Steven Pinker Quotes

The child, merely by going on with his life, learns to speak the language belonging to his race. It is like a mental chemistry that takes place in the child.

I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all.

There was writing and foreign languages. I always had an ease with foreign languages. So the both are related, both language related kind of mind.

It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it.

What's always a challenge for me is that my Spanish is not the level of my English. Nor do I read in Spanish the way I read in English.

I have been challenged with the fictional languages I have to learn. I wasn't terrible at languages at school - I got an A in French, so I did well enough - but I didn't enjoy them. I'm not even sure if that plays into how well you learn a fictional language!

If you have the language gift, you can use it as a tool.

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

It is much easier to learn another language when you are young, enthusiastic and unembarrassed.

It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming.

To be functionally fluent in a language, for instance, in most cases you need about 1,200 words. To acquire a total of vocabulary words, if you really train someone well they can acquire 200 to 300 words a day, which means that in a week they can acquire the vocabulary necessary to speak a language.

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

When I was in Mexico and started to dream in Spanish, I knew that was a good sign that I was learning the language. It was cool.

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

English, for me, is an acquired language. I started with English at the age of 10. At the time, it was my third language.

All the kids are learning different languages. I asked them what languages they wanted to learn, and Shi is learning Khmai, which is a Cambodian language; Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian, Z is speaking French, Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic, and Knox is learning sign language.

I learned Romanian very late, when I was fifteen, in town, and I wanted to learn it. I like the language very much.

I forced myself to watch Spanish TV and listen to Spanish radio all the time. I think I'm lucky because, for whatever reason, people from the Balkans seem to have a talent for learning languages.

It is not easy, but young people have to learn languages.

You always speak the language you hear most.

I just can't stop doing Telugu films just when I have started speaking a little better Telugu.