Today many of us are home with the kids in observance of the President´s Day national holiday. Coincidentally, this year it fell on the same day as another celebration which has been held around the world every February 21st since the year 2000. Yes, it is called International Mother Language Day and it was proclaimed as such by the UNESCO.
“International Mother Language Day has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.”
Don’t you love the intent behind this celebration? A day to recognize the importance of nurturing our mother tongue as a bridge to our heritage and our culture. A day to create bridges not only to our own mother culture, but also to the myriad diverse cultures, languages, and traditions. By being aware, and teaching our kids, of how ethnically and linguistically diverse our world is we create tolerance and understanding amongst us.
We encourage you to celebrate your mother tongue, multilingual education and your love for languages and cultures today and every day!
PS: You may download the official poster here.
Ana, Just read about this last week and so blogged about it on Monday? We’re actually in our Spanish 2-week period, but since English is my true mother language, I thought and thought about how to celebrate and decided we would eat guacamole burgers and mango salsa for dinner! To blend the American and Latino cultures! Our family had a great dinner, my husband was intrigued by the whole concept and well, we’ll do it again next year!