Susie Dent Quotes

I realized very early in life what my abilities and limitations were, and foreign languages was definitely one of my limitations. With strenuous effort, I just barely passed my French class at Harvard so I could graduate.

I am fluent in Spanish and I understand French, Italian and Portuguese.

If you were to ask me to speak Swedish or Dutch or German, I have no idea if I could pull that off!

I like to travel, and I would love to be fluent in at least four languages.

I don't speak Filipino or Spanish, but I've sung in both.

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

I just started taking Mandarin classes. I love the idea of globalization: of being able to work in different countries.

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.

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

I speak French, German, English, and Dutch, and I can say a few words in Spanish - none of these languages have anything to do with Valyrian.

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.

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.

After years of studying French in school, one of my professors said he'd really appreciate it if I didn't take any more French.

I've always been inspired by people who can speak other languages.

I'm a good student. Just trying to learn as much as possible is how I picked up so many languages.

Growing up in Switzerland, you learn German pretty much from day one in school. You learn French and Italian as well. I took English as an extra language because I figured that was the language of the world.

It is not easy, but young people have to learn languages.

When I got into languages, I needed to amass things to make myself more palatable or more acceptable as a human.

I learned English, French, Italian.

A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

I tried to learn the languages - Italian, Spanish, and German - not to successfully. Working on a European set isn't a hell of a lot different from working on an American set.

My mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.

I feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.