UNESCO, on 17 November 1999 proclaimed the 21 February to be the International Mother Language Day

For 2010 Vox Humanitatis invites schools, associations, families, groups of friends throughout the world to participate in this very particular day by dedicating it to the local language used by the population.

The official theme is: "The importance of multilingualism, foreign languages learning and translation for peace and dialogue within the framework of the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures, 2010."

It is a crucial day for many of the approximately 7000 living languages in the world, because 90% of them probably will vanish by the end of this century. With the languages a whole wealth of culture and wisdom will leave us.

One thing we can do is try to reintegrate as many local languages as possible in every day life and the International Mother Language day is a good moment to do things together.

Therefore we invite you to plan something special during this day including the local language in school lessons, meetings, participating in activities we will publish and organise in time on our website.

21 February 2010 is a Sunday which is difficult for schools to consider, therefore we would kindly invite you to plan your activities on 20 or 22 of February.

Please send us your plans for the International Mother Language day by e-mail to motherlanguageday@i-iter.org . All activities will be published on our website in a dedicated section. Be part of THE NETWORK that actively cares about the survival of the local culture and language.

Here are some proposals on what you can do to give a special space to your language:

At home:

• Invite friends and read a poem together

At school:

• Write a short abstract in the mother tongue about various cultural themes and collect them, then publish them as free educational material for all
• Have children/students draw an object/a situation and write the names/descriptions to it
• Local music where the texts are in the mother language can be an idea: sing together
• If the local language is not taught at school: give some basic information about it, some first grammar rules etc.

In associations:

• Plan a meeting of your association and have an evening dedicated to your mother tongue: from poems, to films to what ever ... show that you do care

Else:

• Participate in our translation marathon (further information will be published soon). There's no need to work hours and hours: just do what you feel like doing (we always say: each word counts).
• Adopt a language where there are just a few speakers left. Start to learn the language and support it.
• You are part of another project like Wikipedia, Wiktionary, translation teams of KDE, Gnome, Firefox or whatever? Plan a marathon or edit sprint ... this would be really great!

If you would like to see further ideas added to this list and have some for us: just write - we will happily add feasible proposals.

Please note: the logo used on this page is (c) by Unesco, all rights reserved and may only be used to promote International Mother Language Day.

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