First Language Quotes

“The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Touch is our first language. Before we can see or speak, we experience the world through touch.”
― Ken Breniman, Subversive Acts of Humanity : A Survival Guide for Choosing Evolution over Self-Destruction

“এক লেখকের পক্ষে দুই ভাষা নিয়ে খেলা করা আগুন নিয়ে খেলা করার মতন বিপজ্জনক, পরধর্ম ভয়াবহ, মাতৃভাষা ছাড়া অন্য ভাষায় সাহিত্য সৃষ্টি সত্যি অসম্ভব। অনেকে এ-কথায় আপত্তি তুলবেন, পৃথিবীতে এর ব্যতিক্রমও দু'-একজন আছেন, কিন্তু ব্যতিক্রম কখনও আদর্শ হতে পারে না। অন্য ভাষায় সার্থক রচনা সূত্রে জোসেফ কনরাডের নাম অনেকের রসনাগ্রে আসে, তিনি ব্যতিক্রমই, ইদানিং লোলিতা'র নোবোকভের কথাও বলা হয়, কিন্তু রুশ ভাষা ছেড়ে আমেরিকান ভাষা গ্রহণ করার পরে নোবোকভের স্বীকারোক্তি এই যে, তিনি রুশ ভাষা ছেড়ে দুঃখিত এবং সীমাবদ্ধ, তিনি হারিয়েছেন, "my natural idiom, my untrammelled rich and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English.”
― Sunil Gangopadhyay