UNESCO Safeguards Global Linguistic Heritage on International Mother Language Day

International Mother Language Day on February 21 highlights UNESCO’s efforts to promote and protect linguistic diversity globally. Instituted in 1999, this commemorates the martyrdom of students in erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, fighting to recognize Bangla as their mother tongue in 1952. For UNESCO, the occasion underscores its foundational mandate to facilitate intercultural dialogue towards peace and its vanguard role in safeguarding endangered languages.

Background

• International Mother Language Day proclaimed by UN General Assembly in 1999 on recommendation of UNESCO.
• February 21 chosen as it marks the death anniversary of university students killed during protests to recognize Bangla in former Pakistan in 1952.
• The Bangla Language Movement catalyzed Bangladesh’s eventual independence and retention of mother tongues emerged as a nationalist rallying point.

Key Functions and Structure of UNESCO

UNESCO operates through its headquarters in Paris and a network of field offices globally with following key functional divisions:

Linguistic Diversity and Vulnerable Languages

• Over 40% of approximate 7,000 existing languages face extinction warns a UNESCO study.
• Main threats are declining inter-generational transmission, growing preference for dominant languages and impact of globalization.
• 96% spoken by just 4% people revealing gravity of linguistic imbalance against specialized languages used by tiny few.

Safeguarding Endangered Languages

UNESCO’s endangered language conservation focuses on:

• Creating linguistic atlases, dictionaries and teaching manuals
• Audio/video documentation with consent of native speakers
• Incorporating local languages in mainstream education systems
• Using technology, media and social networks for outreach to younger generations

International Mother Language Day Themes

Some annual themes highlight UNESCO’s language preservation efforts:

Way Forward

• Developing scientific frameworks to assess extinction risk and vitality of languages.
• Adapting UNESCO conventions and recommendations for legal protection of vulnerable languages.
• Pursuing proactive safeguarding policies, community participation and targeted funding support.
• Harnessing digital tools, creative content and grassroots advocacy campaigns to sustain dialogue between speakers.

Recent Global Policy Forum

• Three-day global forum organized by UNESCO in Paris ahead of 2024 Mother Language Day.
• Titled “Learn, Grow, Thrive in Mother Tongue”, the forum adopted an action framework to integrate native languages in education systems.
• Stakeholder consultation focused on challenges in scaling vernacular language models and community participation.
• Academics, edu-technology firms, indigenous groups and policymakers shared field experiences and innovations from around the world.

Harnessing AI for Multilingualism

• UNESCO experimenting with AI to develop real-time, low resource speech to speech translation for indigenous languages.
• Machine learning models trained on limited textual data to build automatic annotators and evaluators to mitigate data scarcity challenges.
• Initial projects ongoing for Mayan language Yucatec Maya spoken in parts of Mexico and Guatemala.
• Partnership with Microsoft to strengthen data infrastructure and leverage computational linguistics to serve marginalized speech communities.

Web Archiving of Endangered Languages

• Web crawling initiatives to develop linguistic archives by capturing vernacular language content online.
• Focuses on social media, public forums, blogs which serve as hubs preserving indigenous speech varieties.
• Recently concluded project collated 8 Terabyte Aramaic web archive spanning blogs, news sites across Middle East showcasing language vitality.

The International Mother Language Day provides a platform for UNESCO to periodically refocus global attention on the existential threats confronting irreplaceable modes of human expression. Persisting with such multilateral efforts can help nurture linguistic diversity as an ongoing celebration of our shared civilizational heritage.