Linguistic Challenges Quotes

Everyone speaks stupid.

I studied German at school. I lived in Berlin for two years and had a German girlfriend for five years, so I don't find speaking German particularly difficult. Singing was slightly more difficult.

Japanese is a very strange foreign language for European people.

Irish is harder to pull off. I know southern people and I really like the midwest, so I can tap into that a little bit. It's easier to sound angry with southern than it is Irish. Yelling Irish you can sound like an angry Leprechaun. I think me screaming like I am going to kill you in Irish doesn't work.

I've forgotten the words with which to tell you. I knew them once, but I've forgotten them, and now I'm talking to you without them.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to say things. I'm a little exhausted by the process.

It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.

When I was in fifth grade - so, about 11 - my folks moved us to Denmark. And so not only did I have all new friends and all new surroundings, I didn't even understand what they were talking about, which was very difficult and kind of started me, I think, on my path to animation.

Blame the guy who doesn't speak Engish.

When the media's around, I try to be careful. I don't want to make a mistake or use bad language, and I have to really concentrate because of the language barrier.

Do you speak Chopnese huh? Do ya? Chop chop chop chop chop. Aha you don't.

Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday

All last year we tried to teach him (Fernando Valenzuela) English, and the only word he learned was million.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.

Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.

When it came to a lot of these German actors with the English, they just couldn't do it. They couldn't get the poetry out of it. They couldn't own it and make it their own. And then Christoph [Waltz] came in, and I didn't know who Christoph was.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.

You do see very few English players going abroad and those that do are largely good players otherwise they wouldn't have gone, but I feel a lot of their downfall is in the language. On the pitch you can learn the different basics of 'left,' 'right' and 'behind you' but off the pitch you want to have that influence around the team.

It is very frustrating not to be understood in this world. If you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else, it can make you want to scream. But somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us, whether you are an electric form of decoration, peppermint-scented sweet, a source of timber, or a potato pancake.

Basically as someone who grew up in Delhi, crooning in southern languages which I don't understand is very difficult.

You cannot write in more than one language. Words don't come out as well.