Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I chose to be a maths teacher because I thought the marking would be easy. You'd just tick and cross, whereas if you're an English teacher, you've got to read essays. Then they said I had to analyse the methodology. It takes an eternity, it's insane!
I grew up riding horses since I was eight. I rode English style and competed every weekend. I had two horses, Scout and Camille, and they were my babies. It taught me a lot about responsibility and commitment. I hope horses will always be in my life.
The way the educational system in Russia works is studying a foreign language is part of the program, so by the time you get to the age of 10, you pick up another language. I speak a bit of Russian, a bit of English, a bit of Spanish a bit of French.
I want to position myself as a great singer/songwriter in Korea, then jump off that into different markets. South-east Asia, China, Japan - I've done nothing even though I speak four languages - English, Korean, Spanish, and a little bit of Mandarin.
It is everyone's story. We are ashamed of our native language, be it Punjabi or Urdu. If you make mistakes while speaking your native languages, no one will say anything. But if you say one word incorrect in English, people will treat it like a crime.
Language-wise, my mom and dad's dialect, they're pretty obscure. It's Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn't something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.
The inner me was always under attack by authority, by the way my parents wanted me to be brought up, by these English schools I went to. So I've always felt this kind of anti-authoritarian strain in me, pushing to express itself despite the obstacles.
Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. What I'm trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism.
Sometimes I wonder how my life would have worked out if my books had been translated into English sooner, because English is the language that's spoken worldwide, and when a book appears in English it is made universal, it becomes a global publication.
Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there's the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.
Having arrived in London to seek refuge during the civil war in Sudan, where I was born, the thing I'm most proud of is having totally evolved. I came here not knowing how to speak English, but I went to school and learned; I adapted to this new culture.
Words began to appear in English and to make some kind of equivalent. For what satisfaction it is hard to say, except that something seems unusually piercing, living, handsome, in another language, and since English is yours, you wish it to be there too.
This African American Vernacular English shares most of its grammar and vocabulary with other dialects of English. But it is distinct in many ways, and it is more different from standard English than any other dialect spoken in continental North America.
When I'm being interviewed, presumably it's because people want to know how I feel about something or what my motivation is, not because they want to hear what I sound like in English. I wouldn't be true to the task if I responded in my unrefined English.
I've been given an amazing opportunity and I could not be more grateful. But I also know that all this will eventually die off. It's not real. It will go away and then you'll go away and then, I don't know, I'll be left sitting in some English hotel room.
When my mom, Mercedes, and her younger sister, Juanita, first came from Puerto Rico, they were the youngest in the family. They had to jump into a new community and really learn English, assimilate, and adapt - and I saw that. I grew up in that community.
I taught myself English. My English teacher was the sitcom 'Friends.' Back in the days when I was, like, 15, 14, it was like a syndrome for Korean parents to make their kids watch 'Friends.' I thought I was a victim at that time, but now I'm the lucky one.
I had a complicated home life, and my teachers, predominantly my theater teachers and my English teachers, were very dedicated to taking care of me in a particular way. And in doing so, I think I developed a very easy rapport with people older than myself.
Until the June 1967 war I was completely caught up in the life of a young professor of English. Beginning in 1968, I started to think, write, and travel as someone who felt himself to be directly involved in the renaissance of Palestinian life and politics.
After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my husband!
I think a lot of American fans or people that read about us - they think that we're trying to be a part of the American culture, like all these Swedish kids that love America. We rap in English, so I guess there's something, but we're very Swedish, actually.
Even when I speak English to my parents, I'll say an English word differently to my Chinese parents and friends than I do to my English-speaking friends - you know, I'll pronounce 'McDonald's' differently, because it feels right, and that's what I'm used to.
I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I've acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.
I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.
I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention - it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.
I'm one of those people that feels that Americans that shouldn't do Shakespeare... The rhythms of the English language and the mannerisms of the English speech seems to work effortlessly with William Shakespeare, but when Americans do it, something seems stuck.
I wish I could adjust my voice, but it's just what's happened to me. It's because I've lived abroad for a long time, and my wife is English and my kids all have English accents, and every voice I hear is English. I've never intentionally changed my accent at all.
I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.
Jewish history has been in my cultural DNA since I was a child growing up in post-war London. In the midst of that dark, gray, lamenting monochromatic world of the '50s, I had a sense that both Jewish and English history were full of color and light and animation.
I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'
I often find during a day of shooting I will speak in an American accent all day long when I'm doing dialogue. At the end of the day, it often takes an effort when I'm talking to my fiancee to bring my English back just because you're so used to speaking that way.
Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means.
You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like 'and' that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.
I don't believe in the so-called Latino explosion when it comes to movies. Jennifer Lopez doesn't have an accent. She grew up in New York speaking English, not Spanish. Her success is very important because she represents a different culture, but it doesn't help me.
My children were educated in what were then Chinese schools, and they learned English as a subject. But they made up when they went to English-language universities. So they didn't lose out. They had a basic set of traditional Confucian values. Not my grandchildren.
I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.
I do revel slightly in the fact that I am what I am - an English, middle-class, public-school-educated bloke. There is a reputation with that of being slightly stiff, but whoever gets to know me will see some other element - whether it be vulnerable or silly or camp.
I attended a middling high school in central Virginia in the mid-'90s, so there were no lofty electives to stoke my artistic sensibility - no A.P. art history or African-American studies or language courses in Mandarin or Portuguese. I lived for English, for reading.
My mom has an English accent, so we always referred to the trunk as the 'boot.' And then, suddenly, we moved to Georgia and I would say things like 'open the boot' with a bit of an accent, and I quickly realized I had to adapt; that kind of thing will get you beat up!
Where I think the American actor is slightly at a disadvantage is in vocal technique. I don't think that words are their friend in the same way that English actors are used to using words: understanding about consonance and how to shade a vowel to show emotional color.
Much has been written about Trump's style of speech, which linguists have said is often unintelligible yet deeply compelling. Orwell's famous 1946 essay, 'Politics and the English Language,' centers on the use of abstract words, often by politicians, to obscure reality.
Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as language goes, at any rate.
Americans aren't good at accents, but the English are because their accents change. You go five or six blocks and the accent is different, so they are used to hearing different pitches. In America, you gotta travel maybe 10 states before you can really hear a difference.
I'm an afternoon tea type of girl. I come from a Russian background where we love our teas. So between lunch and dinner after training I come home and I love a nice cup of tea with jam in it, as we drink it there. Black English Breakfast with raspberry jam is my favorite.
I studied religions and all kinds of other things in college. I took a Shakespearean villain course for English literature. It was really intense. I think that sort of rounds a person. In this business, it's really important for us to be interesting... and have interests.
I went to play in Brazil when I had just turned 18 and was the world's top junior player. I got to the airport, and no one knew who I was. I couldn't speak any Portuguese, and no one spoke English. Then someone said something that resembled 'tennis,' and I went with that.
Over the years, I would go to my agents, my manager, and I would say, 'Hey, there's this amazing true story about this gay English mathematician who committed suicide in the 1950s.' And they would be like, 'Please don't ever write that script. That is an unmakeable film.'
When I was still back in Cameroon, because I didn't know English, I used to listen to French rap all the time and then a little bit of American hip-hop. And then, when I got to the States, that's when I really got into all those guys - Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, all those guys.
Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying.
There's inherent cultural imbalance whenever you're translating from Chinese to English. Educated Chinese readers are expected not only to know about all the Chinese references - history, language, culture, all this stuff - but to be well-versed in Western references as well.