Ade Abudu
By Ade Abudu, London: This 21 February 2013 marks the fourteenth International Mother Tongue (Language) Day. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established the day in 1999, and the day has been celebrated across the globe since February 2000.
So what’s it all about? Well, International Mother Language Day aims to promote linguistic and cultural diversity, as well as multilingualism.
The theme for this year is “The Book” and hence the proposal is:
Read texts, folk stories, poems etc. in your local language to children at home, playgroup, place of worship, party or “somewhere in public”, if possible, to make people aware of the status of many lesser resourced languages or local languages in the world. Somewhere in public could for example be: public libraries, universities, schools, restaurants, cafés etc. Even radio stations and TV stations could contribute by dedicating a “corner” in the news or another programme to this day.
Often you cannot create your event exactly on the 21st of February, we already do know that, well you can of course choose a date “around” International Mother Language Day as well and extend it over the weekend (Thursday, 21st to Sunday, 24th of February).
Networking will help to get events done. The goal is to reach people, even only a few, not to have super big events. We should then keep this way of “communicating International Mother Language Day” to people up for the coming years and extend the network of places where a reading takes place step by step. In this way we very likely will be able to raise awareness of people for all the Mother Languages in the world, particularly the Yoruba Language.
Let’s pass it on to our children. “The great and most powerful gift a parent can give their child is to pass their language and their culture …”
To celebrate the International Mother Tongue Day on this Thursday, 21st of February, our society recommends that we speak only Yoruba Language with our respective families on this special day. Furthermore, we can involve the families in events to promote understanding and speaking of Yoruba language over the weekend, be it at the Mosque on Friday, Church on Sunday and/or social gatherings. You may like to ask ‘What happens thereafter and do we wait for another anniversary’? We suggest that you allocate a day in the week/fortnight/month for speaking Yoruba in your household. Please note message below.
Ede Yoruba ko ni paarun o!
Ipade wa bi oyin o!
Ade Abudu
Egbe Ifesemule ati Ilosiwaju Ede Yoruba
