Mother Tongue quotes:

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My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.' -- Ishmael Beah
I think in my mother tongue. That's Hindi. -- Anupam Kher
For us Indians, I don't think English can ever exude that magic of emotions which our mother tongue can. -- Kailash Kher
This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue. -- Tahar Ben Jelloun
When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer. -- Emmanuel Jal
I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor. -- Max von Sydow
I learnt to sing in Bengali, my mother tongue, then went on to sing in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati and every possible Indian language. -- Shreya Ghoshal
I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue. -- William Tyndale
The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity. -- Amin Maalouf
Foreign languages was the only thing that interested me when I was at school, so playing in another language... it is quite demanding because if it is not your mother tongue, you are missing some connotations and some emotional depth of certain things. -- Tom Wlaschiha
What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech. -- Louis D. Brandeis
Welsh is my mother tongue, and my children speak it. If you come and live in this community you'll work out pretty quickly that it's beneficial to learn the language, because if you're going to the pub or a cafe you need to be a part of the local life. -- Bryn Terfel
It was in Cardiff, and the cast was 60 per cent Welsh-speaking. It's the first time I've walked into a rehearsal room speaking my mother tongue, which in itself was a breath of fresh clean air from the Welsh mountains. Singing Hans Sachs is always a milestone, but I was happy to be part of such an achievement, not personally but as a company. -- Bryn Terfel
It's okay to be proud of your good English. But don't be proud of being poor at your Mother tongue. Only the scum of the earth do that. -- Manasa Rao Saarloos
... Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst not tell thy dreams'? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. -- John Keats
The mother tongue is propaganda. -- Marshall McLuhan
Chess was Capablanca's mother tongue. -- Richard Reti
Silence is become his mother tongue. -- Oliver Goldsmith
What is a nation without a mother tongue? -- Jack Edwards
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race. -- Johann Georg Hamann
An idle tongue is the mother of all conflicts. -- Dennis E. Adonis
Symptoms are the body's mother tongue; signs are in a foreign language. -- John Brown
Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It's the language of the soul. -- Gabrielle Roth
Simple English is no one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for. -- Jacques Barzun
We're one race. No matter our religion, beliefs, mother tongue, or skin color. -- Claudia Black
They call our language the mother tongue because the father seldom gets to speak. -- George W. Bush
A fluent tongue is the only thing a mother don't like her daughter to resemble her in. -- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
I learned to use language like my mother did. I would simulcast, give you the program in your own tongue. -- Trevor Noah
The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner. -- William Cameron Townsend
I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor -- Max von Sydow
See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.. -- Brigham Young
If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I recognize but one mental acquisition as a necessary part of the education of a lady or gentlemen, namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue. -- Charles William Eliot
Mothers are the only race of people that speak the same tongue. A mother in Manchuria could converse with a mother in Nebraska and never miss a word. -- Will Rogers
Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother tongue. -- Jeanette Winterson
I've had the privilege of learning foreign languages. Instead of merely speaking a watered-down form of my mother tongue, like most people, I'm also helpless in two or three other languages. -- Peter HÃ¸eg
I am not ashamed to reply to you in my mother tongue, however imperfectly, and am glad to be able to show that my fatherland means more to me than anything else -- Bedrich Smetana
"What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt." I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue than be master of all the languages in Europe. -- John Newton
A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.. -- Garry Kasparov
The rhythm of my body is the same as my mother tongue. It is in this rhythm where I find sanctity, that I can return to my mother who is everywhere in the universe. -- Kim Hyesoon
A grandmaster must memorize thousands of chess duels in his head, as these are for him what words of the mother tongue are to the ordinary people and what notes are to a musician. -- Garry Kasparov
[My mother tongue is] Albanian. But, I am equally fluent in Bengali (language of Calcutta) and English. -- Mother Teresa

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