapir Quotes

• French and German illustrate the misleading character of apparent grammatical simplicity just as well.

  Edward Sapir

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Character, Simplicity, Nations

• English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

  Edward Sapir

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Language, Diplomacy

• Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science.

  Edward Sapir

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cultural, Anthropology, Historical, Science

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Population, Appearance, Movement

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Nationalistic, Religious, Implication, Language

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in National, Language

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

  Edward Sapir

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in International, Language, Standard

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Evidence, Personal, Information

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Logical, Analysis, Simplicity

• 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

  Topics in Business

  Tags in Countries, World

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Constructed, International, Language

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom, Human, Spirit

Edward Sapir (32)

Birth:	26th January, 1884
Death:	4th February, 1939
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Anthropologist, Linguist

About

Edward Sapir was born in Lębork, Poland . He was an American anthropologist and linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics. He studied Germanic linguistics at Columbia, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas who inspired him to work on Native American languages. He earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Germanic philology from Columbia, before embarking on his Ph.D. in Anthropology which he completed in 1909. By the end of his life he was professor of anthropology at Yale, where he never really fit in.

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