H. Russell Bernard

"Languages have always come and gone. Neither the language of Jesus nor that of Caesar are spoken today. But languages seem to be disappearing faster than ever before."

"There are 63 officially recognized indigenous languages in Mexico, but there are at least 282 indigenous languages spoken in Mexico...We see the different languages in these families referred to as "varieties" or “dialects” in the literature. Nobody would think today of calling Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, French and Portuguese "varieties" of Latin."

"Teaching people to read primers and Bibles does not produce authors; it produces readers. Printing presses and publishing houses produce authors. This rule is no different today for nonliterate languages than it was in late medieval times in Europe."

"I see nothing useful or charming about remaining monolingual .. if that results in being shut out of the national economy."

"Computers will not preserve cultures. But they can be used to foster cultural pluralism and to provide people everywhere with the power to make their own bilingual educational materials, or to print pamphlets on how to grow better rice, or to record for future generations the customs and lore of those now alive."

"Werent humans domesticated by the requirements of the plants and animals themselves?"