International Mother Language Day
UNESCO's initiative is to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism around the world.
UNESCO's Declaration of International Mother Language Day
On November 17th, 1999, UNESCO declared 21st February the International Mother Language Day in recognition of Bangladesh's Mother Language Day.
For the past 22 years, this day has been a focal point for a worldwide movement towards making individuals feel more connected to their native roots. The means of doing that has been through the development of a deeper connection of individuals with their mother language.
This picture is from a school in Bangkok where there is an annual show every year on 21st February.
UNESCO establishes 21 effective and promising educational programmes that use mother-tongue and/or minority-language instruction.
Above is a poster from the UK raising awareness about multilingualism for children.
"When we lose a language, we lose the worldview, culture and knowledge of the people who spoke it, constituting a loss to all humanity. People around the world live in direct contact with their native environment, their habitat. When the language they speak goes extinct, the rest of humanity loses their knowledge of that environment, their wisdom about the relationship between local plants and illness, their philosophical and religious beliefs as well as their native cultural expression (in music, visual art and poetry) that has enriched both the speakers of that language and others who would have encountered that culture."
"The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is. Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000.”
- Boroditsky, L. (2018). How language shapes the way we think. IRL @ UMSL.
Information compiled by: Syeda Maisarah Hoque (VI-S)