Imagine a piano keyboard, eighty-eight keys, only eighty-eight and yet, and yet, new tunes, melodies, harmonies are being composed upon hundreds of keyboards every day in Dorset alone. Our language, Tiger, our language, hundreds of thousands of available words, frillions of possible legitimate new ideas, so that I can say this sentence and be confident it has never been uttered before in the history of human communication: “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.” One sentence, common words, but never before placed in that order. And yet, oh and yet, all of us spend our days saying the same things to each other, time after weary time, living by clichaic, learned response: “I love you”, “Don’t go in there”, “You have no right to say that”, “shut up”, “I’m hungry”, “that hurt”, “why should I?”, “it’s not my fault”, “help”, “Marjorie is dead”. You see? That surely is a thought to take out for a cream tea on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
– Stephen Fry - Language Conversation
Posted 5 months ago & Filed under language, stephenfry, humour, 2 notes
