"The idea of a "Mother Tongue" has long preoccupied me, and I once wrote a lengthy paper about the relationship between Taiwanese and Mandarin entitled "How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language"." - Maitani

"The topic has now come back to me from a different angle, one that I might title "How to Remember your Mother Tongue and (Temporarily) Forget Your Global Language"." - Maitani

"The occasion for these reflections was a letter that I received from a Mexican scholar named Soledad Jimenez Tovar who spent the last five years in Germany at a Max Planck Institute and in Kazakhstan doing fieldwork. In Germany she spoke German and lots of English, and in Kazakhstan she spoke mostly Russian and some Mandarin which she used when trying to converse with the Dungans there." - Maitani