– Often attributed to Nelson Mandela
Meaning: Speaking a shared language helps people understand your ideas, but speaking someone's own language shows respect and wins their trust and warmth.
23 English quotes
Quotes about learning languages
What writers, actors and thinkers have said about English, foreign languages and the struggle (and joy) of learning one.
Quotes
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
Meaning: We can only think about and share what we have words for. The more language you have, the bigger your world becomes.
– Often attributed to Charlemagne
Meaning: Learning a new language does more than give you new words: it gives you a new way of feeling, thinking and seeing the world.
- possess
- – to have or own something
“England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”
– Often attributed to George Bernard Shaw
Meaning: A joke about British and American English: the two countries speak "the same" language, yet their differences in words, spelling and accent often cause confusion.
– Rita Mae Brown, Starting from Scratch (1988)
Meaning: The words a people use show their history, values and hopes. If you learn their language, you understand their culture much better.
“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections (1833)
Meaning: You only really notice how your own language works when you compare it with another one.
– Flora Lewis
Meaning: A new language is not just a new list of words. It also teaches you a different way of seeing and organising the world.
– Often attributed to Federico Fellini
Meaning: Each language carries its own view of the world, so speaking another one lets you see life from a new angle.
- vision
- – a way of seeing or imagining something
– Mark Twain, Letter to George Bainton (1888)
Meaning: Choosing exactly the right word matters a lot. A word that is nearly right is as different from the right one as a small glowing insect is from a powerful flash of lightning.
- 'tis
- – an old short form of "it is"
- lightning-bug
- – a firefly, a small insect that glows at night
“I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.”
Meaning: Twain says he uses grammar the way some musicians play music: by what sounds right, not by studying the written rules. Many fluent speakers learn grammar this way.
- by ear
- – by listening, without reading notes or rules
– Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)
Meaning: A joke at the writer's own expense: the French people did not understand him because his French was bad, but he pretends the problem was theirs.
- stared
- – looked at someone for a long time, often in surprise
“We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”
– Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost (1887)
Meaning: A joke: Britain and America share almost everything, Wilde says, except the thing they are supposed to share most, the English language.
- in common
- – shared by two or more people or groups
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943)
Meaning: The fox in The Little Prince warns that talking can confuse people. Sometimes being together quietly says more than words.
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
– Rudyard Kipling, Speech to the Royal College of Surgeons (1923)
Meaning: Words can change how people feel and act, just as a strong drug can. They can heal, excite or harm.
- mankind
- – all people; the human race
– Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (1922)
Meaning: Beautiful words give real pleasure, like the taste of good wine. Speaking and reading well can be enjoyed for its own sake.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet", Essays: Second Series (1844)
Meaning: Many ordinary words began as fresh, poetic images. Over time we stopped noticing the pictures inside them, like living things turned to stone.
- fossil
- – the remains of an ancient plant or animal preserved in rock
– Henry James, Quoted in Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934)
Meaning: Some words are loved for their sound and the feelings they bring. For James, "summer afternoon" meant warmth, calm and happiness.
“Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing.”
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)
Meaning: Advice from the Red Queen to Alice, and a joke about people who drop in foreign words. Learners will recognise the trick of switching languages when a word won't come.
“Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.”
– Carl Sandburg, The New York Times (1959)
Meaning: Slang is the practical, everyday language of ordinary people. It is informal and rough, but it gets the job done.
- Slang
- – very informal words and expressions, often used by a particular group
- rolls up its sleeves
- – gets ready to work hard
– Joan Didion, "Why I Write" (1976)
Meaning: Didion jokes that she missed the grammar lessons, so she writes by what sounds right, like a pianist who plays without reading music.
- by ear
- – by listening, without reading notes or rules
“Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”
– Trevor Noah, Born a Crime (2016)
Meaning: People judge who you are and whether you belong more by the language you speak than by how you look. Speaking someone's language can turn a stranger into one of their own.
- defines
- – shows or decides what someone or something is
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
– Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize lecture (1993)
Meaning: Life ends for everyone, but the way we use language, what we say and write, is what gives our lives their value.
- measure
- – a way of judging how good or important something is