Quote by José Rizal: “He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish.”

Rizal believed that language is not just a communication tool — it carries a people's history, identity, and dignity. To abandon your own language, especially under colonial pressure to speak the colonizer's tongue, is a form of self-betrayal that goes against something deeply human.

Rizal wrote during the late Spanish colonial period in the Philippines, when indigenous languages and culture were systematically suppressed in favour of Spanish. The ilustrado class — educated Filipinos like Rizal — were navigating the contradiction between colonial education and national identity.

Filipino nationalist, polymath, and writer whose novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo exposed Spanish colonial abuses and ignited the Philippine independence movement. He was executed by Spanish colonial authorities in 1896 at age 35. He is considered the national hero of the Philippines.