Ilhan Omar Quotes

I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

It took me a year to really learn the American lingo. I really feel for people who are coming here and don't speak English at all. It must be hell.

The fact that I didn't speak English I think was the most difficult thing for me.

This will sound really funny, but I'm so used to shooting in Hindi that shooting in English took a while to get used to.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

I've never learned to speak a foreign language with ease.

I've studied Spanish, but I need to improve. I'll probably improve when I work in the country one day. For most people, when they travel to a country, their language becomes better.

When I came here I moved to London and I was meeting so many new people and had to speak only in English, which is not my native language.

I have an interest in languages and make an effort to learn.

Nothing in my younger life could have told me I would have needed to know how to speak English.

It is much easier to learn another language when you are young, enthusiastic and unembarrassed.

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.

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.

French was my first language.

I could never learn to be totally fluent in any other language.

I don't know Arabic. I can't speak or write it.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and, out of self-defense, Spanish. I watched her learn Spanish in three months.

Back home, almost everything I did, I did in Hebrew. I went to drama school in Hebrew, my whole career was in Hebrew, and to switch languages was something that was fascinating and more complicated than I expected it to be, even though I've been speaking English since I could speak.

I might have some Danish lessons sometimes.

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.

I'm terrible at languages. I'm trying to learn Spanish. I tried to learn French as a kid.

The language skill in the U.S. for the most part has been awful. Many Americans don't learn any foreign language.