Quote

Cantonese, which has up to nine tones as opposed to the five in Mandarin, is much more versatile and one of the richest dialects in Chinese.

Language-wise, my mom and dad's dialect, they're pretty obscure. It's Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn't something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.

I just love dialects; they're really fun.

A feature of English that makes it different compared with all other languages is its global spread.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.

I come from a specific area in Beirut where it's multicultural, and it's a culture that blends with multiple cultures - it's unbelievable lifestyle.

I was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the U.S. and went back. I'd been raised in a French school in Beirut. Lebanon is a peculiar place, so bicultural it goes along with you. There is a Western influence, an Eastern influence. Most people are fluctuating between those identities.

The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.