UN Holidays - International Mother Language Day

The international educational organization UNESCO, which belongs to the specialized agencies of the United Nations for education, science and culture, proclaimed in 1999 February 21 to be celebrated throughout the world as International Mother Language Day The UNESCO General Conference chose this day as a sign of memory and solidarity with the demonstrators who took to the streets on February 21, 1952 in Dhaka (Bangladesh) to demand that the country's authorities recognize their native language Bengali as the state language But, unfortunately, this student demonstration was brutally suppressed, and then people died from police bullets In the international calendar, Mother Language Day calls on all countries, on all continents of the Earth, to actively and purposefully develop, and in all possible ways, support actions, actions, movements that will be aimed at respect, tolerance, and protection of all known groups of languages, and, in particular, those that are now at the stage of extinction According to the UN, there are about six thousand languages ​​on our planet, not counting the numerous dialects According to many linguist experts, half of them are capable of disappearing by the end of the 21st century, which means that humanity on Earth may lose with them the most ancient, important knowledge and teachings contained in folk languages An international group of linguistic scientists has created a unique Atlas of the World's Languages, which is full evidence that the real disappearance of languages ​​is taking place in almost all regions of the world, regardless of the conditions of their cultural and economic development The information collected in this Atlas showed all people that developed countries such as the USA, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico have the largest number of languages ​​and dialects that are in danger of completely disappearing from the face of the Earth And this despite the fact that in the territories of these countries there are a great many active, spoken languages Here in Russia, more than 130 languages ​​are already in quite serious danger, 22 of them still exist, on the verge of extinction, and 15 are finally recognized as dead, such as: the Ainu language, the Akkala language, Kamas, the Kerek language and others The threat of extinction hangs over the Selkup, Chulym-Turkic, East Mansi, Negidal, and Oroch languages The negative trend towards the extinction of languages ​​in the very near future, unfortunately, will only intensify, because they can survive if at least 100,000 people constantly communicate in them Often, the extinction of languages ​​was caused by the anti-people policy of rulers to achieve by all means the unification of their countries, in which they forced their population to use only one language The most important goal of International Mother Language Day is to protect endangered languages ​​as much as possible; it is very relevant today: approximately two languages ​​disappear every month in the world