Quotes About Bilingualism

Besides Hindi and English, I can speak in Maithli, my native language, and in Bangla and Nepalese too. But I can just about make a smattering at Marathi.

I'm reminded of the lady governor of Texas who, during a controversy about bilingualism in the State House in Austin, said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it was plenty good enough for her.

Claudia Gould's native French but Anna's answer was in English. It had become a battle of wills between her and her mother.

Why can't bilingualism be seen as an extra resource? Is it because kids who can think in two languages are smarter? (from the book Attitude, 2002)

Plus there was the standard French insult of ignoring your French and answering in English.

Being in southwest Detroit, when my dad would want to say anything about me or my brothers or sisters, he would start speaking in Spanish to my uncle and my grandmother because we didn't understand.

You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.

A man who can speak two languages is worth two men.

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses

To know another language is to have a second soul.

Avoir une autre langue c'est posséder une deuxième âme.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.?

We have made a conscious effort to blend in with U.S. society and have done our best to develop good English skills. Today, both Johanna and I communicate in English with ease, and our children speak English at native fluency levels, but we continue to speak Icelandic at home.

Speak Spanish, get accused of separatism. Speak English, get laughed at for thick accents and limited vocabularies. Many Mexicans speak English to Mexican workers out of gratitude—the fast-food counter is the only place Mexicans can feel like Americans by speaking the shared language of haggling with Mexican workers over the cost of fries.

The idea of Homo monolinguis - one-languaged man - the idea of children having to grow into one system before we confuse them with another mental system, is an idea with which, unfortunately, many people are brought up now.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.

There is no question of the government or myself attaching less importance to the use of English.

I read both in French and English and often a couple of books at once, mixing fiction and non-fiction.

By the time they got home, they were both thoroughly bilingual in cursing. *

In the superficial activity of her life, she was all English. She even thought in English. But her long blanks and darkness of abstraction were Polish.

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.

On average, schools employing a solely oral approach graduate students at eighteen who read at a fourth-grade level; students from Bi-Bi schools often read at grade level. Spoken English is taught as a useful tool, but is not a primary focus.

Unlike Conrad or Nabokov, I didn't have circumstances which would have coerced me out of my native tongue altogether.

I was born in Paris, and my mother was a French teacher, but then I rebelled against my upbringing and studied Spanish in school. So now I just speak bad French and bad Spanish.