In March 2011, Professor Kevin Scannell, a computational linguist from St Louis University, Missouri, created something unique—a website that tracks indigenous languages on Twitter and then enables speakers of the same language to find each other and communicate in their mother tongue. Users can also link to their blogs to the site; a feature which further promotes indigenous languages and cultures. Euskara is the most tweeted indigenous language with 17,052 tweeters and Welsh is at number four with 14,249.
It may sound incredible, but there are approximately 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world. The comprehensive web-based publication Ethnologue, which reports on the state of world languages, states that on average six languages per year have become extinct since it first published its findings in 1950. Does this matter? For native English speakers it might be hard to imagine a society where our language is rarely used beyond the home or immediate community, but The Linguistics Society of America explains the impact of the loss of language diversity like this:
“Much of the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of a people is experienced through language…When a language is lost, all of this must be refashioned in the new language… traditions are abruptly lost in the process and replaced by the cultural habits of the more powerful group”.
In 1952, students in Dhaka (the capital city of Bangladesh, which was formerly the region of East Pakistan) fully understood the situation described above and were shot dead as they demonstrated for formal recognition of their native language, Bangla. In 1999, UNESCO memorialised this day by proclaiming it as International Mother Language Day and, every year, people around the globe are encouraged to promote “linguistic diversity and multilingual education…to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue”.
In Bangladesh, people will be enjoying a public holiday, celebrating International Mother Language Day with parties, literary competitions and other events to promote their language and culture. There will no doubt be plenty of Tweets in Bangla to record highlights of the day– this language was added to the Twitter site in 2014.
EVS Translations believes in the power of mother languages! Did you know that all of our translators translate exclusively into their mother tongues? This ensures the highest quality for your translation project.
