Monolingualism Quotes

We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.

Insist on one language. English for all Americans.

If I could talk in only one language for the rest of my life, it'd be Tamil.

Globalization has brought a proliferation of such environments, so that even monolinguals must increasingly learn to live and act multilingually.

If you know only one language, you're a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language.

I'm about as monolingual as you come, but nevertheless, I have a variety of different languages at my command, different styles, different ways of talking, which do involve different parameter settings.

Americans and French are notoriously monolingual, especially earlier generations. Language is a sense of pride in both cultures. I think that the French and Americans are like brothers or sisters who are so similar that they irritate one another.

With the United States in slow long-term decline, how will that affect the position of English? And where will all that leave monolingual Britain? Our political leaders like to boast about how global Britain is, but when it comes to languages, it is near the bottom of the global league, together with another island state, Japan.

Maybe then you comprehend, speaking one language only is a prison!

Even though I have spent literally years of my life trying to learn another language, any other language - and even though I have in the past claimed in several key professional contexts that I speak other languages - I am in fact still trapped inside the bubble of English.

I realize that it's like spices in the kitchen. I need that turmeric. I'm sorry, but cinnamon isn't going to substitute . I feel that I can teach my listener about a new word they can use too. "Well, what words are part of my own community, even if I'm monolingual, that I'm not allowing myself to use in a public sphere?"

There are very few places in the world where you have to learn a language with no language in common. It's called a monolingual field situation.

Nobody should call themselves a professional if they only knew one language.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

The idea of Homo monolinguis - one-languaged man - the idea of children having to grow into one system before we confuse them with another mental system, is an idea with which, unfortunately, many people are brought up now.

Do we look like thrill-seekers? Wasn't it enough that we had to put up that sign reading NO HABLA ESPANOL and acknowledge the existence of thirty percent of the population, even in the negative?

English is the only interesting thing that's left in my life.