Billy Wilder Quotes

English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.

Spanglish is a creative way also of saying, 'I am an American, and I have my own style, my own taste, my own tongue.'

At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects.

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

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 have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Urdu can not die out because it has very strong roots in Persia. The language itself is not only just the language of the Muslims, but it's also the language of the Hindus.

It always trips me out that America, the most powerful and magnificent nation in the history of the world, whose might was built by immigrants from all over the world, only speaks one language.

Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

Afrikaans is my first language, although you would never know, as my English accent has more of an American-British thing going on from all my years of travelling.

Singing in Hindi is nice but restrictive. Regional languages are more rhythmic, have a different tone and sound, making it more interesting.

I've always felt very much from a mixed culture - mainly English and French, but also Nigerian, Thai, Mexican. Everything's had its influence on me.

I might sing a gospel song in Arabic or do something in Hebrew. I want to mix it up and do it differently than one might imagine.

There were about 6,000 languages spoken on this planet at the beginning of the 20th century, there are probably only 600 still widely spoken at the beginning of the 21st century. Together with biodiversity, cultural and linguistic diversity are fading fast.

No common education has served to remove and soften the differences of origin and language.

There are men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there upon the [Hudson] river.

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

We will never have "a" Chicano English or Spanish because of regional differences. But I think that because of our bilingual history, we'll always be speaking a special kind of English and Spanish. What we do have to do is fight for the right to use those two languages in the way that it serves us.

At different times my children went to Polish, British, and American schools, and they learned about 'the nation' in all of them.

I am only one-eighth the writer I might have been had I contained all the fragmented languages of Trinidad.

Languages and cultures are disappearing at an enormously fast rate, and many of them are in Canada. These are extreme examples of removal of freedom of expression - to actually lose a language and the ability to express that culture.

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'

I grew up traveling quite a bit, and I think that, because of that, my design inspiration is a mish-mash of all different places and styles.

I talk funny 'cause I come from Canada.