Quotes About Bilingualism

Latinos are learning English. That doesn't mean that they should sacrifice their original language or that they should give up this in-betweeness that is Spanglish.

I am a 10th class pass in Hindi. From 7th grade to 12th grade, I was in Delhi; before that, I was abroad. I came in not knowing a word of Hindi in 7th grade and learned Hindi and passed the exam in 10th. I think I was north of 50 percent, so I feel very proud of that accomplishment.

In Wales, only about one in five inhabitants can speak Welsh (down from one in

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.

When I was a kid, it was thought I would do something in the visual arts because I was always drawing, but when we emigrated to Australia from Holland when I was seven, I learnt the English language, and I fell in love with it.

Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish, and because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself.

I speak English. I dream in it. I cannot separate my English from my Shona; I see the world with those two languages.

Je parle le français depuis plus de trente ans, je l'écris depuis vingt ans, mais je ne le connais toujours pas. Je ne le parle pas sans fautes, et je ne peux l'écrire qu'avec l'aide de dictionnaires fréquemment consultés. C'est pour cette raison que j'appelle la langue française une langue ennemie, elle aussi. Il y a encore une autre raison, et c'est la plus grave : cette langue est en train de tuer ma langue maternelle. -L'Analphabète

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

we swim in our second language, we breathe in our first

To learn a new language is not easy. For one thing, you will always speak with an accent. . . . But for your children it will be their native tongue!

My father had barely any education. He could hardly write or count. But his great pride was that he was perfectly bilingual. In the household, he entertained this idea that we had to speak both languages.

So, sometimes, when I'm not happy with my performance and I have to think, I will think in English.

Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual, but it has perilous consequences for a nation.

aujourd'hui encore, l'allemand, l'alsacien et le français se disputent dans ma tête et brouillent mon élocution ; aujourd'hui encore, je me déplace avec un dictionnaire allemand-français dans mes affaires.

I don't know, 'Zorro' was just so great for me because, knowing where I came from, everyone spoke Spanish to me, like, forever after that. And I'm, like, from Wales.

I talk bilingual.

In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.

I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old poems I'm still writing in Russian.

There are many different ways of teaching languages. The Ottomans rounded up youngsters in conquered lands and brought them back as slaves to be trained as dil oglan, or "language boys," in Istanbul. Modern direct methods are gentler but rely on the same understanding of how languages are best learned—through total immersion in a bain linguistique, a kind of baptism of the brain.

When you used to be able to express yourself as an adult in your own language, or as I can do in English, for instance, it's sometimes hard to switch back to very simple talking, like I am forced to do in Finnish. So a real conversation, when I really wanna tell something, I can't do it in Finnish.

I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.

In English, I'm a little bit limited. I speak English as a second language, and that's a little limitation that I have to work around and I have to use it to my favor. So, yes, that's why I end up wanting to do more things in Latin America.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.