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Motivation Quote by Martina Hingis

"I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there"

About this Quote

There is something quietly defiant in Hingis keeping Czech alive at home: it frames identity as a practice, not a passport. For an athlete whose public life was built in a borderless arena - tournaments, sponsors, flags stitched to warm-up jackets - this line grounds her in a private routine. Language here isn’t nostalgia; it’s continuity. You don’t “remember” a mother tongue so much as you keep it running, like maintaining a muscle that would otherwise atrophy under the pressure of global English and the branding needs of international sport.

The intent is simple, almost stubborn: I was born there, so I still belong to that origin in a way that doesn’t need permission. But the subtext is more interesting. Hingis’s career unfolded amid the messy politics of Central European identity: post-Cold War mobility, shifting national narratives, the expectation that elite athletes neatly represent one country at a time. Speaking Czech with her parents is a refusal to let that tidiness win. It’s also an intimate claim about family hierarchy: with coaches, media, and fans you adopt the lingua franca; with parents you revert to the language that formed you. That choice signals respect, comfort, and a boundary around what fame can’t touch.

Culturally, the quote lands because it’s mundane. No grand statement about heritage, no melodrama about roots. Just a domestic habit that implies a whole story about migration, assimilation, and the way elite success can thin out your personal history unless you actively hold onto it.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Hingis, Martina. (2026, January 15). I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-still-speak-czech-with-my-parents-because-i-was-114735/

Chicago Style
Hingis, Martina. "I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-still-speak-czech-with-my-parents-because-i-was-114735/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-still-speak-czech-with-my-parents-because-i-was-114735/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Martina Hingis on Speaking Czech with Her Parents
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About the Author

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Martina Hingis (born September 30, 1980) is a Athlete from Czech Republic.

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