International Mother Language Day

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International Mother Language Day in Sydney, Australia

The International Day of the mother tongue is one of the UNESCO exclaimed memorial to "promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism ." It has been celebrated annually on February 21st since 2000 .

purpose

Against the background that over half of all languages ​​spoken worldwide are threatened with extinction, UNESCO has on the one hand committed itself to promoting languages ​​as a symbol of the cultural identity of the speakers, and on the other hand it is also concerned with foreign language teaching and multilingualism as the key to mutual understanding and respect.

The annual memorial day is used to draw attention to minority languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers. In many cases, these languages ​​are no longer passed on to subsequent generations and are forgotten. Many languages, some of which have fewer than a hundred speakers, have not even been recorded and documented. The focus in 2005 was on sign language for the deaf and Braille for the blind.

Historical background

The Shaheed Minar in Dhaka reminiscent of the Bangladeshi students who left in 1952 their lives in demonstrations of the year

In 1952 the government decided the then Pakistan the collection of Urdu the sole official language, although it was mother tongue for only 3% of the population. In East Pakistan , Bengali was spoken almost exclusively . During protests in Dhaka on February 21, police shot at demonstrators; there were deaths.

The continuing linguistic and cultural oppression of East Pakistan finally led to the secession and the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971 . Since then, February 21 has been celebrated there as the Day of Martyrs . At the request of Bangladesh, this day was made International Mother Language Day in November 1999 by UNESCO. On May 16, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly also proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.unesco.de. Retrieved June 26, 2013 .