Clive James Quotes

I met my wife in New York, so, we lived together there for five years, so my Swedish was kind of a gradual learning process.

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

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

The only way to learn a language properly, in fact, is to marry a man of that nationality. You get what they call in Europe a 'sleeping dictionary.' Of course, I have only been married five times, and I speak seven languages. I'm still trying to remember where I picked up the other two.

Learning another language is like becoming another person.

I studied Italian five hours a day for many months to ensure I could communicate with the players, media and fans. [Claudio] Ranieri had been in England for five years and still struggled to say 'good morning' and 'good afternoon.'

I tried to learn the languages - Italian, Spanish, and German - not to successfully. Working on a European set isn't a hell of a lot different from working on an American set.

If you were to sit me down in a classroom, with fluorescent lights humming and some woman trying to teach me Italian, there's no way. But scream goes to Italy, we stay in a squat, and the only way you can ask someone where to take a piss is to do it in Italian. So I learned Italian.

My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the time and if I was to even understand what was going on, I had to learn the language fast.

My wife's French. I mean I speak a bit of French but I've lived amongst French, you know, most of my adult life.

I had no idea what they were saying in Italian as a child, they spoke too quickly on the radio. But I realized that language was very funny.

I love Europe. I don't speak a lick of French, but I speak a bit of Italian. I can get through Italy better than I get through the rest of Europe.

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.

I think I've started to dream in American a little bit.

People are getting more used to another language; that's how I learned English and Spanish. I listened to other singers and tried to sing with them. Of course, I studied it, and I took classes, but music helps me a lot.

I think the best part of learning a language is that you can see the country's culture through the language. And it gives you different levels of understanding of that culture when you really try to dig in and learn it.

When I went to school, I didn't know a lick of English, but it was okay because there were so many immigrants in the area, a lot of the kids didn't speak a lick of English, either. It was normal to have a wicked accent.

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

I am very happy and satisfied with my first year in Italy.

For me, it's a big challenge to translate everything in English.

I can identify with Riho because I was the talent that didn't speak the language in Japan. I'm very excited for the fans to kind of build a relationship with her because it's going to take work from both sides to understand one another.

Moving to England, again it's a new language to learn, and I've got to get use to the mentality, the culture, but I think I've integrated myself really well into this team, and I'm happy so far.

As a child, it was really hard because I'd be thrown into a new school and have to make new friends, or I'd sit in class for months without speaking the language, but as I got older, I welcomed the possibility of discovering new cultures and languages.

I am an actor and I don't have any language barrier. If I get a Tamil film, I will learn the language. It's not a problem.

I learned to say 'hello' in German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Indonesian, and Italian - languages of the countries I've visited.