A Quote by Lynn Abbey
I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.
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Translated literature can be fascinating. There's something so intriguing about reading the text second hand - a piece of prose that has already been through an extra filter, another consciousness, in the guise of the translator. Some of my favorite writers who have written in English were doing so without English being their first language, so there's a sense of distance or of distortion there, too. Conrad. Nabokov. These writers were employing English in interesting ways.
In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.
I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.
James Joyce's English was based on the rhythm of the Irish language. He wrote things that shocked English language speakers but he was thinking in Gaelic. I've sung songs that if they were in English, would have been banned too. The psyche of the Irish language is completely different to the English-speaking world.
When I was in high school, I started learning English as my second foreign language, but my level of English at that time was very average.
Gore speaks to America as if English is its second language; George W. speaks as if English is his second language.
In English, I'm a little bit limited. I speak English as a second language, and that's a little limitation that I have to work around and I have to use it to my favor. So, yes, that's why I end up wanting to do more things in Latin America.
Growing up was very interesting for me. If you were Haitian, people just automatically assumed that English was a second language. So they had a special class for my brother and I, but we spoke proper English.
I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.
Sign language is my first language. English and Spanish are my second languages. I learned Spanish from my grandparents, sign language from my parents, and English from television.
Wherever I go, I have to speak English, which is my second language. So whenever you get a chance to speak in your own language? It feels good.
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets — no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!
One of my favorite tricks was taking a page and having the first student translate it from English into whatever language he or she was working on, and the next one would translate it back into English and then into the foreign language, and we'd go around the room and compare the two English versions at the end, and it would be amazing how much survived.
English, for me, is an acquired language. I started with English at the age of 10. At the time, it was my third language.
We have a president for whom English is a second language. He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself.
I spent ten years in London; I trained there. But because I started in English, it kind of feels the most natural to me, to act in English, which is a strange thing. My language is Spanish; I grew up in Argentina. I speak to my family in Spanish, but if you were to ask me what language I connect with, it'd be English in some weird way.
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