Significance, theme of International Mother Language Day 2022

Vijay Garg *

The theme of the 2022 International Mother Language Day is "Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities"

To promote linguistic, multilinguistic and cultural diversity across the globe, International Mother Language Day is observed every year on February 21. The day acknowledges that languages and multi-lingua-lism are the two powerful tools that can promote social inclusion and uniform development worldwide.

This day is also celebrated to make people aware of how cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue can strengthen co-operation and provide quality education for all. The novel initiative to celebrate International Mother Language Day was taken by Bangladesh.

There are somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 living languages in the world today (the exact number is a matter of debate). According to the En- dangered Languages Project, over 40% of the world's languages are threatened with extinction.

UNESCO announced this day on Nov 17, 1999, which was later formally recognised by the United Nations General Assembly in 2002. On May 16, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution A/RES/61/266 called upon the Member States "to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world".

The theme of the 2022 International Mother Language Day is "Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities", which focuses on how technology can be a potential factor for fostering multilingual education and would support the development of quality teaching and learning for all.

Here are 10 interesting facts about languages in India that you should know:

1. India's treasure trove: India has 234 identifiable mother tongues, 121 languages and around 22 official languages! Sindhi, Konkani, Nepali, Manipuri, Maithili, Dogri, Bodo and Santhali are the languages which were added to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution after amendments in the Constitution. Earlier, there were 14 languages which were initially included in the Constitution.

2. English and Hindi as official languages: The Constitution of India designates English and Hindi as the official languages of the Government of India. However, as per Article 343 (1) of the Indian Constitution, it is only the Hindi written in Devanagari Script that is accepted as the official language of the Government.

3. Legal language: The Supreme Court and High Court use English as their official language as directed by the Constitution of India.

4. The categories: Almost every Indian language fall into one of the four groups: Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and Sino-Tibetan.

5. Meet the classics: Because of their history and having stood the test of time, languages like Tamil, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Odia, and Telugu have been honoured with the classical languages status.

6. The difference: In Uttarakhand, Sanskrit is used as the second official language; Jammu and Kashmir uses Urdu and for Goa its Konkani.

7. Did you know?: Telugu is known as the 'Italian of the East'. And, even today, French is commonly spoken in Puducherry !

8. Languages of the islanders: Apart from Nicobarese, people of Andaman and Nicobar Islands also speak Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

9. Sanskrit's German connect: Did you our good ol' Sanskrit is a popular language in Germany with more than 10 universities in the country offering Sanskrit as a subject!

10. Ancient roots: Nearly all Indian scripts come from the same script named Brahmi and most of the major Indian epics were written in Sanskrit!