Second Language Quotes

I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won't go away.

Apart from English, I speak my mother tongue Malayalam, as well as Tamil, Telugu, and a bit of Kannada and French.

I learned English from watching American movies and American series. And you'd watch the movie the first time and not understand anything. Then you'd watch it again, and you'd start understanding more and more, and that's how I learned English.

I think it's important if you're American to have a second language, and Spanish is the language to have.

When I was in high school, I started learning English as my second foreign language, but my level of English at that time was very average.

I dropped out of the business for 8 years, and I taught English as a second language. Then I decided to go back to acting, and I got 'Mad Men'.

In English, I'm a little bit limited. I speak English as a second language, and that's a little limitation that I have to work around and I have to use it to my favor. So, yes, that's why I end up wanting to do more things in Latin America.

I've never lived in an English-speaking country, ever, but I lived in Austria. So, my second language is German. And when I went to school, I had a lot of classes in English.

I grew up speaking Korean, but my dad spoke English very well. I learned a lot of how to speak English by watching television.

English, for me, is an acquired language. I started with English at the age of 10. At the time, it was my third language.

Malcolm Bradbury made the point, and I don't know whether it's a valid one or not, that the real English at the moment is not the English spoken in England or in America or even in Canada or Australia or New Zealand. The real English is the English which is a second language, so that it's rather like Latin in the days of the Roman Empire when people had their own languages, but had Latin in order to communicate.

I wanted to write for all children, even those kids who might see language as a threatening thing, even if English is their second language.

Spanish is my second language. When I started, I was doing interviews in Spanish and had to catch up.

French is a foreign language, but I've been speaking it since I was 18 so it's second nature to me.

Apparently Arnold was inspired by President Bush, who proved you can be a successful politician in this country even if English is your second language.

We've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.

English is not my first language.

Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English.

I could sing in English before I could understand it because I phonetically learned it from the musicals.

Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish, and because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself.

I do speak a bit of Bengali.

The script [of Regression] wasn't the draw for me. It was largely Alejandro [Amenabar] and his way of talking. To hear him talking about the script was way more interesting than the script. He wrote it, and so, English is his second language. It's an interesting thing. I've had that before. I was directed by Alfonso Cuarón before, too. It's always interesting when you're being directed by somebody like that. So much of directing is about communication, and finding the right words, and what it means, and how to convey certain emotions and ideas.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

I came here when I was almost 22. I'm perfectly bilingual, but I'm never going to sound like Sandra Bullock.

Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.