Language Inequality Quotes

Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.

Move beyond the educated elite, and the great majority in most countries outside Europe don't speak English.

Bilingual education doesn’t work, and it has never worked.

There are so many people in the world who cannot read English or French or whatever.

You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.

I did hold the language laws of Quebec up to ridicule because they are officious and ridiculous.

Insist on one language. English for all Americans.

You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language?

In the British embassy in Afghanistan in 2008, an embassy of 350 people, there were only three people who could speak Dari, the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level. And there was not a single Pashto speaker.

Should people working in our country speak English? Yes, they should.

English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens - it is an imposition on the state.

To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

When California passes a law saying that English is the official language, it can only mean one thing: That English is no longer the official language.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

Try not to be either intimidated by or a captive of jargon. Even though it's language, and language is about communication, it often exists actually to obfuscate and to control power and not to communicate.

I don't know that hearing people have ever felt that experience of truly being left out. They have easy communication, while deaf people can't join in. It takes more time to communicate with us.

I chose English-speaking and English-thinking people to take decisions for Hindi programmes. It was a mistake.

Bilingualism used to have an undeservedly bad reputation; then it got an undeservedly exalted one.

Speaking Spanish isn't a benefit in Hollywood.

Speaking and writing English perfectly should not be a privilege. To those who try to politicize this matter, I tell them now, do not mess with the future of our children.

I unfortunately don't speak French, but my wife is now fluent in English, which really reflects rather badly on me.

So what's really behind the 'English Only' Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.

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.

Language remains a formidable frontier in the legacy of slavery.