Noam Chomsky Quotes

I agree with Chomsky in almost nothing. When it comes to innate structures and so on, I'm very skeptical.

I'd like to continue my education. The physical stuff's great and I think it's great as an actor because you get to live a lot of little lives, but learning more about the world, learning another language, continuing with my Spanish that's important.

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

I studied in Kerala, so learnt to read and write Malayalam.

I studied Hindi in school and that's come in handy.

The scary thing is I took 12 years of French, and I can barely say, 'My name is... ' And that's not because of the concussions.

We humans invented literacy, which means it doesn't come for free with our genes like speech and vision. Every brain has to learn it afresh.

I was gonna try to go to grad school to teach foreign language.

I had to do a lot of studying 'cause I had to learn new languages all the time. So it was a little bit painful watching other kids play outside, and I'm stuck at home learning something.

Learning another language is like becoming another person.

I certainly enjoyed having my sister, because when she came I felt a certain responsibility to help her fit in, and help her learn English. I wanted her to play with all my toys. I was actually, I think, really scary to her, because I had so much energy.

I like languages. I like working on different accents. I speak English, French and Spanish. I'd love to learn more but I think, as you get older, your brain is a bit slower.

Because education is such a broad area, I chose to focus on language learning.

I came to America when I was seven and a half in 91. I think the first full length book in English that I read was Return to Oz when I was nine years old.

I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.

If it is noticed that much of my outside work concerns itelf with libraries, there is an extremely good reason for this. I think that the better part of my education, almost as important as that secured in the schools and the universities, came from libraries.

Creativity is as important as literacy.

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew.

Language is an art, like brewing or baking.... It certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be learnt.

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English.

No child is capable of speech until he has heard other human beings speak, and even two infants reared together cannot develop a language from scratch.

Even if people are suspicious of the motives I think that learning and speaking two languages can only be a good thing for people.

That's why it's important to be multilingual, because it teaches you so much about your own language.

First I think I was interested in the stories, and later on, I became more interested in the language itself, so the stories became almost secondary, but it was kind of a background music for my life.

I think it's harder to learn a language without having a goal.