Love Quote by Jose Rizal

A “stinking fish” is an insult with a purpose: it’s visceral, almost comic in its cruelty, and it refuses to let linguistic loyalty sound like a polite hobby. Rizal isn’t praising language as a museum artifact; he’s weaponizing it as a test of dignity. The line works because it jolts the reader out of the comfortable neutrality of “I’m just more practical in Spanish” (or today, English) and frames that choice as moral surrender. If you won’t defend your own tongue, he implies, you’re not simply switching tools - you’re volunteering for erasure.

The intent is nationalist, but not merely sentimental. In late Spanish colonial Philippines, language was a gate: Spanish conferred education, status, and legal power; local languages were treated as provincial noise. Rizal’s subtext targets the colonial mental habit where advancement means distancing yourself from your people’s speech. “Far worse than a brute” stings because brutes can’t choose; the colonized subject can. The shame is aimed at the voluntary collaborator inside the self, the part that learns to sneer at its own origin.

Calling love of one’s tongue “love” also matters. It’s not only about vocabulary; it’s about a public allegiance to the stories, jokes, prayers, and grievances that a language carries. Rizal, a writer, is defending the infrastructure of memory. Lose the tongue, and you don’t just lose words - you lose the ability to name your world without asking permission.