We must teach science in the mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity. It will not be an activity in which all people can participate.
When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.
If I don't make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, 'Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.' And in many urban areas, it's already happening.
Mothers have always held such symbolic weight in determining a person's worth. Your mother tongue, your motherland, your mother's values - these things can qualify or disqualify you from attaining myriad American dreams: love, fluency, citizenship, legitimacy, acceptance, success, freedom.
For us Indians, I don't think English can ever exude that magic of emotions which our mother tongue can.
What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.
I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor.
Here's my advice to my brown friends: The next time you're on an airplane in the U.S., just speak your mother tongue. That way, no one knows what you're saying. Life goes on.
Marathi is my mother tongue; there's a certain comfort level speaking in it.
Things that are so hard for people, like playing championship-level Go and poker, have turned out to be relatively easy for the machines. Yet at the same time, the things that are easiest for a person - like making sense of what they see in front of them, speaking in their mother tongue - the machines really struggle with.
