I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.
He called me a pie!” she announced, defensively. There was a pause. “Wait. That’s not right.” “A tart?” “Yes! That’s it!
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.
My goals in Holland were known as 'stiffies', which means something quite different in England of course.
There were a lot of kids from Puerto Rico at my high school in Florida; people always assumed I was Puerto Rican. Even now in California, I get talked to on the street in Spanish constantly!
Because I had an accent, people had this impression that I was dumb.
I cannot speak your england.
Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.
In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language.
Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves.
'The Lair of the White Worm' is quite a strange film. It's difficult to be good when you're saying lines that have been translated from Spanish to English by someone who speaks French.
I've had fans coming up to me and speaking Chinese or Japanese. It's not a case of mistaken nationality. I just don't think they realise that we don't all speak the same language.
The most embarrassing one is that I had no idea - and please excuse me - that you guys call a condom a rubber. My version of a rubber is an eraser. I've done that - very loudly asked for a rubber and people have given me strange looks. That was embarrassing!
There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it?
But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.
