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Quotes from Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

1938–2025 Kenya

← All quotes by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

3 quotes

What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986)

But African languages refused to die. They would not simply go to the way of Latin to become the fossils for linguistic archaeology to dig up, classify, and argue about the international conferences.

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986)

African countries, as colonies and even today as neo-colonies, came to be defined and to define themselves in terms of the languages of Europe: English-speaking, French-speaking or Portuguese-speaking African countries.

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.