Mother Tongue Quotes

“These Cro-Magnon people were identical to us: they had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks. And, unlike all previous hominids who roamed the earth, they could choke on food. That may seem a trifling point, but the slight evolutionary change that pushed man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well articulated speech.
Other mammals have no contact between their air passages and oesophagi. They can breathe and swallow at the same time, and there is no possibility of food going down the wrong way. But with Homo sapiens food and drink must pass over the larynx on the way to the gullet and thus there is a constant risk that some will be inadvertently inhaled. In modern humans, the lowered larynx isn't in position from birth. It descends sometime between the ages of three and five months - curiously, the precise period when babies are likely to suffer from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. At all events, the descended larynx explains why you can speak and your dog cannot.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

“No object is in a constant relationship with pleasure, wrote Barthes. For the writer, however, it is the mother tongue. But what if the mother tongue is stunted? What if that tongue is not only the symbol of a void, but is itself a void, what if the tongue is cut out? Can one take pleasure in loss without losing oneself entirely? The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade level.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Kiswahili ni lugha rasmi ya nchi za Tanzania, Kenya na Uganda. Ni lugha isiyo rasmi ya nchi za Rwanda, Burundi, Msumbiji na Jamhuri ya Kidemokrasia ya Kongo. Lugha ya Kiswahili ni mali ya nchi za Afrika ya Mashariki, si mali ya nchi za Afrika Mashariki peke yake. Pia, Kiswahili ni lugha rasmi ya Umoja wa Afrika; pamoja na Kiarabu, Kiingereza, Kifaransa, Kireno na Kihispania. Kiswahili ni lugha inayozungumzwa zaidi nchini Tanzania kuliko nchi nyingine yoyote ile, duniani.”
― Enock Maregesi

“Facing a language you don't know is like returning to your infancy when your mother tongue used to be a foreign language to you”
― Munia Khan

“God in His infinite wisdom blessed humans with redundant tongues: one to outfit the mouth for speech. And a mother tongue to give it meaning... Though it wags out such inconceivable beauty, attached to the mother tongue lies one much maligned woman.”
― David B. Lentz, Bloomsday: The Bostoniad

“The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I have embraced Robert Burns and his beloved Scotland. I have heard the music of the authentic mother tongue. I have walked where he walked, lived where he lived, if only for a brief time, and seen where he died and where he was finally laid to rest. The ghost of Rabbie Burns will continue to walk beside me. And when I am gone, I will walk beside others who fight for the cause of truth.”
― Laurence Overmire, The Ghost of Rabbie Burns: An American Poet's Journey Through Scotland

“La idea de no tener una lengua materna me preocupa. ¿Es como sentirte un nómada dentro de tu propia cabeza? no me puedo imaginar no tener palabras en las que refugiarme. Ser huérfana de lengua.”
― Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone

“Kiswahili ni lugha ya Kibantu na lugha kuu ya kimataifa ya biashara ya Afrika ya Mashariki ambayo; maneno yake mengi yamepokewa kutoka katika lugha za Kiarabu, Kireno, Kiingereza, Kihindi, Kijerumani na Kifaransa, kutoka kwa wakoloni waliyoitawala pwani ya Afrika ya Mashariki katika kipindi cha karne tano zilizopita.

Lugha ya Kiswahili ilitokana na lugha za Kisabaki za Afrika Mashariki; ambazo nazo zilitokana na Lugha za Kibantu za Pwani ya Kaskazini Mashariki za Tanzania na Kenya, zilizotokana na lugha zaidi ya 500 za Kibantu za Afrika ya Kusini na Kati.

Lugha za Kibantu zilitokana na lugha za Kibantoidi, ambazo ni lugha zenye asili ya Kibantu za kusini mwa eneo la Wabantu, zilizotokana na jamii ya lugha za Kikongo na Kibenue – tawi kubwa kuliko yote ya familia ya lugha za Kikongo na Kinijeri katika bara la Afrika. Familia ya lugha za Kikongo na Kibenue ilitokana na jamii ya lugha za Kiatlantiki na Kikongo; zilizotokana na familia ya lugha za Kikongo na Kinijeri, ambayo ni familia kubwa ya lugha kuliko zote duniani kwa maana ya lugha za kikabila.

Familia ya lugha ya Kiswahili imekuwepo kwa karne nyingi. Tujifunze kuzipenda na kuzitetea lugha zetu kwa faida ya vizazi vijavyo.”
― Enock Maregesi

“My tongue was handed down to me
by datus and katipuneros. The truth is
my mouth is a battlefield that
you wouldn’t know how to fight in.”
― Danabelle Gutierrez, & Until The Dreams Come

“Little by little, we began to understand that our mother tongue wasn’t the language of power and prosperity. At a young age, our alienation from Kurdish history and literature – from our roots, identity, and inevitably our parents – began, escalating with each year that passed.”
― Ava Homa, Daughters of Smoke and Fire

“She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours of it. At times her mouth gaped open, her lips moving as if she were drinking in his words instead of breathing.”
― David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein

“The joy of knowing a foreign language is inexpressible. I find it really difficult to express such joy in my mother tongue.”
― Munia Khan

“You can speak with a twang and still not say a thang.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“...Orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, [...] no tongue. For isn´t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?”
― Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

“A strong tie binds novelists to their mother tongue. Though novelists can and do write in languages other than their own, there is a common belief that a novel has a special, almost mystical affinity with the novelist's mother tongue.”
― Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English

“Class was what formed you, but didn’t travel to other cultures – it became invisible abroad. In foreign places, you were singled out by religion and race, but not class, which was more indecipherable than any other mother tongue. He’d learnt that not only were light, language, and weather contingent – class was too.”
― Amit Chaudhuri, Odysseus Abroad

“I grew up listening to languages my immigrant parents didn't want to teach me, so I get a regressive pleasure out of feeling my way through sounds to their possible meanings. Not "getting" a word, or a line, or a poem at first read was never an obstacle for me — in fact, it was a seduction.”
― Ange Minko

“Бо у нас же як? Якщо ти розмовляєш своє мовою, наприклад, у Києві, Харкові чи в Кривому Розі, то ти вже націоналіст.
Україна в цьому справді унікальна країна, яких більше немає у світі. Тут націоналістами називають людей тільки за те, що вони розмовляють своєю мовою. А якщо ці самолюбці ще й хочуть, щоб із ними також говорили по-їхньому, тоді бери вище – це вже нацисти, расисти чи щонайменше фашисти.
Такі ми, українці. Тому так і живемо. Обираємо собі владу завжди з чужинців, щоб нас, боронь Боже, не назвали ксенофобами. Обираємо перевертнів, чмошників і бариг, щоб часом до керма не дорвався якийсь націоналюга-фашист, котрий поставить у центрі Києва пам’ятник Бандері і заборонить на телебаченні російські серіали.”
― Vasyl Shkliar, Чорне сонце

“The goal of American English speakers appears to be to rob the mother tongue of direct meaning and replace it with needlessly-complex jargon.”
― Stewart Stafford

“I am not born dumb, either it is my mother tongue”
― Dr.P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Unity in diversity begins in making the mother tongue as the medium of communication, not as the medium of patriotism”
― Sir P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“TWO MINUTES SILENCE For Those WHO BELIEVE In MOTHER TONGUE; DUMB AND DEAF ARE SAME TO ME In The CEMETERY, MURUGA PERUMAL”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Az anyanyelvnek nem árt, ha a véletlenszerűségei megmutatkoznak más nyelvek nézőpontjának tükrében. Éppen ellenkezőleg: ha az anyanyelvünket egy másik nyelv segítségével, azaz egy más látásmóddal szemmel tartjuk, az egy újra és újra megerősített bizalomhoz, hitelességhez vezet, erőfeszítés nélküli szeretethez. Az anyanyelvemet soha nem azért szerettem, mert jobb lett volna másnál, hanem azért, mert a legjobban ismertem és a legmélyebb bizalom kapcsolt hozzá.”
― Herta Müller, Der König verneigt sich und tötet

“Once upon a time, a human belittled another human who spoke broken English, until the first human discovered English was the second human's third or fourth language, and then the first human felt rather stupid and decided to shut the f*** up.”
― Stewart Lee Beck

“His Farsi laden with a mat of nostalgia”
― John Elizabeth Stintzi, My Volcano

“We all learn other languages through our mother tongue.”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“. . . fabric was my first consistent contact. . . my first language, my mother tongue—tactile, animate, and entire.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir