Dear Members of the UC San Diego Family: 

International Mother Language Day (IMLD) is celebrated throughout the world every February 21. The purpose of IMLD is to promote the awareness of --and respect for-- language and cultural diversity across the world. For more information, please see the United Nations Website dedicated to this event.

To commemorate this day as a testament to UC San Diego's commitment to diversity and inclusion we, in conjunction with the Ethnic Studies and Linguistics Department at UC San Diego, will have a celebration by the Sun God between 12-3pm and will host a Zoom event from 4-5pm here.

In our celebration by the Sun God we will have information about the history of the event and interactive active activities to promote the learning and maintenance of languages, including a booth where you can record a saying in your native or second language. Our Zoom event will have a panel of presenters highlighting different languages: Kumeyaay (Prof. Rodríguez), Semitic Languages (Prof. Rose), Sudanese Arabic (Prof. Aldawi), the History of Hebrew (Prof. Glaser), Linguistic Intolerance in the USA (Prof. Zentella). We will also invite community members to talk about their language maintenance and language learning experiences.

Your help in ensuring the successful celebration of IMLD this February 21 at UC San Diego will be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Gracias. Merci. Salamat. Efcharistó. Xièxiè. Mahadsanid. Shukraan. Dankeschön. Cảm ơn bạn. Dhanyavaad. Gomabseubnida. Teşekkür ederim….  

FOR IMLD 2024 at UC San Diego, 

Prof. Emerita Ana Celia Zentella, Ethnic Studies

Rula Kassicieh, Linguistics

Dr. Alicia Muñoz Sánchez, Linguistics

Dr. Alejandro Rodríguez Aispuro, Linguistics

Internationalmld@gmail.com

We have collected video and audio recordings of over 50 languages in our community so far:

Akan, American Sign Language, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cahuilla, Cantonese, Catalan, Chamorro, English, Esperanto, Fiji Hindi, Filipino/Tagalog, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Gua, Guugu Yimithirr, Hawaiian, Hindi, Ifugao, Ilokano, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Kumeyaay, Lao, Mandarin, Nepali, Norwegian, Oromo, Persian, Pijin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sambali, San Juan Piñas Mixtec, Schwälmer, Serbian, Sinhala, Spanish, Somali, Swahili, Taishanese, Taiwanese Sign Language, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkish, Tzotzil, Urdu, and Vietnamese. 

See recordings of UC San Diego community members welcoming you in this site's home menu.

Thank you for your interest! 

To participate in our events, please join us at UC San Diego by the Sun God from 12-3pm or our Zoom celebration at 4pm here. You can also send a voice or video recording here with a saying in your native/second language. If you would like to volunteer, please e-mail us at amunoz@ucsd.edu.