linguistic struggle Quotes

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, 'Blah, blah, blah.' That's when I get crazy.

I remember thinking how easy it is to speak in clichés, to steal a line from pulp fiction and let it fall. We can only hover around the inexpressible with our words anyway, and there is comfort in saying what we have heard before.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Studying English was useless, completely useless. It took me years to recover from that. Every time I tried to write, it sounded like a bad university essay.

Fumbling for a word is everybody's birthright.

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

I studied Italian five hours a day for many months to ensure I could communicate with the players, media and fans. [Claudio] Ranieri had been in England for five years and still struggled to say 'good morning' and 'good afternoon.'

This is why it is sometimes hard for introverts to find words: we really hate to compromise, and words are always a compromise.

She drowned in words that could not teach her how to swim.

This was the Athenians' war against the King of Macedon, a war of words. Words are the only weapons the Athenians have left.

The biggest issue for me has been the language because I speak so much German now. I've had to focus on my English and find more words to describe what I want to say and also soften my tone. It was quite stiff from 20 years of speaking German, so when I started speaking more English, oh my god, my tongue was like: 'Argh'!

It's hard for me to perform in English.

It is terrible to see someone being beaten up by the English language.

While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.

Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.

Being here in the United States, English is not my first language. It's kind of a challenge for me, a big challenge for my family.

I think that learning Burmese has to have been one of the most challenging things that I have had to do for a movie.

You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years.

Dutch is not so much a language as an ailment of the throat.

Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence

When I write in Italian - this is just the metaphor that came to me immediately, and I really think this is what it is - I feel like I'm writing with my left hand. Because of that weakness, there is this enormous freedom that comes with it.

That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.

I can speak English on the field but it's difficult with media.

I never saw so intelligent a man have so much trouble in getting out a connected sentence. Ever since I have known him, he has desired to have a long talk with me, but he never gets started; and yet each time he meets me with renewed zest for the outpouring. It is like getting congealed liquid from a demijohn; you know the jug is large and full, but getting the contents out is the problem.

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.