Mel Brooks Quotes

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.

Although I feel very French, a part of my heart is in the States. When my brother and I arrived, we didn't really speak any English, and when we left, that's all we spoke when we played together. It was just a beautiful place to grow up.

I speak Spanish to my children and they speak it better than me.

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 grew up speaking Korean, but my dad spoke English very well. I learned a lot of how to speak English by watching television.

Belgium is half French-speaking and half Flemish, and I was born on the French side. So we spoke it a lot - like, in kindergarten, it was almost all French. But then I moved to New Zealand when I was 10, where we obviously spoke English all the time, so I lost the French a little bit.

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

I realized over the years if I'm writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.

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.

I speak, Hindi, English, and American. I'm trilingual.

You can't be an American if you don't speak English. Our public schools should be mandated to teach all children in English.

I was six or seven and an interpreter.

I learned Punjabi before I learned English in spite of the fact that I was born in Canada.

Since I grew up in Palakkad, I am comfortable speaking both Tamil and Malayalam.

I grew up speaking Arabic at home.

Despite his South Indian connection, my husband Rohit doesn't have an accent at all.

I so want to be able to speak another language. I love the way my friends who are half Italian and half English break from one language into another without even pausing.

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

Latinos are learning English. That doesn't mean that they should sacrifice their original language or that they should give up this in-betweeness that is Spanglish.

My mother is half Malayali and half Tamilian. I can speak Bengali and Tamil, but can't read or write.

The fact is I do feel very Spanish, like when I'm talking to my wife and daughter in Spanish at two in the afternoon. I even think in Spanish when I get angry!

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.

Neither of my parents had English as a first language.

I think in French, but I get angry in Spanish.

Kids in school told me my parents had accents, but I had no idea; they've always sounded that way to me.