Language Oppression Quotes

I did hold the language laws of Quebec up to ridicule because they are officious and ridiculous.

When California passes a law saying that English is the official language, it can only mean one thing: That English is no longer the official language.

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.

So what's really behind the 'English Only' Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.

Under the Assads, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language at school, or even from speaking it in the military. The result is a generation of Syrian Kurds, many now in late middle age, who can't write their own language.

It's very easy to lose language - it can be shut off in a second.

It's problematic being an Arab who writes in Hebrew.

It wasn't so long ago that it was not popular to speak Gaelic in Ireland because the areas that Gaelic is spoken in were much poorer areas.

It is terrible to see someone being beaten up by the English language.

I'm against the idea of force-feeding all of Canada on two languages.

It's interesting that, given our culture has so many words that refer to women in a truly derogatory fashion, it's 'lady' - a term that has conferred social respect on our gender for over a thousand years - that has women up in arms.

The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.

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

Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

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.

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.

I didn't want to read French or write it; it was like a boycott, a rejection.

Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German.

As a religion, bilingualism is the god that failed. It has led to no fairness, produced no unity, and cost Canadian taxpayers untold millions.

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

I think with all my books, language has been their subject as much as anything else. Language can elide or displace or sideline whole groups of people. You can't necessarily change the way language is used, but if it becomes something you're conscious of... that gives you a certain power over it.

When an American person hears you speak a different language, you're automatically the bad guy.

Every [political] contest is one of French and English in the outset, or becomes so ere it has run its course.

Requiring this kneeling down of all languages before French is sheer linguistic imperialism.

There was a time when liberals were linguistically dominant in America.