Quotes About Bilingualism

Talking in one language and talking in another, I think inevitably, produce two different personalities, as far as I've seen in other people. I assume it does the same for me.

When I speak in English, my expressions become different. My attitude, too. I'm not sure why, but there really is a difference. My hands move differently when I speak English.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

True, I was born and raised in Chennai, fluent in Tamil, but essentially, I am a Telugu guy and a Telugu actor.

Balancing my career between two industries has never been an issue. I started with a Telugu film and have a soft corner for the south industry, though I've grown up speaking Hindi. I don't think language can be a barrier when it comes to acting. And, since I come from a theatre background, I'm used to memorizing my lines.

I speak Tamil and Telugu better than Bengali.

Habla en francés siempre que no encuentres la palabra en inglés para nombrar alguna cosa, saca ligeramente los dedos de los pies al andar y ¡Recuerda siempre quién eres!.

Even when I speak English to my parents, I'll say an English word differently to my Chinese parents and friends than I do to my English-speaking friends - you know, I'll pronounce 'McDonald's' differently, because it feels right, and that's what I'm used to.

I remember as a child of five or six lying in the bath marvelling at the different languages displayed on the shampoo bottles around me. From that moment on it was always words not numbers that held a fascination for me.

I think it keeps your brain moving faster, singing in another language.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.

One of his peculiarities was never to speak a word of French, which he however wrote with great facility.

When Karen speaks in Farsi, which she does even with her children, the tone of her Southern drawl colours the language in a strange an inimitable way. I listen for several minutes and decide that Farsi is, by nature, a language of deep greens and browns, and that Karen speaks it in bright red swaths.

I have stayed in south India all my life. English comes more naturally to me than Hindi.

Bilingualism opens doors and provides opportunity to our children so they can shine and become successful in a labor market that is increasingly competitive and globalized.

It's funny because I'm so used to acting in English that any time I have these moments where I have to speak Russian, it definitely takes a different part of my brain to pull it off, but it's always nice and fun.

I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.

Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.

Some words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.

I speak French, and I grew up with French, so my English is Franglais.

I speak as much Spanish as anyone who has grown up in Southern California or Texas or Arizona. I had my three years of high-school Spanish and a couple of semesters in college.

Whenever I come across an Arabic word mired in English text, I am momentarily shocked out of the narrative.

I'm born and raised in Mexico. I only spent eight months in the States, but definitely English is a really big part of my life, and I love it. Thank God my mom put me in American school because I'm able to be working in the States, and it opens a lot more doors being half and not being only one. It's cool because I get to turn it on and off.