Talking about language and respect for the past two posts brought this famous story to mind. It has been told in many forms, and I didn't seem to have a copy of it in my house. Browsing the internet, I found it on the Union for Reform Judaim's site, but it is also a great story available for children in book form called "Yettele's Feathers", by Joan Rothenberg. It goes like this...

There's a famous story based on a midrash ( D’varim Rabbah 6:14) about a man who gossiped.
The people in the town were upset with him because of the things he said. The gossiping man was sorry and went to the rabbi to ask him how to repair the damage he had done.

The rabbi asked him, 'Do you have a pillow at home? One stuffed with feathers?'
The man nodded.

'Then I think I can help you,' the rabbi said. 'Come back tomorrow and bring that pillow with you.'

The man did not understand, but he did what the rabbi told him to do and returned to the rabbi’s house the next morning with the feather pillow.
The rabbi stood on the porch and took out a large knife. He cut the pillow open, and feathers flew everywhere, carried away by the wind in all directions.

The rabbi told the man, “Now go collect all of the feathers and fix the pillow.'

“But I can’t!” the man said. “There are so many feathers and they have flown so far away! I will never find all of them.”

'That is the point,' said the rabbi. 'Just like the feathers cannot be gathered from the wind, so, the unkind words you said have now been spread throughout the village. You can not truly take back your words once someone has heard them.”