Nadine Labaki Quotes

Within a language, you have your roots, your culture, and I think and dream in Bassa. We have 260 languages in Cameroon, but the official ones are French and English.

I do not share the wish to see my language dead and decently buried.

I grew up speaking both languages, and for me that's really important.

Hindi is my mother tongue. Even though I do not get to use it as often, it's still a part of me.

I am making sure, as the governor of a territory, that our kids speak fluent English. But having said that, I will tell my wife I love her in Spanish, and I will pray in Spanish, and no one from Washington should come down here and tell us how to go about it.

While a people preserves its language; it preserves the marks of liberty.

What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two weeks.

There is a pride in speaking this language.

When people speak their own language you get a much better sense of who they are.

I have a high regard for Native languages and the pivotal role they have played in our nation's history.

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

Languages are not owned by nations but by the people who use them and make them live.

I always speak Welsh to my family.

We used to speak Irish - Gaelic Irish - around the dinner table, but over the years, we lost that.

Living freely means being able to freely communicate in your native language and to be guided by the 10th article of the constitution, which defines Ukrainian as the only state language and guarantees the unhindered development of Russian and all the other languages.

I think in my mother tongue. That's Hindi.

It's haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.

I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there.

I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French; nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.

If French is no longer the language of a power, it can be the language of a counter power.

The Hawaiian language needs to be studied globally as a language of life.

I still keep my accent.

English is my language because of the history, and what I try to do - and I did that in 'Carpentaria' in particular - is to write in the way we tell stories and in the voice of our own people and our own way of speaking.

The Sami, as an indigenous people, as well as the Roma and other groups, have the right to maintain and develop their own language and culture.

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.