Marilyn Hacker Quotes

To be functionally fluent in a language, for instance, in most cases you need about 1,200 words. To acquire a total of vocabulary words, if you really train someone well they can acquire 200 to 300 words a day, which means that in a week they can acquire the vocabulary necessary to speak a language.

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

It's important to me to work in my own language now and then. I love English, but you can never learn to master a foreign language if you're not brought up with it.

I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.

I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.

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

I was one of those kids who always wrote.

As long as I'm able to write across the media and across the age groups, I'm happy.

I wanted to write.

I never thought it was unusual to write, and I've been writing or pretending to write since before I even started school.

I definitely want to teach my daughter Spanish.

I have written ever since I knew mechanically how to do it.

I think of myself as someone who thinks largely through writing. Thus I write more than most people, and I write in many different forms. I think of myself as the kind of person who writes, rather than as one kind of writer or another.

I can still put down some pretty nasty stuff on paper, which is what I enjoy doing.

Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

In Buenos Aires, I have a very close friend who speaks very good English, and she taught me. It was quite difficult because the muscles of your mouth are used to your language, and then when you want to speak another language, they don't go to the place they need to go to make the sound.

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

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming.

Language patterns solidify at 10, 11, 12, so I was able to learn English fairly easily, with no accent. I didn't do speech or vocal work to get rid of the German accent; I was just lucky.

I've been writing, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.

I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

I love to write. I have always loved writing. That was my first love.

I learned Romanian very late, when I was fifteen, in town, and I wanted to learn it. I like the language very much.

Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.