This paper is written in response to a paper by Maria Rivera on issues of language and identity. I give an autobiographical account of my own experiences in relation to language identity and colonialism. I relate language and issues of alienation during the colonial time and I reflect on how that past is still currently distorting the way we look at our local language. I depict some episodes that, although they cannot be generalized, show how colonialism still deforms our cultural liberty. I conclude that only with cultural emancipation can we teach in a truly contextualized manner and do research based on our context. Only with cultural liberty we can be emancipated in the context of globalisation.