International Mother
Language Day is an observance held annually on 21st February worldwide to
promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. It
was first announced by UNESCO on 17th November 1999. Its observance was also
formally recognized by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution
establishing 2008 as the International Year of Languages.
International Mother
Language Day has been observed every year since 2000 February to promote
linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. The date represents the
day in 1952 when students from different educational institutes such as Dhaka
University, Jagannath University, Dhaka Medical College were demonstrating for
recognition of their language, Bengali, as one of the two national languages of
the then Pakistan, when many were shot and killed by police in Dhaka - the
present capital of Bangladesh.
It is estimated that
there are 6,500 spoken languages in the world. Of these 13 are the most
populous languages like Mandarin, English and Hindi. Around 2,000 of the world
languages have less than 1,000 speakers and many are facing a similar fate.
Coming to my mother
tongue Telugu, there are many Telugu people who cannot write or read Telugu.
There are some who cannot even speak Telugu. However strong the reasons might
be for this situation, it does not sound good.
English is a very
important and a must language in today’s world and naturally, our society has taken to it very seriously and our
education system is mostly in English. Mastery in English will certainly help
in one's career and in our society which
speaks different languages and English serves as a common language to connect
them. But to preserve our roots, culture and the language of our parents we
must learn and respect our mother tongue. While amidst our family and relatives
where there is no need to speak in English we must speak in our mother tongue.
Some parents consider it stylish and posh to speak in English even within the
family and among relatives. They even force their babies to utter their first
words in English and continue to speak only in English, deliberately avoiding
mother tongue. I think this is not necessary, mother tongue spoken mostly in
the family helps children in learning
other languages faster and better. Like us, our children will also learn
English much more effectively if they continue to develop their mother tongue
at the same time, so they can become bilingual and as they grow
multilingual…like us.
No comments:
Post a Comment