Amish Tripathi Quotes

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

I speak English, so I am no longer cute. My tongue itches for French.

One of the biggest problems is - you know, I've got some Hispanic friends - is that a lot of those folks that don't know English, is primarily because they don't even know Spanish. They don't even know their own language.

If I could talk in only one language for the rest of my life, it'd be Tamil.

I think in my mother tongue. That's Hindi.

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

Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.

I realized over the years if I'm writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.

Neither of my parents had English as a first language.

My mother tongue is Telugu. I was born and brought up in Tamil Nadu.

I grew up speaking Vietnamese - that was my first language because my parents didn't speak any English, and I didn't learn English until I started school.

Nothing in my younger life could have told me I would have needed to know how to speak English.

I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

When I took part in European leaders summits, it was sometimes unpleasant for me to hear Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian friends speak English, although I admit that on an informal basis, first contacts can be made in this language. Nevertheless, I will defend everywhere the use of the French language.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.

I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

English is not my first language.

I don't speak Filipino or Spanish, but I've sung in both.

I grew up speaking both languages, and for me that's really important.

Well, my first languages are German and Spanish because I was brought up by a Spanish mother and a German father, so I always spoke both languages at home. I'm very thankful that I was brought up in a bilingual house.

I have a funny accent in every language.

I came here when I was almost 22. I'm perfectly bilingual, but I'm never going to sound like Sandra Bullock.

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.