"She must have been, no doubt, a docile, good-natured child, with a certain facility for Latin verbs and intelligence tests -- but what use is that to anyone?"Sarah Caudwell, Thus Was Adonis Murdered
"Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman."George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara
"Julius Caesar was therefore compelled to invade Britain again the following year (54 BC, not 56, owing to the peculiar Roman method of counting), and having defeated the Ancient Britons by unfair means, such as battering-rams, tortoises, hippocausts, centipedes, axes and bundles, set the memorable Latin sentence, `Veni, Vidi, Vici,' which the Romans, who were all very well educated, construed correctly.Sellars & Yeatman, 1066 and All That"The Britons, however, who of course still used the old pronunciation, understanding him to have called them `Weeny, Weedy and Weaky', lost heart and gave up the struggle, thinking that he had already divided them All into Three Parts."
"Even when I seem to be doing pretty well in Spanish, I can run out of it, the way someone might run out of flour or eggs. A few years after I passed up the chance to stay in Madrid, some friends and I went to Baja California to mark an occasion I can no longer remember, and I became the group's spokesman to the owner of the motel, a Mrs. Gonzales, who spoke no English. Toward the end of a very long evening, as I listened to her complain about some excess of celebration on our part, I suddenly realized that I had run out of Spanish. It wasn't merely that I couldn't think of the Spanish words for what I wanted to say ("I am mortified, Mrs. Gonzales, to learn that someone in our group might have behaved in a manner so inappropriate, not to say disgusting"). I couldn't think of any Spanish words at all. Desperately rummaging around in the small bin of Spanish in my mind, I could come up with nothing but the title of a Calderon play I had once read, to no lasting effect, in a Spanish literature course.Calvin Trillin, Travels With Alice, "Abigail y yo.""`Mrs. Gonzales,' I said. `Life is a dream.'
"She looked impressed and, I must say, surprised. She told me that I had said something really quite profound. I shrugged. It seemed the appropriately modest response; even if it hadn't been, it would have been all I could do until I managed to borrow a cup of Spanish from a neighbour. Eventually I came to look back on the experience as just about the only time I was truly impressive in a foreign language."
"`I think German is the worst,' said Mrs Brandon, `not that I know any Latin. It is really nothing but words. If you try to read a German book you spend all your time looking up words, and there doesn't seem to be any special reason for them to mean anything and the minute you have looked them up you forget what they mean. And they all begin with a prefix or a suffix.'"Angela Thirkell, The Brandons.
"Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing."Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass.
"Nor can I do better, in conclusion, than impress upon you the study of Greek literature, which not only elevates above the vulgar herd, but leads not infrequently to positions of considerable emolument."Reverend Thomas Gaisford, Xmas Day Sermon in the Cathedral, Oxford.
"I mean Mr Georgopolis is also quite cultured, as I know quite a few gentlemen who can speak to a waiter in French but Mr Georgopolis can also speak to a waiter in Greek which very few gentlemen seem to be able to do."Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
"'The only Italian I know,' said Sandy, 'is spaghetti.'Sarah Strohmeyer, Bubbles Unbound"'You'd be surprised,'Tiffany said sincerely, 'there are a lot more Italian words than that.'"
'"I suppose you're pretty fluent in Gaelic?" Mrs Urquhart-Unwin asked.'"Oh, not really," Kilwhillie replied. "I know kemmarashiff and slahnverjaw and harmiskee..."
'"What does that mean?"
'"That means I'm tired."
'"Oh, how thoughtless of me! You've had a very long day. Let's turn back to the house."
'"No, I assure you I'm not at all tired. I was merely giving you an example of my Gaelic. Like half luke and half ewer. Half luke means it's wet and half ewer means it's cold."
'"I sounds an absolutely fascinating language. Is it very difficult to learn?"
'"It's not so difficult to learn, I believe, though I can't say I ever tried, but people who have tried tell me they find it's almost impossible to make themselves understood when they talk it. That's the problem. If you fill your mouth with aitches and then gargle with them you get the idea of it more or less. But it isn't easy. Does this friend of yours, Mrs Wolfingham, speak Gaelic?"
'"She certainly does not, but she has a very great deal of self-confidence, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that she was studying it. I'd like to be able and learn just enough to correct her when she went wrong, and perhaps have one or two phrases to leave her completely at a loss how to reply."'
Compton Mackenzie, Hunting the Fairies
"Finnish is nice too."David Oliver.