Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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

It is time for dead languages to be quiet.

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.

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

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

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.

I think it's about the feeling more than a language. And I think that we and every culture in the world has to keep their own language just to bring something else, something different, and show a different vision of the world, actually. And that's why I'm trying to keep my language.

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.

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

To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

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.

The position is: the Gaelic language is no longer the native language; it is dead, yet food is being brought to the graveyard.

The places I come from have such rich languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them.

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.

The knowledge of the ancient languages is mainly a luxury.

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

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.

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

The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before.

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.

To what better purpose can a man's energy be devoted, and his talents, than the resuscitation of his country's language?