Question

Explain the statement, 'When a people are enslaved as long as they hold fast to their language it is as if they had the key to their prison'​

Answer 1

It is absolutely true when people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language, it is if they have key to their prison. Love and loyalty to one’s motherland and mother-tongue are the cornerstone of one’s identity and self-esteem. Anyone who can’t love his country and national language can’t love anything and anyone in this world. Our country and language give us the most in our life; if we can’t love them, we are highly ungrateful beings in that case.
Many countries in the world gained freedom from imperialistic countries by holding fast to their mother-tongue. Our country, India also faced imposition of other languages by the oppressors, but our freedom fighters held fast to their vernaculars and national language and finally achieved freedom.
In the chapter Last Lesson by Alphonso Daudet we find linguistic chauvinism displayed by both the German and the French. Germans imposed their language on the French; whereas the French were worried and sad about losing their mother-tongue. They made all the plans to protect their mother-tongue.