Julia Ioffe Quotes

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

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

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.

After I learn more English, I'll work hard and make more films.

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English.

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

Most previous immigrants came to the United States to become Americans, with no intention of returning home. They relinquished their ties with their homeland. English was their key to prosperity, and they worked hard to master it.

They say that immigrants don’t speak English. So? Who cares. Even the Irish learned English after a while.

Rapid acquisition of English should be the paramount goal of any immigrant language instruction program.

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.

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.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Spain with my mother. I learned Spanish before I learned English. But the English language stayed with me.

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?'

Here in South Korea, I'm continuing to learn English in order to boost my prospects. When North Korean defectors try to get a job to stabilize their lives, their lack of English is a handicap. It was the same story while I was living in China. It took an enormous amount of time and enthusiasm to learn Chinese.

I love to see people's faces change when they hear me speak English, and they realize how far I have been able to go.

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

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 arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.

I came to this country when I was 13 years old, I couldn't really speak English, and I had an accent.

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

I knew that if I wanted to be all I could be, I would have to go to the U.S. It took three years to get the accent right.

After I arrived in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang.

It's good to be in a role when you can learn something new.

Every job you do, you gain more experience. You never stop learning.

I was going to be living there and I didn't want to sound like a foreigner all my life.