বাংলায় পড়ুন
Language has the power to change the world. Humans are blessed with much different linguistics around the world. But everyone has a specific mother tongue, for the maximum number of people residing in West Bengal, their mother tongue is Bengali. Mother tongue is the language a person has been exposed to from birth or the language of one’s ethnic group rather than their first language. People across the world celebrate their mother tongue today on 21st February. In West Bengal, it is celebrated as ‘Bhasha Dibas’ and in Bangladesh as, ‘Shahid Dibas’.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation announced 21st February as the International Mother Tongue Day in November 1999 and the world started celebrating it from 2000. UNESCO decided this date as the International Mother Tongue Day in order to commemorate to the Language Movement of Bangladesh that took place in 1952.
Every year a different theme is chosen by UNESCO, and as 2019 is the international year of indigenous languages, this year the theme for International Mother Tongue Day is, “Indigenous languages matter for development, peacebuilding, and reconciliation”. The main objective behind celebrating this day is to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and promote multilingualism. India itself has 22 officially recognized languages, 1635 nationalized mother tongues and 234 identifiable mother tongues. This year is a little bit more special as India and Bangladesh will celebrate this day together at Benapole-Petrapole’s no man’s land.
