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Many concepts, principles, actions, processes, rules and methods simply do not make sense if one thinks in Yorùbá on the basis of the spatiotemporal classical logic that is encoded into the English language.

— Kọ́lá Abímbọ́lá

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Source: His argument is that translating or interpreting ideas between the two languages can require more than substituting words because the underlying conceptual structures may differ.
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More by Kọ́lá Abímbọ́lá

The implication of the foregoing is clear: doing philosophy in the English language will yield a completely different set of rules, principles and standards from doing philosophy in the Yorùbá language because these languages individuate and identify in radically different ways.

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More quotes by Kọ́lá Abímbọ́lá

The growth of philosophy in Africa is leading to the demise of African philosophy!

The primary logic of Yorùbá language is not classical; it is intuitionistic or sortal at base, with a secondary or supplementary layer of classical logic.

Translation from Yorùbá into English and vice versa is fun! You see and understand things differently by code-switching in and out of the two languages. But at the same time, it is perilous!

All philosophy is cultural philosophy.

As long as we continue to conduct philosophy in Africa solely (or mainly) in European languages, the concepts, categories, and worldviews embedded within our philosophical products will predominantly be European and not African.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kọ́lá Abímbọ́lá (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.