Striking Quotations on Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

SLA Topics

Quotes on words

Vivian Cook

The more languages you know, the more of a person you are.

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics. 

As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

I have never known what is Arabic or English, or which one was really mine beyond any doubt. What I do know, however, is that the two have always been together in my life, one resonating in the other, sometimes ironically, sometimes nostalgically, most often each correcting, and commenting on, the other. Each can seem like my absolutely first language, but neither is.

If I speak only one language, I can help my country as only one man. If I can use two languages, I can help as two men. But if I can use all nine languages, then I can work as nine men. 

So my answer to the question: Can an African ever learn English well enough to be able to use it effectively in creative writing? Is certainly yes. If on the other hand you ask: Can he ever learn to use it as a native speaker? I should say. I hope not. It is neither necessary nor desirable for him to be able to do so. The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry out his peculiar experience. 

If I know only my own language, I am no better than a chicken scratching around for its own food in a narrow pen. If, however, I know the white man's language I can soar like an angel 

We do not for example say that the person has a perfect knowledge of some language L similar to English but still different from it. What we say is that the child or foreigner has a 'partial knowledge of English' or is 'on his or her way' towards acquiring knowledge of English, and if they reach this goal, they will then know English 

L’accent du pays ou l’on est ne demeure dans l’esprit et dans le coeur comme dans le langage  

I am standing for peace and non-violence…
Why all people of world
Are not following Mahatma Gandhi,
I am simply not understanding…
To much going for fashion and foreign thing.

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

A mouse saved her young from a ferocious cat by barking 'bow wow'. After the cat ran away, the mouse said to her offspring 'See, children, it pays to know a second language' 

Paradoxical as it may seem, Second Language Acquisition researchers seem to have neglected the fact that the goal of SLA is bilingualism. 

second language: ‘A language acquired by a person in addition to his mother tongue’, 

From whatever angle we look at it, bilingualism is a relative concept.

A man who knows two languages is worth two men. 

To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

You live a new life for every new language you speak.