21 Feb. It is celebrated as International Mother Language Day all over the world.
It aims to promote linguistic, cultural, diversity and multi language. The theme of this day of 2023 is multilingual education, a necessary to transform education. Programs organized by UNESCO have to know about the capacity of multilingualism.
The idea of celebrating International Mother Language Day was given by Bangladesh.
In 1999 UNESCO was approved in the general conference. Since the year 2000, this day is considered as the world’s biggest festival.
Significantly, 40% of the population globally has their own language, which they speak or understand. UNESCO encourages multilingual education based on the mother tongue or first language.
The discussion will be based on the following three interconnected themes.
- Enhancing multilingual education as a necessity to transform education in multilingual contexts.
- Supporting learning through multilingual education and multilingualism in fast changing global contexts and in crisis situations.
- Revitalizing languages that are disappearing or are threatened with extinction.
History of celebrating international mother language.
On 21 Feb 1952, a student and social worker of Bangladesh’s Dhaka University protested against Pakistan’s language policy.
Bangladeshi Bengali wanted to give status to Bengali language at the national level.
In which the government also had to agree and Bengali was given the status of national language. Many youths were martyred in this movement. To pay tribute to him, UNESCO decided to celebrate International Mother Language Day on 17 Nov 1999.
According to Sayuktarashtra there are 6,900 languages spoken in the world. Out of which 90% of the language speakers are less than 1 lakh.
There are 150 to 200 languages that are spoken by more than one million people. 60% of the world’s people speak only 30% of the main languages.
Out of which 10 major languages are Japanese, Arabic, English, Rishi, Bangla, Hindi, Portuguese, Punjabi, Spanish and Mandarin.
More than 4 thousand languages are estimated to be extinct in the world.
India is a country with diverse cultures. According to the ethnology of the world language database in the 24th edition, out of 20 languages spoken in the world, 6 languages are from India.
Hindi is the 3rd most spoken language spoken by 61.5 million people.
Bengali is the 7th most spoken language in the world. Which is spoken by 26 crore 5 lakh people. 17 crore is Urdu spoken by 5 lakh people. At 15th no Marathi is spoken by 9 crore 3 lakh people. Telugu at 16th place is spoken by 8 crore 1 lakh and at 19th place is Tamil language.
