Mother Tongue Quotes

Silence is become his mother tongue.

When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

We're one race. No matter our religion, beliefs, mother tongue, or skin color.

A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

"What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt." I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue than be master of all the languages in Europe.

A grandmaster must memorize thousands of chess duels in his head, as these are for him what words of the mother tongue are to the ordinary people and what notes are to a musician.

Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.

The mother tongue is propaganda.

They call our language the mother tongue because the father seldom gets to speak.

Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It's the language of the soul.

This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

For us Indians, I don't think English can ever exude that magic of emotions which our mother tongue can.

The rhythm of my body is the same as my mother tongue. It is in this rhythm where I find sanctity, that I can return to my mother who is everywhere in the universe.

What is a nation without a mother tongue?

The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity.

After studying the Hungarian language for years, I can confidently conclude that had Hungarian been my mother tongue, it would have been more precious. Simply because through this extraordinary, ancient and powerful language it is possible to precisely describe the tiniest differences and the most secretive tremors of emotions.

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.

Symptoms are the body's mother tongue; signs are in a foreign language.

I'm at the age when my friends have started having kids, and when my first good friend had a baby, the first time I picked up her daughter I spoke in French. I didn't even think about it. It just came out. Maybe it's because it's my mother tongue?

If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide.

The hardest thing is being with other people — it's like they're on a different wavelength, but only you know it. They talk about their lives and what's wrong with them, and you kind of, like, just let them go. It's a whole different language, and you've got to remember that you can only respond in their mother tongue. It's really hard to relate.

Friends started saying, "Oh, don't come. No vengas. It's dangerous for us, and we live here." Then there's also the issue, if you go back, and you happen to be Mexican-American, you get treated very differently [in Mexico] than if you're blond. If you say something wrong, they say, "Why don't you learn your mother tongue?"

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Letters to the editors of English and American newspapers often contain expressions of horror about the new terms that creep into the language, and these expressions are usually accompanied by dire predictions about ruination of the mother tongue.

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.

Chess was Capablanca's mother tongue.

See that your children are properly educated in the rudiments of their mother tongue, and then let them proceed to higher branches of learning.

I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River, when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

Language is wine upon the lips.

I learnt to sing in Bengali, my mother tongue, then went on to sing in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati and every possible Indian language.

Welsh is my mother tongue, and my children speak it. If you come and live in this community you'll work out pretty quickly that it's beneficial to learn the language, because if you're going to the pub or a cafe you need to be a part of the local life.

It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man.

People over the age of thirty were born before the digital revolution really started. We've learned to use digital technology-laptops, cameras, personal digital assistants, the Internet-as adults, and it has been something like learning a foreign language. Most of us are okay, and some are even expert. We do e-mails and PowerPoint, surf the Internet, and feel we're at the cutting edge. But compared to most people under thirty and certainly under twenty, we are fumbling amateurs. People of that age were born after the digital revolution began. They learned to speak digital as a mother tongue.

I am not ashamed to reply to you in my mother tongue, however imperfectly, and am glad to be able to show that my fatherland means more to me than anything else

All the children in the world, when they go to school, have the right to study in their mother tongue. But we go to school and run into literary Arabic as children. It sounds like a foreign language. The words for "house" or "table" or "lamp" are not the same as the words we use at home, and most of the other words are alien to children at school. Classical Arabic is one of the prisons of the Arab world.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages

... Who alive can say 'Thou art no Poet - mayst not tell thy dreams'? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved, And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

[My mother tongue is] Albanian. But, I am equally fluent in Bengali (language of Calcutta) and English.

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.

I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor

I recognize but one mental acquisition as a necessary part of the education of a lady or gentlemen, namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue.

Musical ability is not an inborn talent but an ability which can be developed. Any child who is properly trained can develop musical ability just as all children develop the ability to speak their mother tongue. The potential of every child is unlimited.