quotes

"Be a craftsman in speech, thou mayest be strong, the tongue is a sword to a man, and speech is more valorous than any fighting." Instruction for King Merikare, line 32 (Egyptian, mid-twentieth century BC)1

Asked in 1898 to choose a single defining event in recent history, the German Chancellor Bismarck replied 'North America speaks English.'2

Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. Such a whole, if it wishes to absorb and mingle with itself any other people of different descent and language, cannot do so without itself becoming confused, in the beginning at any rate, and violently disturbing the even progress of its culture. -- Addresses to the German Nation By Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Reginald Foy Jones, George Henry Turnbull, 1922, pp. 223-224

"The limits of my langauge mean the limits of my world." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 3

[O]nly through a common language can a group of people act in concert, and therefore have a common history. -- Nicholas Ostler in "Empire of the Word"4

"...porque' la semejanza y conformidad de las palabras casi siempre suelen reconciliar y traer a verdadera unio'n y amistad a los hombres "

"because the likeness and conformity of words almost always tend to reconcile people and bring them true union and friendship"

-- Garcilosa de la Vega, quoting Father Blas Valera, in Commentarios Reales, part I, vii. 3

It is evident that our heart is ignorant if it speaks in a language it doesn't know, just as Latin people often sing in Greek, enjoying the sound of the words but not knowing what they mean. The spirit given in baptism knows what the heart is praying when it speaks or mouths off in a language unknown to itself; but the mind, which is the heart, is without fruit. What fruit can it have if it does not know what it is saying? --Ambrosiaster, or St. Ambrose, commenting on I Corinthians xiv.14, quoted in Ostler5

"[L]anguage has a history of its own, throwing light upon all other history" --Robert Caldwell (1814-1891) A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages (1856) quoted in Ramaswamy (1997)6

Thus the Greeks stigmatized non-Greek speakers as 'barbarians' (speakers of mumbo-jumbo, a non-language). The 'Welsh' were foreigners, people who spoke 'a strange language' that 'one does not understand' (cited in the OED, 1648).
One's own language, on the other hand, was glorified as the language of God (Arabic, Dutch, Sanskrit), the language of reason, logic and human rights (French in recent centuries) the language of the superior ethno-national group (German in Nazi Ideology).7

There was always speculation that the strange unwillingness of the Dutch to share their language with their colonial subjects was a sort of snobbery, to enhance their prestige among the Dutchless natives. This was roundly discouraged by the Dutch administration as a harmful attitude. Nevertheless, it was widely believed by foreign observers (e.g. Bousquet 1940:88-9); and it did happen to fit in with a certain aspect of Javanese etiquette, whereby social status was marked by styles of language (taalsorten ).8

Almost without exception, every orientalist began his career as a philologist -- attributed to Edward Said by Tishale Tibebu9

This was written in the 1920s in the former Belgian Congo by a missionary.

The government is averse to Swahili. It has rejected it as the official language and chosen Bangala. The government seems to wish to isolate the Congo as far as possible from her neighbours. The less we use Swahili, the more the Government will approve of our books and work. (Alfred B. Buxton to Paul Hurlburt, April 20, 1925, British Foreign Bible Society, Correspondence Files)10

This was written by M. De Bauw, head of a private firm with governmental experience, in answer to a question in a questionnaire distributed to 60 people in business, government, missionary and teaching work in the Congo -

We must, with all the means at our disposal, fight the spread of any European language other than French. Among these means I suggest the following: (1) Prohibition, by way of legislation, to teach natives any European language except French. (2) Inspection of all schools by agents of the State, so that the nature and tendencies of education can be safeguarded. Obligatory licensing of all teachers, white or black. (3) Revocation of all contracts between Europeans and natives drawn in a language other than French or a dialect of the colony.11

Writing after the questionnaire's were returned is the Vice-Governor's cover letter to the Minister of Colonies

I especially call your attention to the question of an expanding influence of English in the mining region of Katanga which is signalled by M. de Bauw, Director General of the Comite Special du Katanga and by others. I believe with him that the Colonial Charter should be revised so that certain corrections may be made with regard to freedom of teaching and use of language. In a colony like ours, which is just being organized, it is dangerous to grant equal rights to citizens of the ruling country and to foreigners. Education is amon the most appropriate means to propagate and extend the influence of the Europeans on the minds of natives...12

Language is breath;
Language is consciousness;
Language is life;
.............
Language is the world;
Without language, who are we?
(Bharatidasan 1978: 132) 13

I found the following quote to well express the divide that language creates, even as it talks about the divide between peasant communities of people in the borders of France.

Isolation encouraged persistent mutual distrust. In turn, stereotypes arising out of this distrust (...) reinforced isolation, endogamy or selective exogamy, and existing orientations, that is, the rivalries and the psychic distance between one village and another.14

Frumin worked in post-conflict Afghanistan with US AID

"One of the things I've heard most from people in developing countries is that we need to listen more ... that's probably the biggest lesson, listening, and not thinking we have all the answers." -- Amy B. Frumin, International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, "Academic Conference Call: Stability Operations and Post-Conflict Reconstruction"

The peoples of the rainforests began to doubt their own legacies and then to adopt portions of the foreign heritage. But they clung to their own languages and much of the older cognitive content carried by them. Thus they turned into cultural schizophrenics. -- Vansina, from "Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa" quoted in Clark15

"I just found out about a Thai scam, an Israeli labour recuiter in LA, has brought in two or three thousand workers from Thailand. They've all paid about twenty thousand dollars, they are working right now in fourteen different states. The same thing, they take away the passport when they get off the bus and they say "Get to work." And then they just take away money from their paycheck, deductions for this, deductions for that, nobody speaks English, nobody can talk about it."

-- John Bowe at the Carnegie Council for International Ethics speaking on his book "Nobodies" 17 Oct 07