Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak.

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.

I am not anti-English, and I never was.

The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.

When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates' parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.

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.

So what's really behind the 'English Only' Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.

I'm against the idea of force-feeding all of Canada on two languages.

Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual, but it has perilous consequences for a nation.

I've found that one's language abilities, especially for Korean kids like me, get frozen at the age you immigrated. So I've always associated Korea with being a child and being infantilized through my inability to speak.

I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

All the academy will tell you that the language that is familiar to you is not appropriate. and that's not to say that there shouldn't be a standard, but when I come to school with my friends' language, my grandmother's language, the language in my mouth - you're going to tell me that's improper?

It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country, and they don't understand what I am saying because they don't speak English. I think that's wrong. It's nothing to do with being politically correct or incorrect; it's just not right.

An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.

To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

Because I had an accent, people had this impression that I was dumb.

Speaking Spanish isn't a benefit in Hollywood.

When I was a girl, there wasn't anything in Spanish in the movies until you saw it on DVD.

Most Arab Israelis speak Hebrew, but not the other way around. It's about time that changed.

I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.

All of us in Quebec - and I mean all of us - have allowed language to become a preoccupation that works to the disadvantage of all of us - and I mean all of us.

I have a strong accent; it limits the roles, of course it does. I guess if I had moved to America a long time ago maybe my accent would have got less.

In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.

Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.