Quotes & Sayings About Bilingualism

Language is present in a piece of writing like the sea in a single drop. — Kato Lomb

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics. — Roman Jakobson

Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens. — Pierre Trudeau

Bilingualism opens doors and provides opportunity to our children so they can shine and become successful in a labor market that is increasingly competitive and globalized. — Luis Fortuno

Overly literal translations, far from being faithful, actually distort meaning by obscuring sense. — Ken Liu

To look it at another way, surely there are many unfortunate people who have needed to undergo multiple stomach surgeries. Yet no one would hand a scalpel over to them and ask them to perform the same surgery they received on another person, simply because they themselves had undergone it so often. — Kato Lomb

There are many sides to this difficult problem. And people persist in discussing soil-erosion, and tribal decay, and lack of schools, and crime, as though they were all parts of the matter. If you think long enough about it, you will be brought to consider republics, and bilingualism, and immigration, and Palestine, and God knows what. So in a way it is best not to think about it at all. — Alan Paton

Bilingualism for the individual is fine, but not for a country. — S.I. Hayakawa

Language is one of the more complex human cognitive functions," Narly Golestani, Group Leader of the university's Brain and Language Lab, tells me during a recent visit. "There's been a lot of work on bilingualism. Interpretation goes one step beyond that because the two languages are active simultaneously. And not just in one modality, because you have perception and production at the same time. So the brain regions involved go to an extremely high level, beyond language"["In other words: inside the lives and minds of real-time translators," Mosaic, November 18, 2014]. — Geoff Watts

There is as little likelihood of squeezing an adult into the intellectual framework of their childhood as there is into their first pair of pajamas. — Kato Lomb

we seem to be on a constant quest to keep America a country of citizens who can only talk to one another — Kari Martindale

After all, enforced national bilingualism in this country isn't mere policy. It has attained the status of a religion. It's a dogma which one is supposed to accept without question. — Stephen Harper

I'm reminded of the lady governor of Texas who, during a controversy about bilingualism in the State House in Austin, said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it was plenty good enough for her. — Christopher Hitchens

As a religion, bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness, produced no unity, and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions. — Stephen Harper

My motivation for learning Japanese was to translate a chemical patent, a job that I had heroically (i.e., rashly) taken on. — Kato Lomb

At first, we should read with a blitheness practically bordering on superficiality; later on, with a conscientiousness close to distrust. — Kato Lomb

Language, as much as land, is a place. To be cut off from it is to be, in a sense, homeless. — Lauren Collins