Schools ! Celebrate the Silver Jubilee of International Mother Language Day !

 

 

Silver Jubilee Celebration of International Mother Language Day

https://www.un.org/en/observances/mother-language-day

The year 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day. This milestone highlights a quarter-century of dedicated efforts to preserve linguistic diversity and promote the use of mother tongues.

It serves as a significant opportunity to reflect on achievements, renew commitments, and emphasize the critical role of language preservation in safeguarding cultural heritage, improving education outcomes and creating more peaceful, sustainable societies.

The 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day celebrates a quarter-century of efforts to preserve linguistic diversity and promote mother tongues. This milestone emphasizes the importance of language preservation in safeguarding cultural heritage, improving education, and fostering more peaceful societies. 

International Mother Language Jubilee 2025

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1041961827969494&id=100064670590472&_rdr

• Theme 2025:

"Silver Jubilee Celebration of International Mother Language Day !"

The 25th anniversary of International Mother Language Day celebrates a quarter-century of efforts to preserve linguistic diversity and promote mother tongues. This milestone emphasizes the importance of language preservation in safeguarding cultural heritage, improving education, and fostering more peaceful societies.

Significance of International Mother Language

Languages are essential carriers of identity, tradition, and history. The loss of a language leads to the disappearance of unique cultural expressions, indigenous knowledge, and traditional practices. 

This day raises awareness about the urgent need to document, revitalize, and protect endangered languages.

With approximately 8,324 languages in the world today, many are at risk of disappearing due to globalization and societal changes. 

Ensuring that education systems support the right to learn in one's mother tongue is crucial for improving learning outcomes, as students who are taught in a language they fully understand show better comprehension, engagement, and critical thinking skills. 

World Atlas of Languages (Beta Version)

The World Atlas of Languages is an interactive and dynamic online tool that documents different aspects and features of language status in countries and languages around the world.  It aims to provide  a detailed record of languages as communicative tools and knowledge resources in their sociocultural and socio-political context.

via Google Images Archive

Education

Quality education should be delivered in the language spoken at home. However, this minimum standard is not met for hundreds of millions, limiting their ability to develop foundations for learning. 

Increasingly, information and knowledge are key determinants of wealth creation, social transformation and human development. 

"Literacy programmes and methodologies are most relevant and respond to the needs of learners when they are context-related, bilingual and support intercultural understanding within the framework of lifelong learning."

• The role of teachers:

The overall aim of IMLD 2025 is to contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 4 by recognizing the role of teachers in promoting mother languages and multilingual teaching and learning through reading and technology. in different languages.

The digital revolution has highlighted the digital divide in language representation. Less than a hundred languages are significantly used in the digital world. 

"Increasing linguistic representation in digital platforms, AI tools, and online education is essential to safeguard linguistic diversity in the modern era."

via Google Images Archive

Students : 

-Share key messages via social networks with students of the world. You must celebrate the Jubilee of International Mother Language.

International Mother Language Day is a reminder of the importance of linguistic and cultural diversity and the need to support and celebrate mother tongues. 

By promoting mother tongues in education and online, we can help to preserve linguistic diversity and strengthen communities. 

By valuing and supporting mother tongues, we can create a more inclusive and harmonious society. It’s a call to action for all of us to do something positive to support language diversity and multilingualism.

G-Souto

21.02.2025

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Schools ! Celebrate the Silver Jubilee of International Mother Language Day ! by GinaSouto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References : Un / UNESCO

Schools : International Mother Language Day & International Year Indigenous Languages

http://www.un.org/

“Indigenous peoples have always expressed their desire for education in their own languages, as set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."

Each year on the 21 February, UNESCO invites all of us to recognize and celebrate mother languages on International Mother Language Day (IMLD).  

International Mother Language Day has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.

The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh. 

credits: UNESCO

https://www.facebook.com/unesco/

                       

Theme 2019: "Indigenous languages as a factor in development, peace and reconciliation."

Since 2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, the theme of this year’s International Mother Language Day will be indigenous languages as a factor in development, peace and reconciliation.

"Indigenous peoples number some 370 million and their languages account for the majority of the approximately 7,000 living languages on Earth. Many indigenous peoples continue to suffer from marginalization, discrimination and extreme poverty, and are the victims of human-rights violations. "

Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO

credits: unknown

via Google images

Some information:

Languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication, social integration, education and development, are of strategic importance for people and planet. Yet, due to globalization processes, they are increasingly under threat, or disappearing altogether. When languages fade, so does the world's rich tapestry of cultural diversity. Opportunities, traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression — valuable resources for ensuring a better future — are also lost.

At least 43% of the estimated 6000 languages spoken in the world are endangered. Only a few hundred languages have genuinely been given a place in education systems and the public domain, and less than a hundred are used in the digital world.

credits: unknown

via Google images

Linguistic diversity is increasingly threatened as more and more languages disappear. 

Globally 40 per cent of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand. Nevertheless, progress is being made in mother tongue-based multilingual education with growing understanding of its importance, particularly in early schooling, and more commitment to its development in public life.

Students in a classroom at the Jabalia refugee camp 

in northern Gaza Strip 

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

http://www.un.org/

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

Multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages which transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures in a sustainable way.

https://en.iyil2019.org/

In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, based on a recommendation by the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

At the time, the Forum said that 40 per cent of the estimated 6,700 languages spoken around the world were in danger of disappearing.  The fact that most of these are indigenous languages puts the cultures and knowledge systems to which they belong at risk. 

credits: UNESCO

https://www.facebook.com/unesco/

Celebrating IYIL2019 will help promote and protect indigenous languages and improve the lives of those who speak them.  It will contribute to achieving the objectives set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development.

The celebration is also expected to strengthen and reinforce the many standard-setting tools adopted by the international community which include specific provisions to promote and protect languages.

credits: UNESCO

@UNESCO

Education: 

Education in the mother language is an essential part of achieving these goals, to facilitate learning and to bolster skills in reading, writing and mathematics.

It requires a sharper focus on:

• Teaching training 

• Revisions of academic programmes 

• Creation of suitable learning environments.

Quality education should be delivered in the language spoken at home. However, this minimum standard is not met for hundreds of millions, limiting their ability to develop foundations for learning. 

Increasingly, information and knowledge are key determinants of wealth creation, social transformation and human development. 

Literacy programmes and methodologies are most relevant and respond to the needs of learners when they are context-related, bilingual and support intercultural understanding within the framework of lifelong learning.

credits: UN

https://news.un.org/

"Multilingual education based on the mother tongue (s) in the early years of schooling plays a key role in fostering respect for diversity and a sense of interconnectedness between countries and populations, which are core values at the heart of global citizenship. As such, it contributes to the fostering of learning to live together."

Indigenous Languages provide a unique understanding of perspectives of people from all around the world. Losing them means losing the knowledge & beauty they add to our lives.

Let’s act together to protect the rich diversity & value of native languages!

Activities:

• UN invite students to share a favorite proverb in your mother tongue: 

To celebrate International Mother Language Day 2019, the Office of the United Nations Ombudsman and Mediation Services invites you to send your favorite proverb in your mother tongue on the following topics: 

Peace, harmony, conflict resolution/competence to deal with conflict, mindfulness, resilience, well-being. 

The proverbs will be compiled, and the most appropriate ones will be selected to be published on our website and other digital communication tools.

Proverbs:

Invite your students to send proverbs in mother language on one or two pf these topics. I'm sure they will be very happy to participate on this challenge.

credits: UNESCO

https://en.unesco.org/

Other Activities: 

• Propose your students to tweet in mother Language on this day, February 21 on the theme: Why it's important to learn in mother language. Of course you must prepare the tweets before being published on Twitter;

• Join to each tweet a translation on a different language (foreign languages of the school curriculum) so that more people could read their messages;

• Add a hashtag #MotherLanguageDay to tweets;

• Following the hashtag #MotherLanguageDay students will read messages from around the world in different languages and paying attention to indigenous languages and retweet some of them (foreign languages of school curriculum) to help amplify every messages they read;

• Wherever in the world you may be, and whatever language you speak, ask your students to record a small video (each class, one short video) with students saying som small expression in mother language to share with a school from another country, and different language;

• Ask foreign schoolmates to do the same for a school linguistic exchange project.

Visiting the official site IYIL2019, ask for help to contact a indigenous school to share some activities. It would be very interesting! And students would love it!

When we lose a language, we lose a cultural heritage, the special ways different people express their relationships, their families, and the world that they see.

Language acquisition and mother tongue literacy should ideally be supported by written resources such as - but not limited to - books, primers and textbooks, to support oral activities. Written materials in mother language reinforce learners’ literacy acquisition and build strong foundations for learning.

Technology  is allowing many languages to increase audience by establishing a presence on YouTube, social media as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and of course by texting on smartphones.

"Opportunities, traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression — valuable resources for ensuring a better future — are important.".

G-Souto

21.02.2019

Copyright © 2019-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com® 

Schools : Intl Mother Language Day & Intl Year Indigenous Languages 2019 !  by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License