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Bilingual Quotes

Browse 42 quotes about Bilingual.

Bilingual Quotes

“The smell of bacon sizzling and the sound of eggs hitting hot pans were drowned out by the sonorous diner conversations happening all over the restaurant. Some were laughing at their own jokes in one of the center tables. A couple wordlessly broke up, using the diner napkins to dry their tears, sitting in one of the red with white upside down triangle detailed booths. There were also some teenagers arguing about the pronunciation of gif on the counter table, sitting on the red high chairs.”

LoveDeathFriendshipNovelFoodRestaurantsBilingualSkullDinerBacon And Eggs
Book:Death's Rattle
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“James turned the kitchen radio to a classic rock station as he started making the burger. Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer played throughout the restaurant. “It’s our song, Vanessa!” Elijah exclaimed as he and Vanessa sang along to the chorus. When the song came to an end, a few of the customers clapped, zapping them out of the Bon Jovi daze. Vanessa took a bow, embracing the attention. Elijah shyly got back to work and brought a customer their meal.”

LoveDeathFriendshipNovelFoodRestaurantsBilingualSkullDinerBacon And Eggs
Book:Death's Rattle
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“While bilingual is understood as a valuable asset or goal for middle-class and upper-class students, for working-class and poor students it is framed as a disability that must be overcome”

ClassMiddle ClassDisabilityWorking ClassUpper ClassBilingualBilingualismEslEnglish Second Language
Book:Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad
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“Can you read?" the boy said at last. "Of course," said Arrietty. "Can't you?" "No," he stammered. "I mean--yes. I mean I've just come from India." "What's that got to do with it?" asked Arrietty. "Well, if you're born in India, you're bilingual. And if you're bilingual, you can't read. Not so well." Arrietty stared up at him: what a monster, she thought, dark against the sky. "Do you grow out of it?" she asked. He moved a little and she felt the cold flick of his shadow. "Oh yes," head said, "it wears off. My sisters were bilingual; now they aren't a bit. They could read any of those books upstairs in the schoolroom." "So could I," said Arrietty quickly, "if someone could hold them, and turn the pages. I'm not a bit bilingual. I can read anything.”

ChildrenLiteracyBilingualBilingualismBritish Literature
Book:Borrowers
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“Kyiv is a bilingual capital, something unusual in Europe and unthinkable in Russia and the United States. Europeans, Russians, and Americans rarely considered that everyday bilingualism might bespeak political maturity, and imagined instead that a Ukraine that spoke two languages must be divided into two groups and two halves. "Ethnic Ukrainians" must be a group that acts in one way, and "ethnic Russians" in another. This is about as true as to say that "ethnic Americans" vote Republican. It is more a summary of a politics that defines people by ethnicity, proposing to them an eternity of grievance rather than a politics of the future.”

EthnicityBilingualKyiv
Book:The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
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“Language is Highway to A Culture (Diary of A Polyglot Neuroscientist, S.2392) Languages are not ornaments, languages are organs, channeling spirit from the heart. Language is highway to a culture, language requires a vessel, not translator. Soon earbuds will feature instant translation, which will render crosscultural conversation seamless, but at the same time, lifeless, hollow and cold. Until we develop the brain technology to communicate meaning telepathically without talking, no amount of translation can carry the warmth, nuances and sentiment of a lived language. As added perk, speaking more than one language delays age-related cognitive decline. Therefore no matter how you look at it, one broken second language is far more valuable than all the mass-produced subtitles.”

LanguageLinguisticsTranslationLanguage LearningPolyglotLanguage BarrierMultilingualismBilingualLanguage Studies
Book:Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat
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“I have been accused of being a bully. I think a lot of that stems from precisely my resistance to feel like I need to do the emotional labor of making people feel comfortable about what I’m saying. In particular, as a Latino scholar doing work in bilingual education, I’m particularly resistant to the idea that I need to make white people feel comfortable doing work in bilingual education. I put my work out there. I let it speak for itself. I certainly have never targeted anyone individually and personally insulted them, which is what bullying actually is, right?”

BullyingLatinoBilingualLatinxBilingual Education
Author:Nelson Flores
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“This whole idea of a bilingual brain is still, from my opinion, coming from a monolingual perspective in the sense that most of the world is bi- or multilingual. Why are we exceptionalizing the, quote, “bilingual” brain instead of the quote, “monolingual” brain to begin with? Why aren’t we saying, “What are the unique cognitive traits of monolingual people who are the minority of the population?” Maybe a bilingual brain is just a brain and it’s the monolingual brain that’s actually this weird thing that we need to study. Of course, I don’t actually believe that, but I feel like some of the discourse exceptionalizing bilingualism, when we reverse it and really think about, well, if we describe monolingualism in that way, that would be really strange. Yet, “bilingual” describes more of the world’s population than “monolingual.” What exactly are we doing there?”

LanguageLinguisticsBilingualMonolingual
Author:Nelson Flores
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“On growing up internationally - from the Daughter of Copper. And so, with the greatest of ease, both as children and adults, we float back and forth between our two languages and cultures, seamlessly navigating the moments of time and place that define us.”

IdentityMiningCopperCulture IdentityBilingualExpatriateChilean
Book:Daughter of Copper, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Identity, Growing up on Borrowed Land
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“Earlier this year, a self-identified White, monolingual English-speaking teacher explained to me that, among other signs of her stupidity, Dr Baez’s English language skills are ‘horrible, and from what I hear, her Spanish isn’t that good either’...If Dr Baez, the bilingual school principal with multiple university degrees, including a doctorate in education, was subjected to such discriminatory thinking, then what could this mean for students, who were positioned in highly subordinate institutional positions?”

EducationRacismDiscriminationBilingualBilingualism
Book:Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad
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“I grew up speaking two languages, mother tongue and national tongue, then in my late teens I assimilated English from pirated dvds of American movies; soon after I absorbed another language, from the South of India, again from movies. Years later when I started writing and got WiFi, that's when an entire new horizon opened up. This time I found myself drawn to Turkish and Spanish, which became second languages in the canon, after my first English. I don't describe, I embody - I don't study a culture, I disappear into the culture.”

IntegrationAdvaitaMulticulturalismPolyglotLanguages And CultureCultural StudiesMultilingualismBilingualBilingualismPolyglot Poet
Book:Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat
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“Pilgrim of Language (Sonnet) How will you know if you can speak another language? If you can curse someone on impulse without memorizing, you got the language in your gut. If you can console someone in pain, the language nestles in your heart. No es necessario que hablar guapisimo, solamente necessario que hablar amable. All those pedestals of language levels, a, b, z, and what not, are elitist garbage. Chase after form, and you'll miss the soul - throw yourself into the soul, and neurons will regrow. Forget grammar, forget vocabulary, let the language seep into your bloodstream. In a world infested with medal-seeking mules, stand odd, stand ablaze, a drunken pilgrim.”

LinguisticsLanguage LearningPolyglotLanguage BarrierMultilingualismNeuroplasticityBilingualLanguage AcquisitionLanguage StudiesLanguage Proficiency
Book:Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot
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“For years, "Sorry, I don't speak French" has been the reflexive response of English-speaking Canadians to a request, a comment, or a greeting in the other official language. Part apology, part defiance, it is a declaration of the otherness. That is not me. I don't do that. The language barrier is her, at this counter, now.”

CanadaFrenchQuebecBilingual
Book:Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Confronting the Canadian Crisis That Won't Go Away
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“Something critical happens when the cadre of bilinguals learns to read imported scrolls: they gain entry into a library. I use the word "library" to refer not to a physical building but, more broadly, to the collectivity of accumulated writings. . . . humans possess an ever-increasing store of writings, the totality of which I call the library. The transformation of an oral culture into a written one means, first and foremost, the potential entry of bilinguals into a library.”

LibraryBilingualWritings
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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