I came from a Hindi medium school... the principal felt that I would not fit into an English medium college. Though I was top in my class in school, and I got admission in other colleges, but I really wanted to study in St. Xavier's.
I had English grammar book and started to teach myself. I read 'Catcher in Rye,' in Russian. I was amazed at freedom in 'Catcher in Rye!' Freedom to have those perceptions of life!
We should not blur the lines between legal and illegal immigrants. Millions of people around the world have gone through the process to come here legally and they followed the rules that required them to pay a fee, learn English, and learn about American history and government.
When Pakistan beat England at cricket, my Pakistani cousins remind me how English and British I am. When they say, 'You're one of the Queen's advisers,' for them it's, 'Wow - anything's possible in the U.K.'
Emerson stands apart from the other poets and essayists of New England, and of English literature generally, as of another order. He is a reversion to an earlier type, the type of the bard, the skald, the poet-seer.
I could sing in English before I could understand it because I phonetically learned it from the musicals.
I don't see how English as we use it in Europe can be revivified. It's like Latin must have been in about A.D. 300, tired and used up. All one can do is press very hard stylistically to make it glow.
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.
It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.
It would be just as pointless to oppose the international use of English today as it would have been to oppose the worldwide use of French in the 18th century.
No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
I am now completing research supported by NSF and NEH that is mapping changes in the English language through all of North America, for both mainstream and minority communities.
For English assignments I was constantly coming up with these strange adventure stories... But I actually wanted to be an artist, or maybe work in the comic book industry.
For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.
Dreams do come true, even for someone who couldn't speak English and never had a music lesson or much of an education.
We must insist on assimilation - immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here, they need to come here legally. They need to learn English, adopt our values, roll up their sleeves and get to work.
In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.
You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
You can learn Elvish, if you want. It's a language like Italian and English. You can learn to read it, you can learn to write it, and you can learn to speak it.
To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.
When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.
I'm very aware when I'm speaking to the English of how flat my Mid-Atlantic American voice is.
My favorite pudding is good old English apple pie.
Ironically, for a few million people in the Far East, I did become an English teacher through my music.
The English language has 112 words for deception, according to one count, each with a different shade of meaning: collusion, fakery, malingering, self-deception, confabulation, prevarication, exaggeration, denial.
English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it.
It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.
We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
'English Rose' - what does that actually mean? That I am pale? That I am English, maybe? They are going to say that about any actress from this country!
What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.
I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends.
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.
For you, it's a silent movie. For us, it's a talking movie because we had lines on set. There's a lot of noise on set and music. We spoke in English, in French, in gibberish, but it was very alive. The challenge was tap dancing.
