International Mother Language Day : All You Need to Know : HISTORY and IMPORTANCE

International mother language day is celebrated every year on 21st February since 2000. First announced by UNESCO on 17th November 1999. Mother language day is a part of broader initiative “to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by the people of the world”

UNESCO believes in the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies. The day signifies how intergovernmental body like UNESCO believes and understand the importance of multilingualism.

THEME OF THE YEAR:

The theme of the year 2022 international mother language day is “USING TECHNOLOGY FOR MULTILINGUAL LEARNING: challenges and opportunities”.

The experiences of COVID-19 especially in the field of education, technology plays a vital role and, makes it easy and efficient for the students. The UN understand the importance of technology and its potential to address some of the greatest challenges in the field of education.

HISTORY: International Mother Language Day

It was the idea of Bangladesh to set up international mother language day, UNESCO approved this initiative in 1999 at 30th UNESCO General Conference. And then celebrated for the first time on 21st February, 2000.

IMPORTANCE: International Mother Language Day

According to UNITED NATIONS, an estimated 6500 languages are spoken in the worldwide and 43% of them are engendered. Only a few are included in the education system

More than 19500 languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongue, according to census data. There are 121 languages which are spoken by 10,000 or more people in India.

Linguistic diversity is increasingly coming under threat as more and more languages disappeared. The UN reports 405 of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak.

With a growing understanding of how important it is to preserve one’s own mother language, now native languages are being introduced in early schooling and more commitment to its development in public life can be observed nowadays, progress can be seen in multilingual education.

-Deborika Bhattacharjee,

Content Writer,

BONGAIGAON TIMES