Siyanda Mohutsiwa

"I am studying mathematics because I wanted to study something as difficult as it is useless"

"It is easier to want a better, higher paying job than to ask ourselves what happened to the idealism that had once dominated our youth and fuelled our desire to change the world"

"It is easier to want a better bed than it is to lie in it and wonder what within us has driven away every partner that lay in our own bed at one point or another"

"Because, it is far easier to want a nicer, more expensive outfit than it is to ask ourselves why we can never conceive that we are enough as we are"

"Agonising over which property to purchase as your first house is tough — I’ll give you that: but that’s a far easier choice to make than say, deciding who to share your entire life with. And that’s when materialism becomes convenient. Now, everything in your eyes becomes commoditised. It can be listed now"

"You can list the traits you want in a life partner like you list your groceries. In bite-sized desires: acquirable and uncomplicated. As if “honest” is a category in a shopping isle, you can walk down it, pop a partner in your cart, and tick “honest” off the list"

"That’s why we drape our souls in shallow aspirations. That’s why some of us escape the hum-drum of desiring life partners for child-rearing. It is all far too daunting. Un-manageable. So we shorten the list and chase men with money and power or women with good looks and sexual prowess, and we ask from each other only tangible things"

"We fear the pain of failure, and that’s why it’s easier to want things. We don’t want to examine our parenting techniques; thinking back to painful moments in our childhoods when we vowed never to become our parents"

"Language is about practicality. This is a fact. The first homoerecti that invented language did not do so because it made their insides feel warm to release a series of grunts and vowels into the air between them. No, they did it because they needed to get a certain job done"

"And if your plan is to save your language so that your grandchildren can hear that the story of the tortoise and the hare sounds so much better in your language then whatever your plans are to save it are hereby doomed"

"in order to save your language it must become a necessity for anyone living in your country/community to speak it in order to thrive and survive. Instilling a pride in it can only do so much"

"Growth is better than preservation"

"If we wanted our languages to grow we would have entire institutions dedicated to bringing our languages up to date with technology and everyday sayings. This is the essence of practicality"

"Ultimately, I hope a new dimension is added to the debate on language “preservation” — that we do not focus on feel-good campaigns that do nothing but shame our children for not seeing the point of learning their parents’ languages but rather shift our mind-set to the question of growth and practicality"