I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.
A. B. Yehoshua
I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor, so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.
Alexei Sayle
My name means 'hope' in Arabic, and I was born when there was a war in Lebanon.
Amal Clooney
Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the page.
Ameen Rihani
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
It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.
Aml Ameen
I've forgotten a lot of things. I've forgotten how to play the piano and how to speak Arabic, though I studied it for two years.
Amy Sherald
I was born into a Turkish family that had acquired Italian citizenship. Many members of the family subsequently became British, French, Brazilian, and German, so there was a bit of everything. It was not uncommon for people in the family to speak seven languages: English, French, Ladino, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, and even Greek.
Andre Aciman
All the kids are learning different languages. I asked them what languages they wanted to learn, and Shi is learning Khmai, which is a Cambodian language; Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian, Z is speaking French, Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic, and Knox is learning sign language.
Angelina Jolie
I learned French in Tunis, along with Arabic. I also learned French history. I knew the entire history of the kings of France. And I was fascinated by Versailles.
Azzedine Alaia
Not all my work features black actors. I mean, it's funny: someone was reading back to me all the languages that have appeared in my films, whether they were shorts or features. They span Arabic, French, Mandarin, Cantonese - all kinds of languages. I think it's really cool.
Barry Jenkins
My show in Egypt was called, 'The Show,' or, 'Al Bernameg' in Arabic. Basically, it was a political satire show. It started on Internet by three, four-minute episodes, and then it evolved into a live show in a theater, which was something that was unprecedented in the Arab world.
Bassem Youssef
I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.
Brian Eno
If I wanted to learn Arabic or Russian, I could. Or tie my shoes in a new way, I could. Why? Dedication.
Bryson DeChambeau
Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Russian, combined.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers
I eat meat daily. I'm not Jewish. I'm not Arabic. What's the kind of person that doesn't eat meat? That's right - I'm not a vegetarian.
Chuck Berry
I actually speak fluent English and Spanish and... I dabble in a couple of languages, but I'm not fluent in German, Russian and Arabic.
Cote de Pablo
I had this desire to understand Islam better and then focus on the beauty of Arabic and Islamic cultures. And one of the first things to emerge was Arabic calligraphy, which was instantly inspiring.
Craig Thompson
I don't know Arabic. I can't speak or write it.
In Cardiff, I've heard a number of accent mixes that weren't previously heard before such as Cardiff-Arabic and Cardiff-Hindi. This pattern is repeating itself in many urban communities across the U.K.; people are especially keen to develop a strong sense of local identity.
David Crystal
I grew up surrounded by all types of cultures - French, Indian, Arabic - a melting pot of cultures, sounds, foods, people, and religions. It opened my eyes early, and I'm grateful for that. It's not about success in one area; it's about exploring the world musically and spending time in those places whenever you can.
Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors.
The fundamental idea which defines a human being as a Muslim is the declaration of faith: that there is a creator, whom we call God - or Allah, in Arabic - and that the creator is one and single. And we declare this faith by the declaration of faith, where we... bear witness that there is no God but God.
That's something the head scarf, in a symbolic way, is meant to do in Arabic culture: it defines your relationship to your husband and the men of your family differently than your relationship to the average guy on the street you've never met.
It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.
I'm shy, but sometimes my voice is so clear and strong. Your tongue moves, and the Arabic language is so beautiful.
Growing up in the Libya of the 1970s, I remember the prevalence of local bands who were as much influenced by Arabic musical traditions as by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. But the project of 'Arabisation' soon got to them, too, and western musical instruments were declared forbidden as 'instruments of imperialism.'
For Starbucks, there will be no shortage of the highest-quality arabica beans. I suspect that for some others there could potentially be a problem, not in the near term, but over time.
The Malays can hardly be said to have an indigenous literature, for it is almost entirely derived from Persia, Siam, Arabia, and Java. Arabic is their sacred language.
My publication, 'The Post,' has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West.
The rise to prominence of the Saudi novel in Arabic is the great man-bites-dog of recent world literature. Saudi Arabia is a country without a free press, where European styles and forms are distrusted and where the female half of the population became literate only in this generation.
I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
But my Arabic is pretty good. It's good enough to have conversations with people, to understand what they say, to understand what they're feeling.
Everybody needs to understand that I learned Arabic from the United States Army as a second language. I never spoke it at home.
Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot.
Especially after the Twin Towers, we're so terrified of 'Arabic' people. And talk about stereotypical negative portrayals of people of certain groups, if you look at the portrayal of Arabic people in Hollywood films, it's just appalling. They've always been just the easiest of targets - along with native Africans and what have you.
The Muslim heaven features prominently in the Quran, Arabic poetries and Hadith. The Jewish heaven, though, is still a mystery; it's mystic.
I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.
I love the Middle East. My earliest childhood memories are of Jerusalem. I love the colors and smells and cadence of Arabic spoken in the streets of Cairo or Beirut. I also love the modernity and verve of Tel Aviv.
Arak means 'sweat' in Arabic, and it is the perfect Mediterranean after-dinner drink, in my opinion.
Many Arabic/Islamic words have now entered the English dictionary, such as haj, hijab, Eid, etc., and I no longer need to put them in italics or explain them.
In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, I'm Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I've always been invested in the broader world of film-making.
My identity comprises of more than just my faith. I am a proud Muslim, but I am also a liberal, a Briton, a Pakistani, a Londoner, a father, a product of the globalised world who speaks English, Arabic and Urdu.
I listen to a variety of music. I like everything from old Arabic music to Portuguese fados.
I've pretty much played every regional accent you can play in the U.K. I've played German, French, Arabic; I've been Jordanian, Lebanese. I've covered a lot of ground.
Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years.
For 'City of Ghosts,' I really didn't speak any Arabic. It obviously made it more difficult, but I also found it to be an advantage while shooting. It allowed me to focus on the emotion of the scene as opposed to just chasing dialogue.
I grew up in a kibbutz in the Galilee, but we were surrounded by Arabic villages, so I heard all these sounds and all this music. My father was very close friends with one of the Bedouin tribes, so I would always go there, to weddings, and I was always very fascinated by that music.
I have six or seven 'what to name the baby' books, the Oxford dictionary of names, and a fabulous tome that's 26 languages in simultaneous translation - French, German, all the European majors, plus Esperanto, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.
I grew up speaking Arabic at home.
