Judith Martin Quotes

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

My primary and secondary education was in French, which had a lasting influence on my life.

I don't speak Spanish, I speak a little of Italian but no Spanish.

My mom taught me German before I knew English. And I went to French immersion school.

I've never been in any country for more than four years, and I'm learning different languages all the time. It gives you a different attitude.

I'm pretty good with languages. I know a bit of French and actually want to live in France some day so that I can get fluent. I think it'd be tragic to go through life only knowing one language.

It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language.

Some words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.

In my time, you needed to speak a little Italian, and that was it.

I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.

I failed world geography, civics, Spanish and English. And when you fail Spanish and English, they do not consider you bilingual. They may call you bi-ignorant because you can't speak any language.

I just started taking Mandarin classes. I love the idea of globalization: of being able to work in different countries.

I actually speak fluent English and Spanish and... I dabble in a couple of languages, but I'm not fluent in German, Russian and Arabic.

I always try to learn a few words from a new language wherever I go.

I speak English with my dad and Swedish with my mom; it's quite schizophrenic.

I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.

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

Latin America must follow the education model, that allows children to handle the English language from a very early age.

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.

Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.

I would love to be bilingual. I think having a second or third language at my bidding would open up the world in amazing ways.

I think once you understand a language, you understand the culture surrounding it as well.

I grew up learning Russian and translating English songs when I became a teenager, we got to listen to West Germany radio stations, and learning lyrics with picture book. These are my first experiences with the English language.

My mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.

It's like learning a language; you can't speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar.