Quotes About Bilingualism

My mother tongue is Punjabi, but my first language is Urdu, which was the case with the people in undivided Punjab.

It is everyone's story. We are ashamed of our native language, be it Punjabi or Urdu. If you make mistakes while speaking your native languages, no one will say anything. But if you say one word incorrect in English, people will treat it like a crime.

Speaking in Irish he explained that while he would like to deliver his speech in Irish he did not have enough command of the tongue to express himself properly and therefore he was going to continue in English. However when he spoke in English it was to begin by saying: 'Some of the members do not know Irish, I think, and consequently what I shall say will be in English.

Occasionally I write a small piece or the odd lecture in English, and I teach in English, but my fiction is always written in German.

The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else, if not here in English. —GUSTAVO PÉREZ FIRMAT, "BILINGUAL BLUES

Most experts agree that speaking two languages to your baby from the start allows your little one to "acquire" a second language along with the first as opposed to merely "learning" it, as would be the case if it were introduced later. That's a powerful distinction, since it's the difference between being a native speaker in two languages and merely being fluent in a second language.

I've never really had the urge to make an English album.

My mom speaks English - she moved to England in the '70s, so she's fluent in English. We use to speak in Spanish when I was a kid all the time, me and my mom. But when I went to boarding school, I kind of lost it a little bit.

Dil öÄŸretimini eÄŸitimin yarars?z yanlar? aras?nda saymama ÅŸa??lacakt?r; ama burada yaln?zca ilk yaÅŸlardaki öÄŸretimden söz ettiÄŸim unutulmamal?; hem ne denirse densin, hiçbir çocuÄŸun, harika çocuklar d???nda, on iki ya da on beÅŸ ya??na kadar gerçekten iki dil öÄŸrenmiÅŸ olaca??n? kesinlikle sanm?yorum.

It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it

I work, play and do everything in French.

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

I ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us on French in fifth grade, which meant that by the time I graduated high school I had been at it for eight years.

We went from French to a sort of hybrid of the Catalan and Castilian that he taught me, and I wonder if that's part of the reason I don't miss him, that everything we ever said to each other was in languages I'm starting to forget.

My father, his values were anchored in the time, but they were also timeless, whether it's bilingualism, multiculturalism or the charter of rights and freedoms.

Sometimes you can do things with Spanish - like verbs and genders - easier than you can in English.

L'inglese e l'italiano sembrano i punti più vicini. Avendo in comune molte parole di origine latina, condividono un certo territorio. Inutile dire che mi capita spesso in italiano di incontrate una parola che conosco già grazie all'equivalente inglese. Non posso negare che la mia comprensione dell'inglese mi aiuti. Ma può ingannarmi.

Throughout school I studied in Tamil medium schools but it was only when I got to college that I realized that not learning English was a great disadvantage as I didn't understand even the simplest of sentences.

I've studied Chinese in college, but basically, I'm not bilingual.

I studied in Kerala, so learnt to read and write Malayalam.

I moved to New Jersey when I was five, and I lived there for about six years. My dad was allocated to the New York branch of his company. Looking back, I'm so grateful because I got to learn both English and Korean at the same time, and it was just so natural for me, and it made it so much easier to study English afterwards.

The way the educational system in Russia works is studying a foreign language is part of the program, so by the time you get to the age of 10, you pick up another language. I speak a bit of Russian, a bit of English, a bit of Spanish a bit of French.

I speak English without an accent, and I speak Spanish without an accent. I really do have the best of both worlds.