Linguistic Talent Quotes

I've always felt very comfortable with accents. Once I get an accent, I can do it, and that's just something I've been able to do my whole life.

I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting [verbal] imagery which I guess is a poetic touch.

When I visited Ireland with my father and heard the people on the farm talking, I couldn't believe the gift of language they had. I felt very untalented.

Hyperpolyglots are not born, and they are not made, but they are born to be made. There is a finite subset of the human population which has the right neurological equipment for learning and using lots of languages. That equipment may serve only a sub-component of language learning, such as mimicry, pattern recognition, or memory, or it serves those sub-components in a global fashion.

I met one child there eleven years old, speaking three languages [in Guinea]. He could speak English, French and Malinke. Speaking my language actually better than I could. And this hypocrisy - they tell us here in America [ that black people can't be intelligent].

Ingrid Bergman speaks five languages and can’t act in any of them.

John Kerry speaks French fluently. Democrats are saying he's one in a million. A war hero who speaks French, isn't it more like one in a trillion?

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

It is often said that in Ireland there is an excess of genius unsustained by talent; but there is talent in the tongues.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

I have an impeccable memory, and I can learn dialogues in any language in 20 minutes, including Telugu and Malayalam.

I have a good ear for languages.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.

Dan watched in awe. "I didn't know you talk Turkey." "I speak Turkish.

In our generation, everybody told us that it's really important and it's nice to be able to speak a lot of languages. It's an art, too. It really impresses me, people who speak, like, seven languages. I admire them so much, so I began with English, and then Spanish and maybe Portuguese.

The globalized environment where speaking a lot of languages is rewarded and getting access to learning materials is easier. A talent for massive language learning has not been supported by the environment until very recently, so this is a phenomenon that is going to become more common and more visible.

I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy.

My parents have a brilliant ear for languages and mimicry and accents, which I think I've inherited - that I can listen to things and pick them up.

Accents are very easy for me.