I want to speak English perfectly. In fact, I want to speak English just like I fight, and, until that moment, I find it very hard to do an interview solely in English.
I don't speak English, so I'll just have to win the trust and confidence of the fans with my performance on the field.
I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.
My husband and I speak an ancient language called grammatical English, and the kids speak a strange dialect which is difficult to decode because it is based on only four phrases: 'Huh,' 'I dunno,' 'It's not my turn,' and 'I do everything around here!
Black English is something which - it's a natural system in itself. And even though it is a dialect of English, it can be very difficult for people who don't speak it, or who haven't been raised in it, to understand when it's running by quickly, spoken in particular by young men colloquially to each other. So that really is an issue.
The fact that I didn't speak English I think was the most difficult thing for me.
When I speak in English, my expressions become different. My attitude, too. I'm not sure why, but there really is a difference. My hands move differently when I speak English.
I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.
English has always been my musical language. When I started writing songs when I was 13 or 14, I started writing in English because it's the language in between. I speak Finnish, I speak French, so I'll write songs in English because that's the music I listen to. I learned so much poetry and the poetic way of expressing myself is in English.
There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you're bound to understand and like everything that we do. And of course you don't.
When you go to school in Holland you learn to speak English and write in English - but English is different from the Scottish language!
My accent was horrible. In Mexico, nobody says, 'You speak English with a good accent.' You either speak English, or you don't: As long as you can communicate, no one cares.
I think English is very important for tennis players. To be on the tour, it's much more easier if you speak English. So that's why I knew that I have to improve my English.
Not long time ago there was a striking example of the extent to which English has diverged: a television company put out a programme filmed in the English city of Newcastle, where the local variety of English is famously divergent and difficult, and the televised version was accompanied by English subtitles!
Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.
I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.