Luis Fonsi Quotes

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.

As far as Irish writers being great, I think the fact that there have been two languages in Ireland for a very long time; there has obviously been a shared energy between those two languages.

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

Even though I grew up in America, at home we spoke mostly Chinese, because my mom is from Taiwan.

When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.

I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and I would go to school in Texas. I lived on the border, so I was very fortunate to grow up between two worlds and both cultures and both languages and traditions.

I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

I have a very strong identity that connects me to Argentina and to Latin America, but at the same time, I have a deep connection to the music from the United States and music from Europe, too.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

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

People who speak different languages, they are watching the movie from our language. So, I think all of us should be proud as nation and as cinema lovers.

I grew up speaking Spanish. The woman who helped raise me was only Spanish-speaking, so it was one of my primary languages as a kid. And I lived in Spain for a while.

The idea of Homo monolinguis - one-languaged man - the idea of children having to grow into one system before we confuse them with another mental system, is an idea with which, unfortunately, many people are brought up now.

Most of my family doesn't speak English. It's so important for the baby. He's going to know all his American roots, but he also needs to know about his Brazilian side.

If I'm performing in the United States, I'm able to speak Spanglish, and the crowd comprehends. If I'm in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, then I'm completely Spanish. I feel like a New Yorker that represents all Latinos.

American histories were the same; they had these mad ideas about how Parliament worked, or what people really meant when they said A, B, or C. All my life, I felt simultaneously deracinated and rooted in both places, and now it's my greatest strength: I'm culturally bilingual.

I'm more American than anything else. I grew up in China, but I was fulfilled at a young age by American music. It was my biggest inspiration.

This song 'All Aboard,' that tune allowed me to expand and kind of offer my audience something totally different because it's not bachata - I'm singing English, and that was really fun.

I grew up with a grandmother from another country and having a different language in my house. That gave me an ear for accents.

I was six or seven and an interpreter.

I consider myself Russian-American because I'm American by ethnicity and by passport, but I spent all my forming years over in the former Soviet Union in a Russian school. I never went to an American school. There was a lot of culture shock when I moved back to the States when I was 17.

That, to me, is the real crossover: a mainstream artist singing in Spanish.

I'm from Norway, but I always felt like I'd grown up with British culture.

I so want to be able to speak another language. I love the way my friends who are half Italian and half English break from one language into another without even pausing.