Language Imperialism Quotes

Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian.

The basis of any independent government is a national language, and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers ... those who feel they cannot do without English can as well pack up and go.

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

Both French and Latin are involved with nationalistic and religious implications which could not be entirely shaken off, and so, while they seemed for a long time to have solved the international language problem up to a certain point, they did not really do so in spirit.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

Standard English is very imperialistic, controlled, and precise; it's not got a lot of funk or soul to it.

I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare.

My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper.

I write entirely in English; Tagalog chauvinists chide me for this. I feel no guilt in doing so. But I am sad that I cannot write in my native Ilokano. History demanded this; if it isn't English I am using now, I would most probably be writing in Spanish like Rizal, or even German or Japanese.

William the Conqueror had so great an abhorrence of the English language, that he commanded all the laws and law-proceedings to be in French; and even the children in school were taught the first elements of grammar and letters in French and not in English.

National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.

It would be just as pointless to oppose the international use of English today as it would have been to oppose the worldwide use of French in the 18th century.

When I was young we weren't even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it 'vernacular,' as if only English was the real tongue.

Most educated Indians are bilingual. Amongst the urban elite though, there is a disdain for regional languages. That's unfortunate.