Suicidal English
A front to bulldoze the world?
The humble English language inches
Its way round the world picking up
A snobbishness that many ignorant
Souls would die to keep as if it is
The language of their souls
Particularly among Asiatics
Where some happily give up their
Mother tongue just to flaunt
Their mastery of a tongue
Which carries no historical naunces
Of their own, no cultural sounds
Which have taken an eternity.
To emerge in their own lingo;
A treasure then blindly
Carted away in the backyard,
A superficial sophistication keenly pursued;
Its attainment accentuating the
Shallowness and inadequacy of
Their own personality, identity and growth.
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Related quotes
Classical Tamil World Conference (Semmozhi Tamizh Ulaga Manadu)
Through you, I came, Mother;
Lucky was my birth in Bharat, my Motherland;
I was nurtured and grew up by mother’s milk;
I drew strength from my mother’s love.
I knew the world through my mother-tongue;
I learnt most things by mother-tongue;
Thanks to my dear earthly mother;
Thanks to my Mother, Tamil!
The place where I was born was Tamilnadu;
Tamil is my mother-tongue;
Tamil was my first breath;
My first cry was in Tamil.
My last breath shall be Tamil;
My life will be for Tamil;
I am proud of my mother-tongue, Tamil;
I am proud to be a Tamilian!
Tamil is a great language;
Tamil is a popular language;
Tamil is an ancient language;
Tamil is a classical language.
Tamil is a world language;
Tamil is a language of Gods!
Dedicated to ‘Classical Tamil World Conference,2010, Coimbatore’
Copyright by Dr John Celes 23-06-2010
poem by John Celes
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Language lost
My language lost
My identity lost.
Excuse me
I could not save my language.
I am forced to use foreign tongue
I am forced to shun all that are mine.
Excuse me
I could not save my language
I could not save my life
And I am not fine.
I want to talk in my mother tongue
I want to live in my home
I want to tell my Father to come and rescue.
My language lost
My identity lost.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
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I Need To Hear!
I want to hear.
how much your language is.
His way to express so soft.
And how English is so touching! And so tender! In your voice.
because my, is so rude!
and yours, is so spherical
and when I expected for one R
Always comes a Th
so smooth!
That´s confused me!
that reminds me when the smoothness of your tongue meet mine.
And overcome and resign me!
Only in English! ! !
two famous tongue can be meet.
mellow and back words.
Only for you, because your wet time i insist! And you have a beautiful weather! ! ! Can unite drops and sounds.
Oh! No, beautiful language!
Oh! wrong again? ? ? What beautiful wet tongue! ! ! !
poem by Mirna Morgan
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Who's To Blame
Oh Mother Ghana; Mother Ghana
What has happened to you?
What has happened to your culture?
They say we've fold arms against 'Vernacular' language
Instead opened arms wide to 'English' language
Oh Mother Ghana Mother Ghana
Why?
At school, we are taught the things we do not know
By the 'English' language
Why not 'Vernacular' language?
Oh Mother Ghana, Oh Mother Ghana
Where is your true identity as pure African?
Where is your pride as true Ghanaian?
Oh Mother Ghana, Oh Mother Ghana,
Day after day
When we put on the uniform as students
We are forbidden to speak 'Vernacular' language
Instead the 'English' language
Why Mother Ghana, why Mother Ghana?
When we speak 'Vernacular' language; your culture,
They say: 'Speak English' someone's culture!
When we speak 'English' that someone's culture
They say: 'Abrofosem; speak vernacular language' your culture!
Oh Mother Ghana, Oh Mother Ghana
Who's to blame?
'English or Vernacular language'
Oh Mother Ghana; Oh Mother Ghana.
poem by Francis Julian Zewu
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Ramdas, Start Talking With New Language!
Ramdas, start Talking with New Language,
Talk with people and every life,
That language which can take world to new dimension,
Or world shine with beauty and freshness,
Be the one among builders of new world!
Language of love and acceptance,
language that comes from the
depth of the heart,
affectionate and humble,
language that is full of gratitude,
Free of doubts and fear, Language of smile and presence
of mind,
Mindfulness which uses silence
and words well balanced,
the world to new dimensions,
Make world Look like a new world in the light of wisdom!
poem by Ramdas Bhandarkar
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Not a barrier- the language
Music has no language,
I can enjoy your tongue.
Glances have no language,
I can understand their intentions.
Touches have no language,
I can feel their meanings.
Not in same tongue though we are
No less do we communicate.
20.01.99, Palakkad
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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The tree teaches the land's language
the trees -
they impart
the land's language
stored in the earth
unloosening it
in our tongue
they dance
round and round
round and round
in this chore
feed this brain
with words
the body carries
them back
to the land
and they are picked up
by the trees
that go round and round
round and round
in its chore to
impart the land's language
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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In the Same Cell
(They are Tamils. I am a Sinhalese in same country called Sri Lanka.)
They murmur and exchange
In their own mother tongue
I was a dumb person
Because of the language
I talk
In my tongue
He reacts and learns
As he knows little bit
In the same cell of same act
Between the death and life
We passed time without a meaning.
Looks at me
Makes change and
Closes with loyalty
Clearing face with smiles
Thereafter
We
Composed words
With crippling time
Exchanging a lot
Among each other.
As mutes sometimes
Had to be with another's
Silence was the greatest tongue
Understood hearts to each other
Danger beckons untold secrets
Came out at the sleepless nights
Identifying the souls.
The image changed
He and I brought
We together drew a new picture
Point of the pen of language
Taking the colors of trust
While the time
We imprisoned in the camp
Called "Boossa Detention camp"
poem by Udaya R. Tennakoon
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Love For Language
Sound denotes the tune
Tune shapes the word
Words sprout of strong feelings
Feelings have no limit, no boundary
But it is clothed by the language
Language endows with the identity
Identity confers recognition
Recognition offers self esteem
To the human beings in the society
Thus everyone has to devote time
and give all out efforts for protection
restoration and growth of one's own language.
poem by Ratnakar Rout
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The Language That The Poor Wants To Speak
do you speak good English?
do you take pride in it and then use it to impress others
and swindle them
into a belief that they are inferior?
they have feelings too
of humiliation
which even in such a sad state
wish that their humiliation
speak good English still
they always think that English will give them
a good job
a better standing in the society
a flare of fashionable tongue
you make them cry
but still they want to speak that cry in English too
foolish!
but can you blame them?
you who hold that power and might
you who have taken all what they once had
and made them
worse within
themselves
despite which,
they still want to be like you
to speak like you
a god
how sad!
you have never known the language of love
the grammar of generosity
the syntax of sympathy
that language that good English
sometimes has forgotten
to utter
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Ah Goo Tongue
The queerest languages known to man,
Sanscrit, Hebrew, Hindoostan,
Are all translated and made as free
And comprehensive as A B C.
Yet the oldest language talked or sung,
The strange mysterious Ah Goo tongue,
The royal language of Babyland
No man living can understand.
Every soul in the world to-day
Was one time anchored in Babyland Bay,
And quarantined there for a year or more
Before he even could step on shore.
And everybody in Babyland Bay
Talks the Ah Goo tongue, so people say,
But once on land-why not a word
Do they understand of it when 'tis heard.
For the fairy rulers of Babyland
Who guard the kingdom on every hand,
Have willed that no one shall keep the key
Who crosses into the Grown-up Sea.
So the sweet court language has never been made
A common parlance of strife or trade,
But is kept in the kingdom where natives come
Versed in the language of Babydom.
They are all of them royal and that is how
The Grown-up people all kneel and bow,
When they hear that language talked or sung-
The strange mysterious Ah Goo tongue.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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An Inspiring Officer in Indian Administration
I bow my head to Iraianbu
the honest officer with a lot of nerve
and a wonderful descendent
of a glorious galaxy of writers
like Maraimalaiar and Pavanar.
He thinks deep and wide
and speaks in Chaste Tamil
and in fluent, flexible English.
He creates works of eternity
to offer at the feet of our Mother Tamil.
Losing touch with our Mother tongue
we struggle to go deep in other tongue
and sommer try to come out with some pearls
which would tell the world
a circle of novices in Chennai
are knitting sweet-smelling flowers
into colourful garlands
for the world-tongue to wear
with sheer pleasure in abundant measure.
poem by Rajendran Muthiah
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I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor.
quote by Max von Sydow
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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A Prayer
the earth the skies and the beyond in short the world
the unconscious and th preconscious and the conscious and the beyond
they baffle our imagination and hence they do not exist
but in language
And language creates things that are impossible to comprehend
They are all nothing
n othing is our mother
there is a nothing inthe womb of nothing
wherefrom the functional world of touch and tongue sprang
I pray to that nothing in whose neighbourhood
all our crudities vanish-call it death?
Ipray to that nothing
May it enrich our wits
Have you never reached the end of your wit? I DO NOT PRAY FOR YOU THEN
poem by Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
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Different Languages
On the factory floor
Two ethnic women speak
In their native tongue
A language that flows beautifully
Their tongues roll
And the impact of a d or a t can be felt
Amongst all their chatter
The women laugh
That’s when others start to look
The sound of the language
May not be to everyone’s delight
No one cares what they say
Then all of a sudden......
LAUGHTER
And everyone starts to look with fright
What are they laughing at?
Is it me is it her is it him
Looking around
What did I do wrong?
Did I forget something?
Is it my zipper?
The women continue to chat
And laugh
The laughter now becoming too much
For the annoyed man
Of only one language
He goes to the boss
And files a complaint
Please boss tell those women over there
That it is not right to speak in their tongue
The boss agrees
And we are all back to uncultured boredom
As the sound of the
Lovely t and d end
So reigns the simple sounds of
A language that doesn’t flow
And the machines
That continue to sew
poem by James Dylan
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Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.
quote by Robert Fitzgerald
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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yes, what if God does not speak english at all?
you were not born yesterday
and probably heard it before
that if your God does not speak english
then he must not be God
of course, something arrogant
hangs in the air
of this effortless superiority that
'englishers'
'english-plongplangs'
clai m, which, of course, we
always oppose and dub
as prettry dumb silly
but anyhow, yes, we are asked again
what if?
what if, this God, does not really speak English?
well, of course, he is still God
and he must not have considered the english language
that important
and i agree, even if i speak it,
i still have this language
of my soul,
albeit, in english, for you,
who does not speak my own language,
yes, of course, for you to perhaps
understand,
but i like it though, this thought
that God does not speak
the english language, lest, he may sound
so englishly, oh well,
arrogant.....
dear God
do you really...not speak english?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek — it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language — all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
quote by Toni Morrison
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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What is in a language?
Language carries in it the history of a people
The history that begins way before
The conception of that particular language
Every myth, idiom, or story told carries
In it the memories of an ancient infancy
Of a development that comes in stages
As that of a child crawling, walking
Developing a thought, a philosophy
Creating poetry and song
What is in a language is not just relevant
To the people that use it, but it is also relevant
To the entire community of languages
Like the fragments of a great puzzle
Every language has in it the bits and pieces
Lessons to be learned; things significant
To the history of mankind, things significant
To the growth and development of all
poem by LLM Mbatha
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The English Language
English reminds me of a language too bold,
Speaking this tongue is like a magical realm.
In this realm we spoke too audaciously and lovingly,
To be free and caring about the old, the very youngest old,
A fine and cosy people of strength in the body,
That soon overpowered the standards of everyday life.
English is a spoken language of England,
The old refrain from the seas of language and thought,
For the seas mix their sentences and paragraphs,
Too tired is the sea of too many friends of the water,
Water is fighting for words that carry meaning
With the life to save a slave who asks for the life of meaning.
poem by Naveed Akram
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