Language Competence Quotes

The President [George W. Bush] speaks Spanish almost as well as he speaks English.

When I work in English, I'd say I don't see a big difference in my rapport with my team or the actors. When I work in English or French, the music of the language is different, but beyond that music, in the depths, it's the same.

I can speak English. I can speak Hindi. I can understand one or two other languages.

I've been working in three-four languages. I'm happy to do it.

Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.

I feel comfortable in Spanish, I chat like a parrot, but I don't have the confidence in Spanish that I do in English.

I think I am less self-assured when I write English than I would be if I were writing in my first language. I have to test each sentence over and over to be sure that it's right, that I haven't introduced some element that isn't English.

I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.

I am more comfortable with Tamil than Hindi.

We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.

I think we are living in an age where we really need to have bilingual leaders so that we can communicate with our constituents.

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.

I actually speak fluent English and Spanish and... I dabble in a couple of languages, but I'm not fluent in German, Russian and Arabic.

I speak Hebrew excellently.

The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

I can manage in six languages - Marathi and Gujarati, in addition to Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and Bangla.

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

I don't speak any other languages, which I'm kind of ashamed about, actually.

In those days it was very nice to have a President who clearly spoke the English language.

I had to know at least two languages.

I can get by quite well in Italian or German, though if the discussion got to a high level, I'd run out of vocabulary. I'm stronger in French and Swedish.

I speak, Hindi, English, and American. I'm trilingual.

I can read Gujarati and speak some, too!

I'm not very good at standard English.

I would like to speak 10 languages.