Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

I speak French, German, English, and Dutch, and I can say a few words in Spanish - none of these languages have anything to do with Valyrian.

I don't speak Spanish, I speak a little of Italian but no Spanish.

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

My mother is half Malayali and half Tamilian. I can speak Bengali and Tamil, but can't read or write.

My mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.

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.

Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish.

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 talk bilingual.

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

If you were to ask me to speak Swedish or Dutch or German, I have no idea if I could pull that off!

The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature.

What's always a challenge for me is that my Spanish is not the level of my English. Nor do I read in Spanish the way I read in 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.

I can speak English. I can speak Hindi. I can understand one or two other languages.

I had the luck that my parents educated me in three languages. With my mother I spoke Dutch, with my father Italian, and in the school I learned German. But my host language is Italian.

I'm pretty good with languages. I know a bit of French and actually want to live in France some day so that I can get fluent. I think it'd be tragic to go through life only knowing one language.

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

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.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

I speak Farsi, German, Dari, and I understand Turkish, but I haven't used it since 1985, so I'm a bit rusty.

I actually speak fluent English and Spanish and... I dabble in a couple of languages, but I'm not fluent in German, Russian and Arabic.

I speak English, Portuguese, and French. One day I'd love to learn Italian.

I speak Italian, French, Creole and English.

I wish that I spoke more languages. I speak a couple languages, but not well enough to really dub myself. French is really the only one, and it's a difficult thing.