Leila Slimani Quotes

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.

America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.

Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.

I consider myself Russian-American because I'm American by ethnicity and by passport, but I spent all my forming years over in the former Soviet Union in a Russian school. I never went to an American school. There was a lot of culture shock when I moved back to the States when I was 17.

I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.

My mother is American. I first went to school in America, and we came back when I was about six to rural Norfolk. In primary school, I was teased immediately and mercilessly. I probably dropped that accent within about 10 days.

What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

When you become an American, they give you an injection so your accent changes.

I certainly know German colleagues in the U.S. who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that.

Anyone that has come to America past the age of eighteen will be able to understand when I say that you can never shake your accent.

I do think of myself very strongly as a New Zealander, but when I moved out to the States, I was aware that I didn't want to just live in a satellite community of only other New Zealanders.

As an immigrant, I learned by watching other people.

When I reached America, there was so much space and colour. The possibilities seemed endless. At least that's how I felt at 18. But of course, I didn't have to take the usual immigrant route of battling to find a job and a home in a strange country. I could play tennis. I spoke the language, and I was making money. It was easy, really.

When I first moved from Shanghai when I was five, I just thought of myself as Chinese.

I know that if I have come to Britain, I must adapt, and I will try to.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

My family settled in Cairo in 1980. I was nine. I missed Libya terribly, but I also took to Cairo. I perfected the accent. People assumed I was Egyptian.

Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else.

I came to this country when I was 13 years old, I couldn't really speak English, and I had an accent.

I have lived in the United States for half of my life, my entire adult life.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

I suppose that was my first bit of acting, the acquisition of an English accent. It was really just an attempt to be understood.

My grandfather came over from Puerto Rico and raised his kids speaking English so that it would be easier for them to assimilate.