Lev Grossman Quotes

I have been challenged with the fictional languages I have to learn. I wasn't terrible at languages at school - I got an A in French, so I did well enough - but I didn't enjoy them. I'm not even sure if that plays into how well you learn a fictional language!

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 first arrived in the country, I really didn't speak much of the language. I knew two words coming here, and they were 'Hello' and 'Shut up.'

Learning Japanese was certainly a task, but my passion for the culture, as well as my will to communicate with fans and friends, always encouraged me to continue.

In addition to the research, I enjoyed learning French and assimilating the culture of another country.

My mom taught me German before I knew English. And I went to French immersion school.

I speak French fluently, so that really helped.

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

I speak as much Spanish as anyone who has grown up in Southern California or Texas or Arizona. I had my three years of high-school Spanish and a couple of semesters in college.

I speak a little Spanish but I am so impressed by people who can speak a lot of different languages.

I've never lived in an English-speaking country, ever, but I lived in Austria. So, my second language is German. And when I went to school, I had a lot of classes in English.

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

French was my first language.

In our generation, everybody told us that it's really important and it's nice to be able to speak a lot of languages. It's an art, too. It really impresses me, people who speak, like, seven languages. I admire them so much, so I began with English, and then Spanish and maybe Portuguese.

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

I don't ever want to stop learning. And I really want to learn French fluently. It would be great to go and live in France.

It's really difficult for me. Language, I am sorry that I haven't. I think I just always expected that you learn a word in place of a word and when I discovered how difficult the grammar was and learning that was very discouraging for me.

I wish that I spoke more languages. I speak a couple languages, but not well enough to really dub myself. French is really the only one, and it's a difficult thing.

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'm all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.

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

Mum and Dad sent us to a bilingual school, so we had half the lessons in English and half in French. But I remember being hugely lost.

All the kids are learning different languages. I asked them what languages they wanted to learn, and Shi is learning Khmai, which is a Cambodian language; Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian, Z is speaking French, Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic, and Knox is learning sign language.