INTERNATIONAL MOTHER LANGUAGE Day is observed on February 21 since 2000 to promote the linguistic diversity and multilingual education to protect cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge. It highlights that protecting unique mother tongues is essential for preserving traditional, community-based environmental knowledge and ecological balance. The theme for this year is “Youth voices on multilingual education.”
Long before we emerge into the world, our mother has already nourished us. Certainly, she has kept us alive and growing through her bloodstream. But she has also bathed us in her maternal thoughts and words, often spoken directly to the unborn child. Waiting to emerge shining from our mother’s womb, we are already primed to speak.
A mother’s nurturing continues, hopefully, long after birth. One of the many ways in which she does this is to transmit her language. Just as the Earth “speaks” to all living beings through its soil, water and air, our mother teaches us her bio-cultural grammar and each mother’s language is the encoded experience of her long history of walking on the Earth.
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Indeed, it is no accident that, in so many cultures, people speak of their first language as a “mother tongue.” Mother languages, are the deep loam from which sprout our earliest thoughts and perceptions of the world. The more we cultivate in our mother language, the more we connect with our cultural heritage, ancestral wisdom, and unique traditions and environment.
The celebration International Mother Language Day was the initiative of Bangladesh which was approved in 1999 by UNESCO. It honors the 1952 sacrifice for Bengali language rights and highlights the need to protect cultural heritage, as 43% of languages are endangered. This day aligns with environmental sustainability, urging protection of diverse languages just as we protect biodiversity.
Our mother tongue is more than words; it is the heartbeat of our identity, our culture, and our emotional connection to our heritage. As UNESCO notes, when a language dies, we lose an entire cultural and intellectual legacy. Just as we lose a species in a dying ecosystem, we lose a unique way of understanding the world when a language disappears.
Environmental degradation, like pollution and deforestation, is rapid, just like the disappearance of languages. Both challenges – the loss of indigenous languages and the destruction of nature -are interconnected. Local, indigenous languages often carry invaluable traditional knowledge about local ecosystems, sustainable living and conservation techniques that are lost when the language vanishes.
Protecting endangered languages from the dominance of major languages is also a hot topic. Linking the preservation of language to deforestation, pollution, and the need to protect natural resource is beneficial for humanity.
Languages are not just tools for communication; they are the primary “encoded” records of how human cultures have interacted with their local ecosystems for centuries. The links between language and the environment include, ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ as mother languages contain deep, localized knowledge about biodiversity, ecosystems and sustainable practices. Mother languages also often contain unique terms for plants, animals and natural phenomena that do not exist in dominant languages. These terms reflect a deep understanding of medicinal properties, migratory patterns and seasonal cycles.
Environmental stewardship for preserving mother languages ensures that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is passed down, aiding in conservation efforts. Cultural diversity and linguistic diversity, like biodiversity, is threatened by globalization. Protecting languages supports diverse perspectives on environmental management. Many mother languages carry inherent values of reciprocity with nature. Preserving these languages helps maintain the sustainable lifestyles of communities that are often on the frontlines of conservation.
UNESCO notes that multilingual education, specifically in the mother language, promotes inclusion and supports the achievement of global sustainable development goals. The day also aims to prevent the disappearance of languages which takes with it invaluable cultural and environmental wisdom. The linguistic diversity is a key component of “biocultural diversity”. When a language disappears -the world loses not just words, but vital knowledge for managing ecosystems and addressing climate change.
There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken today. Roughly 40% of the global population lacks access to education in a language they speak or understand which hinders effective learning and the transmission of cultural knowledge. Nevertheless, progress is being made in multilingual education with growing understanding of its importance, particularly in early schooling, and more commitment to its development in public life.
Fewer than 100 languages are actively used in the digital world, marginalizing thousands of others. India has 22 officially recognized languages under the Eighth Schedule, 1635 mother tongues, and 234 identifiable mother tongues. The government initiative aimed at preserving and promoting mother languages in different regions of the country.
According to the United Nations, every two weeks, a language disappears and the world loses an entire cultural and intellectual heritage. Due to globalization, the rush for learning foreign languages for better job opportunities is a major reason behind the disappearance of mother languages.Thus, UN has designated the period between 2022 and 2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 says that the medium of instruction shall, as far as practicable, be in a child’s mother tongue. The recently announced India’s National Education Policy 2020 has given maximum attention to the development of mother languages. The policy recommends that as far as possible, the medium of instruction shall be, at least till class 5 in mother tongue /vernacular /regional language. It will help in building a truly multilingual society in India; improve attendance and learning outcomes, and the ability to learn new languages.
Other Initiatives include the Bharatavani project and the use of local languages, i.e. in administration, court proceedings, higher and technical education etc.Article 29 of the Constitution gives all citizens right to conserve their language and prohibits discrimination on the basis of language.
On this International Mother Language Day, let us speak our mother language proudly to keep it alive, and let us protect the Mother Nature around us. A sustainable future requires both linguistic diversity and a healthy environment.
(The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Ukhrul Times. The author is an Environmentalist, presently working as District Forest Officer, Chandel district, Manipur. The author can be reached at nmunall@yahoo.in.)