Omar Sharif Quotes

I always had a weight issue since I was a young kid.

Nothing in my younger life could have told me I would have needed to know how to speak English.

After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang.

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 was heavy as a kid. I mean, I kind of got it together for a while there in my 20s and early 30s.

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English.

When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

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 came to New York when I was 21, 22. I couldn't speak English. I knew I wanted to go to fashion school.

It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

My experience of Chinese culture is indirect, through echoes. When I approach the cashier at my local Chinese supermarket, they switch to English before I've even said a word. They somehow know that I'm not quite Chinese enough.

I don't know French at all. I took some lessons when I was younger but all I know are the numbers. I've been told basically everyone in Monaco speaks English because of it being a huge vacation spot so I'm excited about that. I might not need to learn French after all.

I came to Los Angeles for the first time in 1994. I spoke no English. I only knew how to say two sentences: 'How are you?' and 'I want to work with Johnny Depp.'

I weighed 245 pounds when I was 16 years old. I had a 44-inch waist. And that was two years before 'Dukes of Hazzard' started.

Increasingly, corporate executives who don't speak Japanese are coming into Japan. Unlike their predecessors, they expect their employees to be able to communicate in English.

I didn't move to Miami to live in a Spanish-speaking province.

When I first came to this country I could not speak English. Now I get paid to write it.

If I were bombing with my jokes in English, I would go back to France. Maybe do that mime thing.

The only thing that kept us from going bigger worldwide was the language barrier. All the corn that we did on 'Hee Haw,' it was hard to translate into their slang.

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 didn't speak English until I was ten, when Philip Burton, the schoolmaster who became my guardian, took me under his wing.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.

Every Hispanic player goes through that. It's a lot of hard work, to be able to communicate with your teammates. English is fundamental to be able to express yourself fully in a game.

You know it was really hard to do a set, or even to do interviews in English, because in Europe, we always had a translator with us.