Adam Gopnik Quotes

French was my first language.

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.

I learned Spanish at home and, since half my family doesn't speak English, it's my first language.

Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English.

We've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.

I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.

Spanish is my second language. When I started, I was doing interviews in Spanish and had to catch up.

I speak Hindi fluently because my mother speaks only in Hindi and Urdu.

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'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.

French is a foreign language, but I've been speaking it since I was 18 so it's second nature to me.

I studied in American school, so yes, I grew up speaking English and Spanish. Obviously, Spanish is my first language.

Over 90 percent of parents in Puerto Rico want their children to be totally fluent in English.

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

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.

I didn't move to Miami to live in a Spanish-speaking province.

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.

English, for me, is an acquired language. I started with English at the age of 10. At the time, it was my third language.

I am a 10th class pass in Hindi. From 7th grade to 12th grade, I was in Delhi; before that, I was abroad. I came in not knowing a word of Hindi in 7th grade and learned Hindi and passed the exam in 10th. I think I was north of 50 percent, so I feel very proud of that accomplishment.

Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.

I hardly grew up mono-lingually! I was raised religious, so there's a tradition of semi-access to a second language. When I learned my ABCs, they taught us our Aleph-Bet at the same time.

I grew up speaking Arabic at home.

Spanish is my first language.

Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language.