Apolo Ohno Quotes

It's hard for me to perform in English.

I have a wonderful English-language dialogue coach. All the time I have to speak English, he is with me. It is a double effort, because you have to say the words correctly and then act them.

Our priests and presidents, our surgeons and lawyers, our educators and newscasters need worry less about satisfying the demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship.

I'm not very good at standard English.

If a child cannot speak English the first day at school, that child is not ready to learn.

When the media's around, I try to be careful. I don't want to make a mistake or use bad language, and I have to really concentrate because of the language barrier.

It annoys me when I phone a hotel receptionist in my own country, and they don't understand what I am saying because they don't speak English. I think that's wrong. It's nothing to do with being politically correct or incorrect; it's just not right.

English is the lingua franca of world business, the key to clinching deals from Hong King to Toronto.

If you spend your time trying to learn English, you fall behind in your course content… I know because when I came here I could not speak English. So that was the idea of Congress when we passed bi-lingual education. But that was to only go on for a short time—one and one half years. But many of the bi-lingual education programs of today go on for year after year and they are destructive because the primary objective is to learn English.

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

When I first came to this country I could not speak English. Now I get paid to write it.

I'm tired of hearing people say 'Reggie Jackson needs New York, needs the media, needs the attention.' I've always gotten it whenever I wanted it.

It's liberating to perform in another language. There are some subjects I would never talk about in French, where they see me as a public figure, that I talk about in English.

If you are going to vote in this country, you should be a citizen. To be a citizen in this country, you should know English.

With Singaporeans, you speak English, you're well-educated, the doors open everywhere.

People are very curious and have written a lot of things about me. Right or not. I never comment on those things, because it's not much of my thing to comment on everything that's written about me.

People think I disappear sporadically, but I just do projects that don't get international acclaim.

Every Hispanic player goes through that. It's a lot of hard work, to be able to communicate with your teammates. English is fundamental to be able to express yourself fully in a game.

To the Tamil media, I have mostly interacted in English since I am not fluent in Tamil.

There's a difference between being a star and an actor. If you feed off from being in the public eye, this is the unfortunate flipside to it.

I speak five languages, which actually makes it easier when you join a new team. You can settle much quicker because you can help team-mates much faster and better. People need to be careful around me, though - I can understand everything.

Did people's attitudes towards me change after I appeared on TV? Yeah, definitely. During my career I've had some flak - particularly doing television.

I think English is very important for tennis players. To be on the tour, it's much more easier if you speak English. So that's why I knew that I have to improve my English.

You do see very few English players going abroad and those that do are largely good players otherwise they wouldn't have gone, but I feel a lot of their downfall is in the language. On the pitch you can learn the different basics of 'left,' 'right' and 'behind you' but off the pitch you want to have that influence around the team.

English is not my language.