Language Learning Quotes

The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge.

~ Thomas Paine

Freedom, one of the most important words in any language.

~ Anwar Akash

Daring soul has five diaries; gratitude, work, inspirational, prayer and language diaries.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The joy of knowing a foreign language is inexpressible. I find it really difficult to express such joy in my mother tongue.

~ Munia Khan

Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to construct social realities that celebrate, acknowledge and affirm differences, variety.

~ Bell Hooks

I was pretty good at picking up new languages when I was little, but it's not like I had superpowers or anything.Kids just have an easier time with words.

~ Brian K. Vaughan

The face of self-pity was universally understood.

~ Vann Chow

If you want big improvements, she said, chew gum. Gum? Sure enough, chewing gum has been shown to improve a person's immediate recall of learned words by some 24 percent. Long-term recall improves by a larger 36 percent. To get the benefit, you actually have to chew gum as you are studying; for some reason you can't merely move your jaw up and down. I also discovered that drinking sage tea increases one's recall of words modestly, as does the odor of rosemary. Something as mundane as coffee provides a benefit, too. Drinking two cups of coffee increases neuronal activity in the frontal lobe, where working memory is controlled, and in the anterior cingulum, where attention is controlled.

~ Michael Erard

My love for languages and my love for travel really go hand in hand and feed off of each other. There’s no better way to learn a language than by immersing yourself in a culture where it’s spoken, and there’s no better way to immerse yourself in a culture than by learning to speak the local language.

~ Wendy Werneth

With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home anywhere.

~ Edmund De Waal

If the goal you've set for yourself has a 100 percent chance of success, then frankly you aren't aiming high enough.

~ Benny Lewis

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.-Aunt Beast

~ Madeleine L'engle

Each time a language dies, another flame goes out, another sound goes silent.

~ Ariel Sabar

Sanskrit is a beautiful contextual language. It is called “Dev Bhasha” the language of the soul. Here, meanings of the words must come from the heart, from direct experience – dictionary meanings or static meanings have not much value. Meanings of the words vary depending on mind-set, time, location and culture. The words are made to expand the possibilities of the mind.

~ Amit Ray

...it always felt good to have that moment of resolve, like saying, I'm gonna learn French! It doesn't matter if you do it or not, deciding is the high, right?

~ Felicia Day

The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them.

~ Anton Chekhov

The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot.

~ Benny Lewis

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

Learning a new language, just like opening a new window, allows you to see the world with intimacy.

~ Pearl Zhu

She decided that day to study Russian, the language of violence, terror, and absurdity. She knew she would never be bored.

~ Natalie Standiford