ABSTRACT
The voice of the land is in our language. (National First Nations Elders/ Language Gathering, Mi 'gmaq Nation, Canada)
104 CHAPTER 3
in our souls than the language we inherit It liberates our thoughts unfolds our mind and softens our life. (Paulus Utsi (born 1918), 1996: 111, translated by Roland Thorstensson)
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. (Rudyard Kipling, 1923)
It is easier to divest a nation of all its guns than it is to rob it of its language. Machine-guns will fall silent sooner than the loquacious mouths that raise so very different words up to the sky. (Kosztolanyi 1987: 27)
It was not by chance that in Germany, the murderers in power were burning books (before burning in crematoriums the corpses of millions of victims). It was not by chance that the Francoists in Spain shot to death Lorca, who was poetry itself. (Clancier 1996: 28)
This tongue of mine I use to appreciate taste; how can one taste with someone else's tongue? (From a Wolof poem by Useyno Gey Cosaan; quoted in Fishman 1997: 292)
What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath? (From Will iam Shakespeare, Richard II 1.3; Mowbray when sentenced to banishment from his country and language)
Remember what is good: Your language. Your tradition. Your family, A l l the relations of the World. We are not by ourselves, We are in Unison, Watch . . . (From a poem by Damon Clarke, Hualapai; quoted in Cantoni 1996: 95)
Tzvetan Todorov, a neighbour from Paris, published a now-famous book entitled "Nous et les autres". But "Nous et nous", who will be writing this more complicated book?
