Language Loss Quotes

I don't speak Spanish, and I get so much crap for it. Oddly enough, it was the first language I learned, but somehow I lost it throughout the years. I can understand pieces of it, but I don't speak it. I need to speak it. I want to teach my kids Spanish.

I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.

I haven't spoken English with native speakers in several months. I've been speaking Arabic.

Asian-Americans, we're not a monolithic group. There might be some Asians who are second-generation, third-generation, who may not speak the language that their parents or their grandparents spoke.

There is a psychic gulf that exists between myself and my grandparents because they don't really speak English, and I don't speak Chinese, and that's my own personal shame because I did not learn, ever. I only saw my paternal grandma a few times in my life, and that's really crazy.

The day a race ceases to express its thought and its sentiments in that language which has grown with it and which took form with its ethnic temperament, it is lost as a race. The preservation of its language is absolutely necessary to the preservation of the race, of its genius, its character and it's temperament.

Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.

As our language wanes and dies, the golden legends of the far-off centuries fade and pass away. No one sees their influence upon culture; no one sees their educational power.

Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.

I had two experiences with very close friends of mine who experienced aphasia, the loss of language. It shocked me.

There is always a point in the writing of a piece when I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic.

To lovers of the long and intricate history of language the disuse and final death of certain words is a matter of regret. Yet every age bears witness to the inevitableness of such loss.

When a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.

My grandmother was German. She didn't teach any of her children German. She really wanted them to be American. And now, she's since passed away, I get so frustrated sometimes. I'm like, "Oh, Oma, why didn't you teach your kids German?" My dad would have spoken German to me from birth, and I would have spoken German.

I find it fascinating to think about what the world is going to be like when people won't talk anymore.

There were about 6,000 languages spoken on this planet at the beginning of the 20th century, there are probably only 600 still widely spoken at the beginning of the 21st century. Together with biodiversity, cultural and linguistic diversity are fading fast.

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don't know how much experience you've had with contemporary Hebrew. It's quite difficult.

I worry these days that Latinos in California speak neither Spanish nor English very well. They are in a kind of linguistic limbo between the two. They don't really have a language, and are, in some deep sense, homeless.

Growing up, my mom always knew that I was more on the Black side than the Spanish side, just because I didn't speak Spanish.

I lived in Germany from when I was 6 until I was 10, so, of course, I played soccer. When I came back to the States, nobody played soccer, and none of the schools taught German, so I couldn't continue to excel in those categories.

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

For over ten years I always had, but I don't speak English.

If music goes out of language, then you are in bad trouble.

I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now.