Martin Amis Quotes

English is not my first language.

It's hard for me to perform in English.

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.

Languages are the pedigrees of nations.

If you spend your time trying to learn English, you fall behind in your course content… I know because when I came here I could not speak English. So that was the idea of Congress when we passed bi-lingual education. But that was to only go on for a short time—one and one half years. But many of the bi-lingual education programs of today go on for year after year and they are destructive because the primary objective is to learn English.

Miami is America’s most diverse city… We have 140 languages we speak..

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

English is not my language.

I think it's really hard for me... to sing in English, because it's not my mother tongue.

I find vocabulary to be a great drawback.

It's always a unique challenge when you're working with somebody where English is their second language.

Dutch is not so much a language as an ailment of the throat.

You cannot write in more than one language. Words don't come out as well.

I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

If you go to France, you have to speakFrench. If you speak in English, no one looks at you. On the one hand we sayEnglish is a global language.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Russian is a very deceptive language, because it looks easy at first: it's like setting out for a gentle stroll and realizing that you've committed yourself to scaling Himalayan peaks.

When it came to a lot of these German actors with the English, they just couldn't do it. They couldn't get the poetry out of it. They couldn't own it and make it their own. And then Christoph [Waltz] came in, and I didn't know who Christoph was.

Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.

I am very sorry, but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanskrit in less time that it takes me to buy a German Dictionary

Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

We can only converse if we can speak the same language. So if we are going to build One Nation, we need to start with everyone in Britain knowing how to speak English.

A person who speaks good English in New York sounds like a foreigner.

Sometimes I want to joke but my English isn't perfect. Sometimes people are wondering what I'm talking about.