Native Language Quotes:

In the UK, most of the nasheeds that I did were in my native language, Urdu. Youngsters who could not understand the language came up to me... [and] said it was a great experience to just listen. That was actually very heart warming for me.

- Junaid Jamshed

source: Source: irusa.org

topic: Heart, Native Language, Urdu, Heart Warming

I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language... Apache.

- Steve Martin

topic: Country, Believe, Native Language

Today, getting people to hear your story on social media, and then act on it, requires using a platform’s native language, paying attention to context, understanding the nuances and subtle differences that make each platform unique, and adapting your content to match.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

source: Gary Vaynerchuk (2013). “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World”, p.22, Harper Collins

topic: Unique, Media, Native Language

It was hard for me to do the show (All-American Girl) because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show and the host said, "Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?" So I looked at the camera and said, "Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate."

- Margaret Cho

source: "Margaret Cho: I'm the One That I Want". TV Special, August 4, 2000.

topic: Girl, Morning, Native Language, Asian American

I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language.

- John Dryden

source: John Dryden (1988). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume V: Poems, 1697”, p.336, Univ of California Press

topic: Life, Native Language, Trade, Enrichment

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

- Thomas Jefferson

source: Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs Corespondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson Late, President of the United States: Now First Published the Original Manuscripts”, p.347

topic: Writing, Native Language, Two

So, rather than becoming multicultural, rather than becoming a person of several languages, rather than becoming confident in your knowledge of the world, you become just the opposite. You end up in college having to apologize for the fact that you no longer speak your native language.

- Richard Rodriguez

source: Source: www.teachingbooks.net

topic: College, Opposites, Native Language, Knowledge Of The World

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America.

- Jack Kerouac

topic: Home, Writing, Native Language

Our native language is like a second skin, so much a part of us we resist the idea that it is constantly changing, constantly being renewed.

- Casey Miller

source: Casey Miller, Kate Swift (2001). “The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing”, p.4, iUniverse

topic: Ideas, Skins, Language, Native Language

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

- Gaston Bachelard

source: "Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books)". Book by Gaston Bachelard edited by Suzanne Bachelard, 1988.

topic: Beauty, Communication, Writing, Language Culture, International Language

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.

- Benjamin Lee Whorf

source: "Science and Linguistics" (1946)

topic: Nature, Lines, Language, Native Language, Dissecting

I have a high regard for Native languages and the pivotal role they have played in our nation's history

- Rick Renzi

topic: Roles, Language, Native, Native Language, Pivotal

May the stars carry your sadness away, may the flowers fill your heart with beauty, may hope forever wipe away your tears.

- Chief Dan George

topic: Stars, Flower, Condolences, Indian Wisdom, Spiritual Teaching

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

- George Bernard Shaw

topic: Bible, Soul, Speech, My Fair Lady, Native Language

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

- Black Hawk

source: Black Hawk, John B. Patterson (1836). “Life of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk: With an account of the late war”, p.97

topic: Native American, Looks, Language, Native Language, Indigenous

We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II to see the value that Native languages bring not only to their culture, but to the security of all Americans.

- Rick Renzi

topic: War, Looks, World, Native Language, World War I

As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?

- John Milton

topic: Children, Delight, Pebbles, Native Language

They're on their way to the foreign-language wing. That's no surprise. The foreign kids are always here, like they need to breathe air scented with their native language a couple times a day or they'll choke to death on too much American.

- Laurie Halse Anderson

topic: Couple, Kids, Air, Native Language

An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters' contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages. The French head of the committee, who had insisted on speaking only in French throughout the week suddenly demonstrated the ability to speak excellent English with English-speaking delegates.

- Daniel Yergin

topic: Past, Important, Environmental, Native Language, English Speaking

I studied piano from the age of three. My grandmother taught piano. I stayed at her house during the day while my parents worked. I obviously wanted to learn to play. And so she asked if she could teach me, and my mother said don't you think she's too young. My grandmother apparently said no. So I could read music before I could read, and I really don't remember learning to read music. So for me it's like a native language. When I look at a sheet of music, it just makes sense.

- Condoleezza Rice

topic: Mother, Thinking, Play, Learning To Read, Native Language

Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.

- George Santayana

topic: Beautiful, Mean, Men, Native Language, Convenient

English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

topic: Simple, Data, Identity, Native Language

The United States, a land of immigrants from every corner of the world, has been strengthened and unified because its newcomers have historically chosen ultimately to forgo their native language for the English language. We have all benefited from the sharing of ideas, of cultures and beliefs, made possible by a common language. We have all enriched each other.

- S. I. Hayakawa

topic: Native Language, Common Language, Corners Of The World, Newcomers

We already knew that kids learned computer technology more easily than adults, It is as if children were waiting all these centuries for someone to invent their native language.

- Jaron Lanier

topic: Children, Kids, Technology, Native Language, Computer Technology

A Swedish physicist can not discuss his work with fifty people unless he goes abroad. A Swedish economist can get opinions and instructions in his native language from thousands upon thousands of his fellow citizens.

- George Stigler

topic: People, Citizens, Fifty, Swedish, Native Language

Post-​wounded women know that postures of pain play into limited and outmoded conceptions of womanhood. Their hurt has a new native language spoken in several dialects: sarcastic, jaded, opaque; cool and clever. They guard against those moments when melodrama or self-​pity might split their careful seams of intellect, expose the shame of self-​absorption without self-​awareness.

- Leslie Jamison

topic: Sarcastic, Hurt, Clever, Native Language, Absorption

A woman who utters such disgusting and depressing noise has no right to be anywhere, no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech, that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible. Don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.

- Rex Harrison

topic: Depressing, Soul, Speech, My Fair Lady, Native Language