Quotes About Multilingualism

The dirty Arab children sold peanuts from the top of the basket and hashish from the bottom. They spoke a masterful unintimidated French in guttural gasps, coming from a land where it was regarded neither as the most beautiful language, as in America, nor the only one, as in France.

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

Millions of people around the world learned to speak English as a second or third language, or sixth, and fluently. He'd always thought they envied his country, maybe wanted to live there, but now he wondered if they just liked English-language movies and TV shows. And maybe, just maybe, they learned English because most English speakers were too lazy or arrogant to become proficient in other languages.

Tradition has it that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, preferred to speak French to diplomats, Italian to ladies, German to stable boys and Spanish to God. English he seems to have used sparingly – to talk to geese.

Rakousko, kdysi považované za jednu z nejsilnÄ›jÅ¡ích a nejlépe Ã…â"¢ízených zemí v EvropÄ›, se stalo zranitelným vlivem své polohy uprostÃ…â"¢ed Evropy: kdykoli se kontinent zatÃ…â"¢ásl, dolehla sem odezva. Mnohojazy?ný ráz Ã…â"¢íÅ¡e ji též ?inil snadným ter?em sílící vlny nacionalismu, síly, která byla jeÅ¡tÄ› o generaci dÃ…â"¢íve v podstatÄ› neznámá.

1,000 out of the world's 6,000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas

It turns out that, in addition to China's eight 'big' languages—Mandarin and its seven close relatives (often referred to collectively simply as 'Chinese'), with between 11 million and 800 million speakers each—China also has over 130 'little' languages, many of them with just a few thousand speakers.

I would love to explore my options in Tamil as well as Malayalam.

I meet people overseas that know five languages - that the only language I'm comfortable in is English.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

A feast of languages

Say'st thou me so? is that a ton of moys? Come hither, boy: ask me this slave in French What is his name. Boy- Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele? French Soldier- Monsieur le Fer. Boy- He says his name is Master Fer. PISTOL- Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him: discuss the same in French unto him. Boy- I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.

have been at a great feast of languages," says Moth, "and stolen the scraps.")

To him, English was still a mudslide of runny, slushy sounds that did not exist in his mother tongue—r, th, sh, and some particularly gelatinous vowels. Frawder thur prueless rare shur per thurst. Mirtler freckling thow. Gold freys yawder far cration. Crewl fry rackler friend thur. No shemling keal rearand for fear under shall an frick. Folger rich shermane furl hearst when pearsh thurlow larshes your morse claws. Clushes ream glown roven thurm shalter shirt.

We still spoke Korean at home, but on the streets we always had to speak Japanese.

How is it possible to feel exiled from a language that isn't mine? That I don't know? Maybe because I'm a writer who doesn't belong completely to any language.

Writing in another language reactivates the grief of being between two worlds, of being on the outside. Of feeling alone and excluded.

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

I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.

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 had to do a lot of studying 'cause I had to learn new languages all the time. So it was a little bit painful watching other kids play outside, and I'm stuck at home learning something.

It's liberating to perform in another language. There are some subjects I would never talk about in French, where they see me as a public figure, that I talk about in English.

Nine SPEAKING IN TONGUES The following is based on a lecture given at the New York Public Library in December 2008. 1

Writing in another language gives me an additional freedom, an additional way of thinking. It's a challenge, but I like the challenge.