Skip to main content

Happy International Mother Language Day!

Little girl at Shreeshitalacom Lower Secondary School in Kaski, Nepal leads class in pronunciation of alphabet.
Image Source
Saturday, February 21, 2015 is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s International Mother Language Day Celebration. A special event will be held this year in Paris, France, including opening ceremony speeches and debates and the theme for this year's celebration is "Inclusion In and Through Education: Language Counts."

From the event's webpage:
As the EFA Goals are far from attained due, in part, to the difficulties of reaching the worst-off segments of the population, the debate around language and education becomes more central. Linguistic minorities are often among the most marginalized populations, with little or poor access to quality education. When they do have access to education, learners from these communities are often either excluded from opportunities to pursue their educational career beyond primary or pushed out of education because the language of instruction is not their own.
UNESCO's Mother Language Day has been observed on February 21 since 2000 and was created with the intention "to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world." The date is in honor of the 1952 deaths of student demonstrators fighting for Bangla to be recognized as one of the two national languages of (then) Pakistan in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh.

More information can be found on UNESCO's Mother Language Day page.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 20, 2015 at 12:14 PM

    Happy Mother Tangue Day to all immigrants and displaced people around the world!
    Gëzuar Ditën e Gjuhës së Mëmës gjithë shqiptarëve nëpër botë!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

The moderators of the Linguis Europae blog reserve the right to delete any comments that they deem inappropriate. This may include, but is not limited to, spam, racist or disrespectful comments about other cultures/groups or directed at other commenters, and explicit language.

Popular posts from this blog

Les langues sont belles : Codeswitchons!

by Katherine Stegman-Frey Katherine Stegman-Frey is a graduate student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois. She is planning on teaching English and Spanish as a second language and is interested in language and culture and how humans use them. She wrote this blog entry as a student in 418 ‘Language and Minorities in Europe.' En 2015, du 14 au 22 mars, on a fêté la 20e semaine de la langue française et de la Francophonie.  Comme contribution, le CSA (le Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel) a affiché un clip sur Youtube où il s’agit du code-switching et de l’emprunt lexical de l’anglais au français. Il va sans dire que le sujet de l’utilisation des mots anglais, des anglicismes, dans les interactions françaises est vraiment vivant et toujours disputé.  En même temps, l’emprunt des mots n’est pas un nouveau phénomène pour les deux côtés de la Manche.  Il existe depuis longtemps et il y a beaucoup d’exemples dans l’histoire.  On trouve quelques n...
Post a Comment
Read more

ITALIAN IN PUERTO RICO? EXPLORING ITALIAN AND CORSICAN IMMIGRATION TO SOUTHERN PUERTO RICO

by Erin Trybulec Erin Trybulec is a Master’s Student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois. Erin's future plans include pursuing a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics. She wrote this blog post in 418 'Language and Minorities in Europe' in Fall 2021. Note: Research in Progress Puerto Rico or “ La isla del encanto ” (the island of enchantment) as it is lovingly known in Spanish, is relatively small in terms of its physical size, measuring around 100 miles by 35 miles (Telemundo PR, 2018); however, the island is home to an immense amount of culture and rich history, which also happens to include influence from Italy and Corsica, two nations with an intertwined past and linguistic mutually intelligibility (Blackwood, 2008). Although the topic of immigration in Puerto Rico is less discussed, a careful look at historical figures and buildings around the island reveal some remnants of their influence. Italo-Puerto Rican and/or Corsican-Puerto Rican roots can most commonly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The French pronoun “iel” and what it reveals about the French’s relationship to their language

Image by Ted Eytan/Creative Commons  ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/27937114851 )  by Amy John Amy John (she/her) is a recent University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate with a double major in French Studies and Psychology. She plans to continue using French and to pursue a career in social work or a social work adjacent field. She wrote this blog post for 418 “Languages and Minorities in Europe” in Spring 2023. So, what is “iel” and why is it important? “Iel” is the French version of the English singular gender-neutral pronoun “they.” It is a combination of “il” (he) and “elle” (she) (Wagener, 2021). “Iel” and “they” are important for similar reasons. It helps us refer to people when we don’t know their gender without assuming their gender. Often, “he” or “il” are the automatic pronouns used to refer to an unknown person. For example, board game instructions often explain the game in terms of “he” as opposed to “they.” Doing this excludes everyone who doesn’t ...
Post a Comment
Read more