Foreign Language Acquisition Quotes

I speak fluent Kosovan.

At Oxford University, I studied languages so I could read the great novels as they were originally written. I took what in the United States would be a double major in Russian and French, but I have to admit that the pressure of getting through so many books spoiled reading for me.

I taught myself Russian, which was very, very useful, especially for poetry and in fact if you can't read Pushkin in Russian, you're really missing something.

My American accent is really, really good. I started out in the theater, doing all different characters with all different accents. When I first came to America, I thought I would be playing American, all the time. It was just weird how it worked out that I played more international characters.

I speak Vietnamese and conversational Spanish.

Knowing English is important, but for us Venezuelans I think it would also be important to know Portuguese. For that reason, we should evaluate the possibility of it being taught in our schools.

Basque is one of the world's more alarming languages. Only a handful of adult foreigners, they say, have ever managed to learn it. The Devil tried once and mastered only three words - profanities, I assume.

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

I speak English, Portuguese, and French. One day I'd love to learn Italian.

I do a mind game every day. I play chess, sudoku. I learn something different: a language, a few words of a different language.

The Swedish he knew was mostly from Bergman films. He had learned it as a college student, matching the subtitles to the sounds. In Swedish, he could only converse on the darkest of subjects.

The things you leave school knowing - some dates and long division - so much of it has been of no use to me. Schools should teach the basics of cookery, first aid, how to look after your money and how to speak foreign languages. Useful things.

I've got to learn French because I've been going there for years and still, the only words I know are the swear words.