Mother Language Day, February 21, 2024

International Mother Language Day, February 21st, was established by UNESCO in 1999 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. It commemorates the 1952 Language Movement in Bangladesh, advocating the recognition of Bangla as one of the two national languages of then Pakistan. There are some 7,000 languages. Every two weeks one language ceases to exist. Over half of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual. Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world: 800+ languages. Rotokas, spoken there, has one of the smallest alphabets in the world, 12 letters. Dumi, in Nepal, is one of the rarest, with only a handful of speakers left. South Africa has 11 official languages. On La Gomera, Canary Islands, the Silbo Gomero language translates Spanish into whistling. Some Amazonian languages, like Pirahã, have no fixed words for specific numbers and use terms like "small quantity" or "larger quantity". !Xóõ, from Botswana, has one of the largest inventories of sounds, including numerous clicks. Constructed languages, conlangs, have been created for use in fiction or in international communication. E.g. Esperanto, Na'vi (Avatar), Klingon (Star Trek), Valyrian (Game of Thrones). Languages are an inherent component of cultural identity. Every language, no matter how small, carries equal weight and significance in the human heritage. https://bit.ly/3IrQbGZ https://bit.ly/48snxzI Art&Text supported by ChatGPT.