Language Challenges 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.

Dubbing for myself in Hindi is a big task. I know Hindi. I can read and write Hindi, but I dont normally speak the language, and that is very important.

The hardest portion of English, I must say it: Idioms.

When I went to school, I didn't know a lick of English, but it was okay because there were so many immigrants in the area, a lot of the kids didn't speak a lick of English, either. It was normal to have a wicked accent.

I think in general I've never dared compose in Spanish. First of all, it is such an intricate language.

I wasn't very good at school and appalling at English.

Learning German will be always kind of hard to me. But I'm getting the basics right.

I study hard at Russian, which is a tough but most attractive language.

I think that learning Burmese has to have been one of the most challenging things that I have had to do for a movie.

And then I went to 'Dawson's Creek,' which is a show that was, for better or for worse, all about the language. It was a word-perfect show, which I'd never had any experience with. And it was really shocking for me. I felt really hemmed in. At the time, it wasn't my favorite working experience.

I can't learn Swedish to save my life. I tried, but I'm not very good at it.

It's not easy to direct in another language, especially comedy.

I grew up around Vietnamese refugees, around people who don't speak English as a first language.

Well, maybe so, although I don't think I am particularly gifted in languages. In fact, oddly enough, it may have something to do with my being slow at languages.

I moved to New York when I was eight years old, in 1978. I grew up in Manhattan. I couldn't speak any English, and I had dyslexia, so it took me many years before I could read.

I'm not a quick study, so I'm always struggling for my words right up until.

Our schools face immense pressures caused by the different needs and languages of children from immigrant families, particularly in urban areas.

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.

The population increasing, some of it could be in countries we haven't thought of making art in. I've never entertained making comedy in China. Like what world is that? I don't know how they would perceive art or sketch comedy. It's not a matter of intellect; it's a matter of language.

I would have never dreamt in a million years I would go out with a ballroom dancer from Russia, as, when we were younger, we did not even speak the same language.

Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.

Colloquialism is the toughest part of what we do, as foreign actors, because there are certain sayings that you guys have that absolutely don't make any sense.

I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one—And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press.

When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it.

It took me a while to grasp Kannada and Telugu.