Language Learning Quotes

“Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Each time a language dies, another flame goes out, another sound goes silent.”
― Ariel Sabar, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq

“When you learn a language, you don't just learn to speak and write a new language. You also learn to be open-minded, liberal, tolerant, kind and considerate towards all mankind.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“...Orm always afterwards used to say that, after good luck, strength, and skill at arms, nothing was so useful to a man who found himself among foreigners as the ability to learn a language.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, The Long Ships

“HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.
NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion

“He agreed that I should buy another dictionary or, better yet, a phrase book with standard Spanish expressions. He also suggested that it would be a good idea if I learned to stammer, because people would get bored listening to me and would finish the sentence for me; this way my accent wouldn't be noticed.”
― Henri Charrière, Papillon

“Languages are like beings:
they thrive, take a dive,
and need care to survive.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Languages are but echoes of each other, Based on the environment each feels unique. No language is superior, no language is inferior, All are born of human mind to meet at heart's peak.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“I don't do drugs, languages are my LSD.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Abigitano: El Divino Refugiado

“Together, we can assemble amazing words and astounding tales.”
― Ollie Kayuro, Fairytale Clues: Magic-filled Stories That Slip English Grammar into the Heart

“It should be against the law to mock someone who tries his luck in a foreign language.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste

“For an immigrant, an accent may be a form of vengeance, a way of insulting the language that constrains him. In the language he does not esteem, he will mumble only the words necessary to his work and daily life, always the same words, not one more. And even these he shall forget at the end of his life, to return to the vocabulary of childhood. Just as the names of those around us are forgotten when the memory begins to lose water, as a swimming pool slowly drains away, as yesterday is forgotten while our deepest memories remain. But for one who had adopted a foreign tongue as if hand-picking his own mother, for one who had sought out and loved every last one of its words, the persistence of an accent was an unfair punishment.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste

“I strove to speak such fastidious Hungarian that perhaps for this very reason it sometimes rang false. Perhaps a word here or there, pronounced with excessive zeal, stood out like a glass eye that was more realistic than the good eye.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste

“Broken polyglots are potent polyglots.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Language is the rich fabric that enshrouds all experience that is truly human. Those who are hyperpolyglots therefore adorn multiple layers of beautiful fabrics at the same time. They have multiple lives in one sense; and they certainly have multiple souls.”
― Usman W. Chohan, HYPIA at One: HYPIA Annual Report 2017

“I was beginning to think in Greek. That is the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

“She was surprised at how easily she was finding her way around, as if the geography of a place were another language and she was developing her ear for the sounds, oft-used words, and the way in which movement echoes speech. She had come to know that every city has its ebb and flow, its tide pools, rivers, and still waters; the time she'd spent wandering had aided her immersion.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Journey to Munich

“I have no mother-language, every mother is my mother, every language, my language.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“Learning a language promoted the first tender shoots of intercultural understanding. People became familiar with previously alien concepts and, as a consequence, more open to them.”
― Fay Abernethy, First Contact, Second Chances

“I never hankered for booze or drugs, you know why - because I'm already drunk, with the most hard-hitting, brain-altering contraband in history - I'm ever consumed with languages and cultures.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Language is just an over-glorified byproduct, real conversation happens between the pauses.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“One broken second language is far more valuable than all the mass-produced subtitles.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Speaking more than one language delays age-related cognitive decline.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Language is Highway to A Culture
(Diary of A Polyglot Neuroscientist, S.2392)

Languages are not ornaments,
languages are organs,
channeling spirit from the heart.

Language is highway to a culture,
language requires a vessel, not translator.
Soon earbuds will feature instant translation,
which will render crosscultural conversation seamless,
but at the same time, lifeless, hollow and cold.

Until we develop the brain technology
to communicate meaning telepathically
without talking, no amount of translation
can carry the warmth, nuances and
sentiment of a lived language.

As added perk, speaking more than one language
delays age-related cognitive decline.
Therefore no matter how you look at it,
one broken second language is far more
valuable than all the mass-produced subtitles.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Until we develop the brain technology to communicate meaning telepathically without talking, no amount of translation can carry the warmth, nuances and sentiment of a lived language.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“How will you know if you can speak another language? If you can curse someone on impulse without memorizing, you got the language in your gut. If you can console someone in pain, the language nestles in your heart.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Chase after form, and you'll miss the soul - throw yourself into the soul, and neurons will regrow.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Forget grammar, forget vocabulary, let the language seep into your bloodstream. In a world infested with medal-seeking mules, stand odd, stand ablaze, a drunken pilgrim.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Pilgrim of Language (Sonnet)

How will you know if you
can speak another language?

If you can curse someone
on impulse without memorizing,
you got the language in your gut.
If you can console someone in pain,
the language nestles in your heart.

No es necessario que hablar guapisimo,
solamente necessario que hablar amable.
All those pedestals of language levels,
a, b, z, and what not, are elitist garbage.

Chase after form,
and you'll miss the soul -
throw yourself into the soul,
and neurons will regrow.

Forget grammar, forget vocabulary,
let the language seep into your bloodstream.
In a world infested with medal-seeking mules,
stand odd, stand ablaze, a drunken pilgrim.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Perhaps, in order to forget those words, I needed to forget the actual language in which they had been spoken, just as we move from a house that reminds us of the dead. Perhaps it was possible to replace one language with another in my head, little by little, discarding a word for every word acquired. For a time, my head would be like a house undergoing renovations, with new words being hoisted up through one ear and the rubble being lowered down through the other. I would of course be saddened to see so many beautiful words, wainscoting, going to waste all because of a few disastrously employed pieces. On the other hand, however, once free of my entire Latin vocabulary, with Kriska's help I would learn to speak Magyar flawlessly.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste