George Steiner Quotes

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

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

Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.

I have a funny accent in every language.

I speak African. I can even speak Italian.

People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.

Talking in one language and talking in another, I think inevitably, produce two different personalities, as far as I've seen in other people. I assume it does the same for me.

Those who have reflected on the powerful influence of language on thought will perceive in how different a manner people who speak in different languages are apt to think.

I think once you understand a language, you understand the culture surrounding it as well.

This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

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

There are very few places in the world where you have to learn a language with no language in common. It's called a monolingual field situation.

Some words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

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 just started taking Mandarin classes. I love the idea of globalization: of being able to work in different countries.

It's funny because I'm so used to acting in English that any time I have these moments where I have to speak Russian, it definitely takes a different part of my brain to pull it off, but it's always nice and fun.

I'm a professor of comparative literature, among other things, so I'm able to read in a couple of other languages, and I understand that not everyone is, not everyone can, although it is quite stunning how many people do read Spanish in the United States, but moving between languages is also extremely helpful.

Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish, and because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

Writing in another language gives me an additional freedom, an additional way of thinking. It's a challenge, but I like the challenge.

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.

My opinion is that more languages you speak, better it is, but when you come to America, you speak English.