Henry Lau Quotes

Just learning to think in another language allows you to see your own culture in a better viewpoint.

Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English.

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

I would love to be bilingual. I think having a second or third language at my bidding would open up the world in amazing ways.

I think the best part of learning a language is that you can see the country's culture through the language. And it gives you different levels of understanding of that culture when you really try to dig in and learn it.

Getting access to diverse civilizations should be easy, and languages are the gateway to that.

As a woman of colour, as a person who is a minority, I believe its important that other people know about my language and I don't necessarily have to explain. In the same way, when I read 19th-century literature and if I have to understand a Latin phrase or a French phrase, it is incumbent upon me to learn it.

A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English.

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.

The more languages you know, the less likely you are to become a terrorist.

When you're speaking Spanish, you're thinking in a different way.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

I've never been in any country for more than four years, and I'm learning different languages all the time. It gives you a different attitude.

I learnt to sing in Bengali, my mother tongue, then went on to sing in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati and every possible Indian language.

Only in North America is it regarded as a major achievement to speak one language moderately well.

Every language teaches you something, so learning a language is never wasted, especially if it's different in more than just syntactic trivia.

I think it's important if you're American to have a second language, and Spanish is the language to have.

The world does not look to us in the Arab world out of a healthy desire for knowledge.

The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.

The more you speak more languages, the more you understand about yourself.