A Quote by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised - so it's no longer "in the closet," as it were. It's part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature. The same questions are there in Native American languages, they're there in native Canadian languages, they're there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish. So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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About Actually African Always American American Language Became Being Between Canadian Classrooms Closet Conferences Cultures Discussion European Future Global Going Irish Issue Just Languages Like Literature Longer Marginalized Native Native America Native American Part Phenomenon Power Problem Questions Raised Relationships Same Say Schools Some Thought Topic Were Writing

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o
English - Writer
Born: January 5, 1938

Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.

Hannah Arendt

The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.

Amos Oz

I can read more languages than I speak! I speak French and Italian - not very well, alas, but I can get by. I read German and Spanish. I can read Latin (I did a lot of Latin at school.) I'm afraid I do not speak any African languages, although I can understand a little bit of the Zulu-related languages, but only a tiny bit.

Alexander McCall Smith

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.

Bjarne Stroustrup

I work in Hebrew. Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages. Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Every language has influences and is an influence.

Amos Oz

We can appreciate each other's languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

He spoke nine languages. You know some people can just pick up an instrument and play. My father was like that with languages.

Daryl Davis

It is not quite true to say that I am not an advocate of writing in African languages. What I think is, one has to think about what is practicable.

Chinua Achebe

The knowledge of languages was very useful. I have a university degree in foreign languages and literature.

Emma Bonino

Languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese are healthy languages. They exist in spoken, written, and signed forms, and they're used by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. But most of the 6,000 or so of the world's languages aren't in such a healthy state.

David Crystal

If you go back a century in Europe, all over the place people were speaking different languages. There were dozens of languages in France and Italy, and they're all called French [and Italian], but they were not mutually comprehensible. They were different languages. And they have mostly disappeared in the last century or so. Some are being preserved, like Welsh, some are being revived, like Basque or Catelan to some extent. There are plenty of people in Europe who can't talk to their grandmother because they talk a different language.

Noam Chomsky

Once you know the Romance languages, singing in those languages is so sexy and sensual. I do have a global audience, so why not?

Gloria Estefan

As far as Irish writers being great, I think the fact that there have been two languages in Ireland for a very long time; there has obviously been a shared energy between those two languages.

Garry Hynes

Americans don't speak foreign languages, by and large. Their interest in anything beyond the borders of the country is limited. A European of any cultivation has to speak a couple of languages; he inevitably without being very thoughtful about it gets to understand what other people think about him.

Arthur Miller

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Contrary to conventional wisdom, dance is not a universal 'language' but many languages and dialects. There are close to 6000 verbal languages, and probably that many dance languages.

Judith Lynne Hanna

A Quote by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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