Language Skills Quotes

I wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school. I could eavesdrop on a lot more conversations on the subway if I knew Spanish.

I don't speak Spanish, and I get so much crap for it. Oddly enough, it was the first language I learned, but somehow I lost it throughout the years. I can understand pieces of it, but I don't speak it. I need to speak it. I want to teach my kids Spanish.

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.

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

I like vocabulary and I actually read a book called 'Word Freak,' which is about a guy who basically went into competitive Scrabble for a year. But having a big vocabulary and being good at Scrabble are not the same thing.

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

Since I am originally from Hyderabad, I speak Telugu fluently.

Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.

I speak three languages. I'm pretty handsome myself.

I speak Cantonese, and I speak Tagalog.

I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English.

All the youth ..., who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it be set to learn ... until they are able to read English writing well.

I got good offers from Bollywood because I can speak Hindi very well.

I've been dubbing my own lines in Tamil for some time now.

I learned French before I learned Spanish.

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.

If you are going to vote in this country, you should be a citizen. To be a citizen in this country, you should know English.

If we were meant to read for enjoyment, would God have created television? Read as it was intended - for exercise. The more you read, the more you expand your - what's the word I'm looking for? - your stockpile of words. You must have a stockpile of words that you can pass along to your children for their stockpile.

I speak fluent Kosovan.

I'm a professor of comparative literature, among other things, so I'm able to read in a couple of other languages, and I understand that not everyone is, not everyone can, although it is quite stunning how many people do read Spanish in the United States, but moving between languages is also extremely helpful.

Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child.

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

It is very difficult to work in another language, and it is also very challenging.

If you can't read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

You have to learn the language of Hamlet.