International Mother Language Day

Freedom of thought, speech, and expression – what does it really mean?

There are many ways to approach this but what does it mean to have freedom? What are the cultural foundations that incubate our thoughts and carve our actions? Although these are open ended questions, one of the most reliable frames of reference would be language.

Modern media and telecommunications tend to make us feel as if the world is getting smaller. But how is this so? One key aspect we need to pay close attention to is how language plays a powerful role in shaping the global village. In an anthropological sense, there are consequences to a culturally shrinking world community where the number of people increase but the quality of diversity decreases.

This issue comes forward when we see languages disappear year by year. Linguists, educators, and government planners have their work cut-out for them – of the six thousand languages identified on the planet, hundreds if not thousands are expected to die out within this century and the next. Many readers may not fully appreciate the scope and depth of what this implies.

Earlier this month, the last remaining speaker of Bo passed away of old age in the isolated Indian territory of the Andaman Islands. The Bo language, their speakers, and their associated cultures stem from Africa. Academics are pegging Andamanese languages as close to being 70 000 years old. That’s definitely old. That definitely predates most cultural compasses that we have grown up with, be it Roman, Greek, Indus, Persian, Nubian, or other.

Take the case of the Code Talkers –  young men from pre-colonial nations of North America being enlisted for their linguistic backgrounds to easily encrypt and decrypt wartime communication for the Allies. The most famous Code Talkers happen to be from the Navajo Nation of today’s south-western United States. The contributions made by Navajo code talkers and the speakers of other native languages were priceless and helped the Americans with their historic victory at Iwo Jima.

February 21 was declared the International Mother Language Day in 1999 by UNESCO after a motion put forth by the People’s Republic of Bangladesh was accepted by the world body. This date carries special significance in Bangladesh because it was on this day in 1952 that the then-Pakistan regime ordered peaceful student protesters to be fired upon as they marched for equal language rights in East Pakistan. Several young people were killed by gunfire, close to a hundred suffered gunshot wounds. At the time, Pakistan was a uni-lingual country based on Urdu as the national language even though Bangla was the single most spoken language within the federation.

From bi-lingual New Brunswick, Andaman Islands and the Canadian Arctic, to the desert north of modern Mexico, to the isolated depths of the Congo and the plateau of the Himalayas we can see that languages make us rich in ways we cannot quantify but in ways we cannot afford to lose either.

Please take a moment to remember, ponder, and think of who we are as human beings and consider how we have come to the point where we are at. Most importantly, gaze into the future where we want to be.