21st Feruary Mother Language Day

Mother tongue. In which you express anything and everything from the time you started speaking. Which gives you identity. In which love is expressed and for which people fight. Language is one of the most important things which make you human and your mother tongue is one among various factors which make you what you are. So does it make others also. So does it give identity to others also.

On 21st February 1952 three students had their appointment with the death. They wanted Bengali along with Urdu as the language of their state which was the part of Pakistan- East Pakistan. They sacrificed their lives for the cause of making their mother tongue recognised on the state level so it can be used in day-to-day life, in education, in media and all walks of life. As it was their mother tongue, it was their identity. It gave them power to express themselves anything and everything. Today the East Pakistan is Bangladesh and Bengali is national language. Their sacrifice didn’t go in vain.

The sacrifice didn’t go in vain for another reason. The UN declared 21st February as World Mother Language Day in the year of 1999. In the month of November that year the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed the 21st day of February of every year as International Mother Language Day, in order to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity. The Canadian organization “Mother Language lovers of the World” proposed the idea to UN and UNESCO and then the Government of Bangladesh obliged and presented the request. The aims of the declaring the day are promotion of multilingualism, awareness of a multilingual world, acknowledgement, appreciation and respect for our multilingual world and to foster education in mother tongue and multilingual education. Where respect not only for our own mother tongue but also for others’ mother tongues.

According to Professor Stephen Wurm who himself spoke some 50 languages, there are some 3000 mother languages endangered and the processes leading to their gradual extinction (Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing compiled by Professor Stephen Wurm); that means half of the total (about) 6,700 languages spoken in the world’s population. If the statistics is held to be right then this is parallel to the destruction of the species in the natural world! This is catastrophic situation in terms of linguistic ecology which is the integral part of human cultural heritage and existence.

According to UNESCO the mother language, as a tool of communication has a powerful role in the formation of the individual and is the most powerful instrument of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage.

In the words of Ezra Pound “the sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.” This can be taken in support of multilingualism. The reasons, justification, and importance for diversity in the natural world are applicable to the linguistic diversity which is similarly important in our cultural world.

Remember that this is not a one-day feeling, respect, acknowledgment, appreciation for multilingual world. It’s a mind set-up. Which has to be assimilated in our generation and should be passed on to next generations.