Language Learning Quotes

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

Each and every tiny thing, every human, animal, bird, fish, insect, plant and stones on Earth Mother vibrate to their own individual frequency that creates its own language. Learning to listen and feel each vibration is not easy if all we hear is our own voice. We must be sensitive to the vibrations of the Earth so that we may understand nature and her needs. ~ Lee Standing Bear Moore

It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning. ~ Michael Gove

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

don't know about you, but my English isn't perfect. I hesitate when I'm nervous, I forget precisely the right word every now and again, and there are plenty of topics I am uncomfortable talking about. Applying higher standards to your target language than you would to your native language is overkill. ~ Benny Lewis

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

Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words "village" and "age" whatsoever. ~ Jakub Marian

In the absence of either a widely accepted theory of language learning or a solid empirical base for classroom practice, teachers and learners have always been, and will always be, vulnerable to drastic pendulum swings of fashion, the coming and going of various unconventional and unlamented "Wonder Methods" being an obvious recent example. The sad truth is that after at least 2,000 years, most language teaching takes place on a wing and a prayer - sometimes successfully, but often a relative failure. ~ Michael H. Long

Languages, just like people, are worlds within themselves. They have the incredible ability to provide us with a clearer, more profound and detailed perspective of a culture and its views on life, nature, and death. ~ Orge Castellano

While one lives in a foreign country, language's main function is as a means of self-protection and a weapon in one's fight with the world. You can't fight without a weapon. But perhaps its human instinct that makes it even more imperative to somehow express oneself, convey meaning, connect with others. ~ Iwaki Kei

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

Both no and yes are at one time good or bad answers. For examples see your English teacher ~ Isaac Milioti

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. ~ Gaston Bachelard

As long as we keep our native language on our tongue, we will penetrate so much more deeply the distinctiveness of each language. Here we will find gaps, there superfluity; here riches, there a desert, and we will be able to enrich the poverty of the one with the treasures of the other. For, in what precise relationship do language and mentality stand? Whoever masters the entire scope of one language surveys a field full of thoughts, and whoever learns to express himself precisely in it thereby gathers for himself a treasure of clear concepts. The first words we stammer are the foundation stones of our knowing, and our nurse-maids are our first teachers of logic. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder

For me, French is so rich and so sacred that learning it is like learning a foreign language. ~ Fabrice Luchini

Write it as easy as you think about the difficulty ~ Cucuk Espe

Learning to read in one language helps us read a second language. ~ Stephen D. Krashen

A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I'd hoped the language might come on its own, the way it comes to babies, but people don't talk to foreigners the way they talk to babies. They don't hypnotize you with bright objects and repeat the same words over and over, handing out little treats when you finally say "potty" or "wawa." It got to the point where I'd see a baby in the bakery or grocery store and instinctively ball up my fists, jealous over how easy he had it. I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up. I wanted to be a baby, but instead, I was an adult who talked like one, a spooky man-child demanding more than his fair share of attention.
Rather than admit defeat, I decided to change my goals. I told myself that I'd never really cared about learning the language. My main priority was to get the house in shape. The verbs would come in due time, but until then I needed a comfortable place to hide. ~ David Sedaris

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

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

I wouldn't call myself a dancer. I would never even dance in a club - I can't move my feet! I'm terribly shy about moving. I feel comfortable in my body, but dancing is like learning another language. ~ Matthew James Thomas

It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like ʌ(OO)ʌ, it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to 'ʌoo'. ~ Jakub Marian

[S]elf-assurance, motivation, and a good method play a much more important role in language learning than the vague concept of innate ability, and that dealing with languages is not only an effective and joyful means of developing human relationships, but also of preserving one's mental capacity and spiritual balance. ~ Kato Lomb

Facing a language you don't know is like returning to your infancy when your mother tongue used to be a foreign language to you ~ Munia Khan

Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable. ~ Neil Postman

In classes, the more lively and uninhibited ones will "suck away the air" from those with a more passive nature, despite all the efforts of the teacher. It is also a special danger in large groups that you will hear your fellow students' bad pronunciation more than the teacher's perfected speech. ~ Kato Lomb

The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Vân Uoc decided that she too would get to know the book inside out. And something miraculous happened when they were about a quarter of the way through reading it. After weeks of ploughing and hesitating, something clicked; she stopped stumbling over the unknown words and long sentences. Words magically started to reveal meaning, most of the time anyway, through context. And the sentences themselves stopped being obstacles and started telling a story. Her eyes were racing ahead; she was comprehending the shape and rhythm of the language. ~ Fiona Wood

He had existed for a long time and was fluent in many languages - most of them…dead ones. ~ Alan Kinross

[R]epetition is as an essential element of language learning as a knife is to a lathe or fuel is to an internal combustion engine. ~ Kato Lomb

Grammar is the breathing power for the life of language ~ Munia Khan

One should connect language learning with either work or leisure. And not at the expense of them but to supplement them. ~ Kato Lomb

[T]he time spent on language learning is lost unless it reaches a certain - daily and weekly - concentration. ~ Kato Lomb

Learning grammar can be viewed as a game that a little boy plays with his father. Daddy talks, the boy listens - perhaps disobeys - and Daddy talks some more. All the while the boy is trying to figure out the grammar that can generate the sentences in Daddy's speech. The boy might occasionally talk back, but there is no guarantee that Daddy will pay any attention. Not that he is a bad father: recall from Chapter 5 that in some cultures, adults do not interact with children until they are socially and linguistically adept. To fully understand the game of language learning, then, Daddy can be assumed only as a rather passive participant. The goal of the game is to learn Daddy's grammar within some finite amount of time: nobody learns forever. ~ Charles Yang

Remember that lettuce doesn't grow on a spruce; and it also doesn't rhyme with it. ~ Jakub Marian

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

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

It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language. ~ Samuel Barnett

That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday, you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay. ~ David Sedaris

That's so," said Eliza. "Vacation ends next month. I start Latin this year. They say it's awful. You decline nouns. All _I_ can say is, who wouldn't? ~ Edward Eager

We are the witnesses of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language: verbs which formerly expressed satisfying actions have been replaced by nouns which name packages designed for passive consumption only -- 'to learn' becomes 'to accumulate credits'. ~ Ivan Illich

Possible explanations for talented language learning fall into two general areas. One view says: What matters is a person's sense of mission and dedication to language learning. You don't need to describe high performers as biologically exceptional, because what they do is a product of practice. Anyone can become a foreign-language expert - even an adult. (...) The other view says: Something neurological is going on. We may not know exactly what the mechanisms are, but we can't explain exceptional outcomes fully through training or motivation. ~ Michael Erard

Some studies of successful language learners have suggested that they're more "open to new experiences" than the rest of us. Temptingly, psychologist Alexander Guiora proposed that we have a self that's bound up in our native language, a "language ego", which needs to be loose and more permeable to learn a new language. Those with more fluid ego boundaries, like children and people who have drunk some alcohol, are more willing to sound not like themselves, which means they have better accents in the new language. ~ Michael Erard

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

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. ~ Ezra Pound

I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Every day the same things came up; the work was never done, and the tedium of it began to weigh on me. Part of what made English a difficult subject for Korean students was the lack of a more active principle in their learning. They were accustomed to receiving, recording, and memorizing. That's the Confucian mode. As a student, you're not supposed to question a teacher; you should avoid asking for explanations because that might reveal a lack of knowledge, which can be seen as an insult to the teacher's efforts. You don't have an open, free exchange with teachers as we often have here in the West. And further, under this design, a student doesn't do much in the way of improvisation or interpretation.

This approach might work well for some pursuits, may even be preferred--indeed, I was often amazed by the way Koreans learned crafts and skills, everything from basketball to calligraphy, for example, by methodically studying and reproducing a defined set of steps (a BBC report explained how the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had his minions rigorously study the pizza-making techniques used by Italian chefs so that he could get a good pie at home, even as thousands of his subjects starved)--but foreign-language learning, the actual speaking component most of all, has to be more spontaneous and less rigid.

We all saw this played out before our eyes and quickly discerned the problem. A student cannot hope to sit in a class and have a language handed over to ~ Cullen Thomas

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

I speak languages with more ease than I read or write them, she explains. It is something in the feel of the sounds. I could attempt to put them on paper but I am sure the result would be appalling. ~ Erin Morgenstern

The conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages. ~ Roger Bacon

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. ~ Ferdinand De Saussure

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

Seemingly unrelated [things] that are in fact really related, that's the stuff I like to talk about. Like dancing, language learning, swimming, three-pointers ... ~ Tim Ferriss

Language is still separating us even though technology is bringing us closer together. ~ Suzy Kassem

The Scots language is a mark of the distinctive identity of the Scottish people; and as such we should be concerned to preserve it, even if there were no other reason, because it is ours. This statement requires neither explanation nor apology. ~ J.Derrick McClure

Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club -the community of speakers of that language. ~ Frank Smith

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

Before two years of age, human interaction and physical interaction with books and print are the best entry into the world of oral and written language and internalized knowledge, the building blocks of the later reading circuit. ~ Maryanne Wolf

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

I'm an infant with Shakespeare; I'm kind of learning how to walk. I am trying to decipher the code, you know? I do my research. And I get a clear understanding of what the language is. It is a tremendous process I have to go through as I am sure all actors do, finding the gems hidden in his language. ~ Ruben Santiago-Hudson

That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names. ~ Thomas Paine

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

In my career, I played for four different teams in a lot of different systems, and it's like learning another language. ~ Ron Jaworski

I believe over the last six years now, I've been learning in between actual acting moments on the show. ~ Renee O'Connor

I'm fucking good looking and sharp witted! I bet Reed only speaks one language. I'm sharp witted in five! - Caleb ~ C.J. Roberts

It is only upon life's new journey & pathway that your greatest learning - will be experienced. ~ Eleesha

My purpose is to translate the wisdom and science of mindfulness, compassion and positive psychology into practical language so we can live with more ease and joy. ~ Laurie J. Cameron

If you listen to the urban speech patterns in India you'll find it's quite characteristic that a sentence will begin in one language, go through a second language and end in a third. It's the very playful, very natural result of juggling languages. You are always reaching for the most appropriate phrase. ~ Salman Rushdie

When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

The french language is emotive. The verbs are strong and definite. The nouns are masculine or french. I could never understand why the farm would be feminine yet the farmhouse masculine; the pear and apple trees masculine yet the fruit feminine. ~ Vicki Archer

I hate that word, CAN'T. I wish it had never been dreamed
up, spoken, or defined. I wish the concept of CAN'T could be
eradicated not only from language, but more importantly from
the psyche of a girl who I know is filled with so much CAN it seeps out of her pores and scents the air. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

Real learning takes place when you use information for a purpose, not by trying to acquire it ahead of time. ~ Anonymous

Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions. ~ Duane Michals

I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We know at lot more now than the 'last time around the 1960s and 1970s - about how to work for smart schools ... ' 'The smart school finds it's foundation in a rich and evolving set of principles about human thinking and learning.' ~ David Perkins

Many great people have experienced some kind of failure. They build on the lessons from failing to become great. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I found sometimes, that it is of great help in handling such a case, to encourage them, to express their peculiar contents either in the form of writing or of drawing and painting. There are so many incomprehensible intuitions in such cases, phantasy fragments that rise from the unconscious, for which there is almost no suitable language. I let my patients find their own symbolic expressions, their mythology. ~ C. G. Jung

Growing up in eastern Turkey, I was not really involved with the family business - sheep and cow farming, yogurt and cheese making. But I think I learned from my father the unspoken business language or instincts that go back thousands of years. ~ Hamdi Ulukaya

The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

ITS NOT FUNNY!"
"You're right," agreed Sydney. "It's no funny. It's hilarious."
We were back at Raymond's house, in the privacy of our room. It had taken forever for us to get away form the fireside festivities, particularly after learning a terrible fact about a Keeper custom. Well, I thought it was terrible, at least. It truned out that if someone wanted to marry domeone else around here, the prospectimve bride and groom each had to battle it out with the other's nearest relative of the same sex. Angeline had spotted Joshua's interest from the moment I'd arrived, and when she'd seen the bracelet, she'd assumed some sort of arragement has been made. ~ Richelle Mead

We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions. ~ Evan Osnos

Learning is a plant that grows in all climes. ~ Akbar

The Language of Sand has something for everyone: myths, mystery, community, humor, grief, and ultimately healing. I found myself not only rooting for Abigail but for the whole community of Chapel Isle. Block manages to hold sass and heartfelt emotion in perfect equilibrium. ~ Brunonia Barry

This world is like a rainbow or flower garden. Each nation donate different colors . Tribe, religion, race, language, traditions and different cultures,etc. The differences make this life be more beautiful. What would happen if the earth only contains black or white only. Rainbow with one color. Flower gardens with one kind of flower. We are all the colors of life and we live together in harmony to make this world more beautiful and give happiness to everyone. ~ Andry Lavigne

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday. ~ John Burroughs

They were very upset when I said that the thing of greatest importance to mathematics in Europe was the discovery by Tartaglia that you can solve a cubic equation-which, altho it is very little used, must have been psychologically wonderful because it showed a modern man could do something no ancient Greek could do, and therefore helped in the renaissance which was the freeing of man from the intimidation of the ancients-what they are learning in school is to be intimidated into thinking they have fallen so far below their super ancestors. ~ Richard Feynman

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language. ~ Denise Levertov

If you feel that you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you. ~ Robert F. Goheen

I've tried to teach what I learned all those years in my mother and father's house, all those things I didn't realize I was learning and that I never knew I'd be so grateful for. When you have love and it's proffered every day in a kind of tender, yet stern insistence and even reckless laughter, when it is given to you and you accept it in life as a thing as natural as rain or snow, or the littler of leaves in fall, you can't help but take it for granted. For a bewildered while you incorrectly understand that the world has given you this becuase it's there in equal measure, everywhere. You never knowuntil it's too late to do anything about it, how seet the effort is: how lasting the human will to love can be in the breast of people who want to make it for you, who want to give it to you, without calculating what's in it fo them, without thinking at all of what it will mean when you grow to full adulthood, see the world as it is, and forget to mention what you have been given.

Ever day of my grown-up life, I have wanted to do what my parents did. I have wanted to widen the province of love and weaken hate and bitterness in the hearts of my children. And I've done these things because of what I got from my family, all those lovely years when I was growing up, being loved and cherished and, unbeknown to me, and in the best way, honored, for myself. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

Leopardstar says that they're staying with us so the Clans can exchange training methods and fighting techniques, but I don't see much sign of it. All they do is watch ... It's like they're learning all about us, all our secrets and weaknesses. That's why I came over here, to get away from them for a bit. ~ Erin Hunter

Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied ... ~ Max Beerbohm

More Latin? I was going to need a fucking guidebook to keep track of a language I thought was as dead as my mother. ~ T.J. Klune

Attempting to contain the infinite within finite symbolism of language may result in scholarship, but it will not produce devotion. (110) ~ Prem Prakash

The death of the idealized versions of our parents, teachers, and mentors - a stage in the hero's journey - is always scary because it means that we're now responsible for our own learning and growth. That death is also beautiful because it makes room for new relationships - more honest connections between authentic adults who are doing the best they can. Of course, these new connections require emotional and physical safety. We can't be vulnerable and open with people who are hurting us. ~ Brené Brown,

It's not information overload. It's filter failure. ~ Clay Shirky

I know how to say 'no' in twelve languages. That's enough for a woman. ~ Sophia Loren