Alan Yang Quotes

I have family in Italy that my mother keeps in contact with, but I don't because I don't speak Italian.

I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.

My parents were both Spanish-speakers and they used to speak to me and my siblings in Spanish and we'd answer them in English.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

I was always aware of what the language I was using meant in terms of my bond with my parents - how it defined the lines of affection between us. When I spoke English, I felt I wasn't completely their child any more but the child of another language.

My mother came from Japan, and I really didn't understand her often. Now that I'm older, I do.

I never learned to speak Yiddish, ever.

My mom was a house mom when we were growing up, and that's all I knew about her. I had a really big disconnect with her because she only spoke Chinese. Her English isn't good at all. Being a typical second-generation, you have the basic stuff, but I never had a deep conversation with her.

When my mom, Mercedes, and her younger sister, Juanita, first came from Puerto Rico, they were the youngest in the family. They had to jump into a new community and really learn English, assimilate, and adapt - and I saw that. I grew up in that community.

Even though I grew up in America, at home we spoke mostly Chinese, because my mom is from Taiwan.

My father had barely any education. He could hardly write or count. But his great pride was that he was perfectly bilingual. In the household, he entertained this idea that we had to speak both languages.

My mom speaks English - she moved to England in the '70s, so she's fluent in English. We use to speak in Spanish when I was a kid all the time, me and my mom. But when I went to boarding school, I kind of lost it a little bit.

Being in southwest Detroit, when my dad would want to say anything about me or my brothers or sisters, he would start speaking in Spanish to my uncle and my grandmother because we didn't understand.

My wife wanted my children to have some Chinese culture and education. She believes the children need to learn two languages and two cultures.

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

People in Finland have also adopted me because of my dad, and that's great, but it's the one language I can't speak.

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.

It's fascinating when you're from another place, but you don't speak the language.

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.

Each language has its own take on the world. That's why a translation can never be absolutely exact, and therefore, when you enter another language and speak with its speakers, you become a slightly different person; you learn a different sort of world.

Even though I am very tied to and close to my heritage, I learned Spanish in college; I didn't grow up with it. Growing up in South Texas is different from Miami or L.A. where it is a necessity to speak Spanish.

This happens to a lot of kids from different backgrounds - they lose a lot of their parents' and grandparents' teachings, language and culture because they have to deal with another language and culture 24/7. By the time I was 44, I was terrible at Spanish. I was always intimidated whenever I had to speak it.

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.

I did read Indian scriptures when we could get the English versions, but the problem was I never took the time to learn the language. Really, what it comes down to is that I knew the emotion of faith; I knew what my parents were trying to teach me, but we always said 'No' when my mom was trying to teach us Punjabi.

When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak.