Clive James 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.

I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.

Learning German will be always kind of hard to me. But I'm getting the basics right.

I learned English, French, Italian.

A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

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.

I could teach you how to speak my language, Rosetta Stone.

I don't speak anything fluently, but I love picking up languages and I do this Duolingo app. I started when I moved to Sweden, when I was about 19, 20. I really loved the language; it was super melodic and really sexy.

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.

The globalized environment where speaking a lot of languages is rewarded and getting access to learning materials is easier. A talent for massive language learning has not been supported by the environment until very recently, so this is a phenomenon that is going to become more common and more visible.

I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time!

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.

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

I think it's important if you're American to have a second language, and Spanish is the language to have.

I speak as much Spanish as anyone who has grown up in Southern California or Texas or Arizona. I had my three years of high-school Spanish and a couple of semesters in college.

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

I would love with all my heart to be able to speak Greek, classical or modern or both. It is a beautiful language, both aurally and in terms of the intricacy of its construction. I took four semesters of Ancient Greek in college, but it's all rusted away now - and I never learned to speak it anyway.

I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.

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.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

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

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.

My father's really fluent in French, but I can't speak at all. I actually took it twice in school already and failed both times!

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.

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.