International Mother Language Day

International Mother Language Day

There are about 6,500 languages in the world, but did you know that a language disappears and dies every two weeks? International Mother Language Day on 21 February, is a day to celebrate and protect all the languages of the world.

In 1999, a special day to promote mother languages was created: International Mother Language Day. The day was also intended to raise awareness of just how many languages we have on this planet (around 6,500) and to protect them.

UNESCO

The Director General of UNESCO, Audrey Azouley, pointed out in a recent speech on International Mother Language Day that mother languages 'shape millions of developing young minds'. As we are a rights respecting school, we are well aware of how important language is and that some people do not have access to education in their own language, making it much harder to do well in life.

Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart.' At least 43 per cent of all languages are endangered, and fewer than 100 of the world's languages are used in the digital world. Most internet communication is in one of the following languages: English, Chinese Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Indonesian, Malayan, Japanese, Russian and German. But everyone has the right to use their own mother language, and to keep the memories, traditions and ways of thinking that their language represents. And this is what International Mother Language Day is all about. {Source: British Council website]

Here at Maylands, we celebrated it on Friday 14th February. We shared some interesting language facts and also celebrated languages spoken around the school, both my staff and pupils. The pupils had the opportunity to share their mother language and find out how many languages were spoken in their class.

Did you know that Rabbit Class speak 13 different languages, from Yoruba to Bulgarian!