Chinua Achebe Quotes

I do that in whatever language of the country I'm in, because the audience appreciate it.

If you're talking about industry, I've never restricted myself to Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, or Kannada. Whichever the language is, from Swahili to Marathi or Bhojpuri to Bengali, I would be happy to do it.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague.

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.

It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open.

I'm about as monolingual as you come, but nevertheless, I have a variety of different languages at my command, different styles, different ways of talking, which do involve different parameter settings.

I spoke Spanish when I was three, and then Maltese. I love dictionaries. I like foreigners. My dad moved every year before I was 14, and I learnt to like abroad. I'm not scared of change.

My mom used to call me a parrot, because the way I spoke would change in every country we'd go to.

When you work in a different language you are not so attached to the words.

Globalization has brought a proliferation of such environments, so that even monolinguals must increasingly learn to live and act multilingually.

I'm a chameleon when it comes to languages.

Most people, throughout history, haven't learned one language to the exclusion of another. You learn to speak differently to a peasant and to a shoemaker. You speak differently to your mother, who comes from Burgundy, and to your father, who comes from Swabia.

I speak all my languages basically every day with the people in the dressing room, and it's a pleasure to be able to do so. On the pitch, if it's a group of players I'm trying to communicate with, then I use English because you need to make sure everyone understands what you are saying.

I use Mandarin, Korean and English on a daily basis and usually only use Cantonese when I'm speaking with my relatives. I don't think it's very difficult for me to switch between each language because I've been doing it for so long.

Language has never been a barrier for me. I grew up learning Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil.

In South Africa, we speak English and sometimes Afrikaans, sometimes Zulu, sometimes Xhosa.

English has always been a mongrel tongue, snapping up words from every continent its speakers encountered.

Language doesn't seem to be a barrier for me to do films in the south.

I'm a big believer in change and embrace the fact that English is probably the fastest-moving language in the world.

It's really natural for me to write bilingually.

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

When a person has an accent, it means he can speak one more language than you

I learned to use language like my mother did. I would simulcast, give you the program in your own tongue.