Today marks the 18th anniversary celebrating International Mother Language Day. First celebrated in 1999, the day seeks to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by people of the world.
The 21st of February 1952 saw a brutal attack by police on students in East Pakistan (now present-day Bangladesh). These students were demonstrating to keep Bengali, their language, as one of their national languages near the Dhaka High Court when police opened fire.
In 1998 a Bengali living in Canada at the time, Rafiqul Islam, wrote a letter to Kofi Anan asking him to take a step to help preserve the languages of the world from the possibility of extinction and to declare an International Mother Language Day. This was a way to help people be proud of their own language, but also to remind the world that everybody has their own sense of cultural identity.
Those events echo the Soweto Uprising during 1976, which again was an unnecessary show of force by the police who opened fire on students trying to protest against the language of teaching in their schools.
Events like these remind us that we all are unique individuals, belonging to unique cultures, each of them with their own proud heritage. On a day like today, we celebrate the unique nature of South Africa with our own 11 official languages!
Nelson Mandela said it best when he said the following: ‘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.’
We at Learning Cubed wish you all wonderful day!
