Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

There were about 6,000 languages spoken on this planet at the beginning of the 20th century, there are probably only 600 still widely spoken at the beginning of the 21st century. Together with biodiversity, cultural and linguistic diversity are fading fast.

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

Every two weeks, a language dies. The world is diminished when it loses its human sayings, just as when it loses its diversity of plants and beasts.

There's nothing unusual about a single language dying. But what's going on today is extraordinary when we compare the situation to what has happened in the past. We're seeing languages dying out on a massive scale.

Languages and cultures are disappearing at an enormously fast rate, and many of them are in Canada. These are extreme examples of removal of freedom of expression - to actually lose a language and the ability to express that culture.

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love.

When a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.

There's a tremendous amount of language loss. Most of the attention is given to indigenous languages, which makes sense, but some of the most dramatic language loss is in Europe.

There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.

A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.

Language is decanted and shared. If only one person is left alive speaking a language - the case with some American Indian languages - the language is dead. Language takes two and their multiples.

I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for 'history.' The closest word for it is memory.

The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the death of a person. And indeed, that's how it should be. For that's how it is. A language dies only when the last person who speaks it dies.

Everybody wants to say who they are and where they're from. And the easiest and cheapest and most universal way of doing that is through their accent.

Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.

India is a conglomeration of different states with various languages, tradition, and culture for each.

Writers are stewards of the culture. Publishers, librarians, bookstore owners. We're all in this together. To write books that are gripping, important, that people want to have, is to keep publishing alive.

Ghazals can never die; they will come back.

I want to contribute to the culture and keep great writers alive by telling the stories of their lives.

Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind.

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity.

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.

Our language, one of our most precious natural resources, deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes.

According to the United Nations' latest count, of the approximately 3,000 languages spoken in the world today, only some 78 have a literature. Of those 78, a scant five or six enjoy a truly international audience.

There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.