James Loeb Quotes

I don't speak Spanish, and I get so much crap for it. Oddly enough, it was the first language I learned, but somehow I lost it throughout the years. I can understand pieces of it, but I don't speak it. I need to speak it. I want to teach my kids Spanish.

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

To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.

Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language.

A young man who is here speaks the Panis language, and in many other respects, is preferable.

Professors of classics - not even a professor of English - professors of classics, they're something sacred; it's almost like being a priest.

I wanted to know if the 'Iliad' in the original was as relevant and contemporary as it was in translation. I then started Latin. I had finally found something I enjoyed and was good at: dead languages!

Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated.

The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature.

And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek.

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 learned to speak Italian, somewhat. Definitely enough to get around in Italy. My grandfather always used to swear at my grandmother in Italian.

At Oxford University, I studied languages so I could read the great novels as they were originally written. I took what in the United States would be a double major in Russian and French, but I have to admit that the pressure of getting through so many books spoiled reading for me.

I learnt to sing in Bengali, my mother tongue, then went on to sing in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati and every possible Indian language.

My uncle is from Argentina, so I grew up hearing Spanish. My Spanish isn't very good, but my pronunciation isn't terrible.

I definitely want to teach my daughter Spanish.

My daughter took Latin for three years; she still can't speak it.

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 don't speak Spanish. I've done Spanish 1 and 2 classes. My grandma asked me when I was young if I wanted to learn Spanish, and I guess I was young. I should have, because it would have helped me a lot.

I wanted to get the most broad foundation for a lifelong education that I could find, and that was studying Latin and the classics. Meaning Roman and Greek history and philosophy and ancient civilizations.

The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.

My biggest regret is that I didn't teach my two children how to speak Spanish.

I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.

I really want to do a film in another language. My dad's from Germany, so it'd be really cool to do a film in German. I'm not quite fluent, but I can get there. And my accent's pretty good. I wouldn't feel too out of my element.