UNESCO Marks International Mother Language Day

UNESCO marks the International Mother Language Day, which is cited as a global commitment to the mother language in public life.

Since 2000, the day is observed on February 21 every year to promote linguistic and cultural persity and multilingualism.

According to UNESCO, the theme of the 2022 International Mother Language Day is “Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities”, which will discuss the potential role of technology to advance multilingual education and support the development of quality teaching and learning for all."

On this special occasion, UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay said in a message: "Technology can provide new tools for protecting linguistic persity. Such tools, for example, facilitating their spread and analysis, allow us to record and preserve languages that sometimes exist only in oral form. Put simply, they make local dialects a shared heritage. However, because the Internet poses a risk of linguistic uniformization, we must also be aware that technological progress s will serve plurilingualism only as long as we make the effort to ensure that it does."

It's worth mentioning that this significant day was recognized on the initiative of Bangladesh and has been observed throughout the world since the year 2000.