Bilingual Language Quotes & Sayings

The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out looking like a brand-new glove again. I'm completely in awe of this skill, since I happen to be both bilingual and a writer, but nevertheless a lousy translator. — Alma Guillermoprieto

I find attempts to create bilingual gospels laughable, in particular the attempt to translate the service from Church Slavonic into Russian. What for? In order not to make the effort and not to learn the divine, if somewhat artificial but solemn, language specially carved for this purpose? This language also provides a link with a tradition which is realized at depths and which the modern Russian language cannot plumb. — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

I failed world geography, civics, Spanish and English. And when you fail Spanish and English, they do not consider you bilingual. They may call you bi-ignorant because you can't speak any language. — Tim Scott

My goal was to reach this literary crowd, but I didn't want to alienate my core fan base. I grew up speaking that language, this isn't put on. I can go back and forth; it's almost like being bilingual. But I'm not college educated; I don't know rules of grammar. — Rude Jude

Sarah Buckley is precious, because she is bilingual. She can speak the language of a mother who gave birth to her four children at home. She can also speak like a medical doctor. By intermingling the language of the heart and the scientific language she is driving the history of childbirth towards a radical and inspiring new direction. — Michel Odent

Serial tasking is hard because switching tasks is hard, even when the tasks are easy and similar. In some experiments, bilingual speakers are asked to read out numbers, first in one language and then midway in another language. They often stumble at the switch, taking many tries before they hit their stride again. — Sendhil Mullainathan

Annoyance has made me bilingual. — Gayle Forman

Here's a question I still can't answer: Did I see through the male tricks because I was destined to scheme that way myself? Or do girls see through the tricks, too, and just pretend not to notice? — Jeffrey Eugenides

Bilingual-education advocates say it's important to teach a child in his or her family's language. I say you can't use family language in the classroom - the very nature of the classroom requires that you use language publicly. — Richard Rodriguez

I don't know or understand any other language except the language of kindness. — Debasish Mridha

When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door. — Victor Hugo

For years, "Sorry, I don't speak French" has been the reflexive response of English-speaking Canadians to a request, a comment, or a greeting in the other official language. Part apology, part defiance, it is a declaration of the otherness. That is not me. I don't do that. The language barrier is her, at this counter, now. — Graham Fraser

My new play 'Chinglish,' which will go to Broadway, is about a white American businessman who goes to a provincial capital in China, hoping to make a deal there. It's bilingual. And it's about trying to communicate across language and cultural barriers. — David Henry Hwang

If you speak three languages you're trilingual. If you speak two languages you're bilingual. If you speak the language of the opposite sex, you can communicate. — Julieanne O'Connor

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it's almost like a meeting. — Franz Kafka

What chance of survival does a culture have
when its own elites actively seek its destruction? — William S Lind

The police become necessary in human society
Only at that junction in human society
Where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got — Omali Yeshitela

We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto. — Newt Gingrich

The house of laughter makes a house of woe. — Edward Young