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21st February
International Mother Language Day
21 February was proclaimed the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO on 17 November 1999. International Mother Language Day is observed yearly by UNESCO member states and at its headquarters to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.
This is mostly the international recognition of Language Movement Day, which has been commemorated in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) since 1952, when many Bengali-speaking people were killed by the then East Pakistan police and army in Dhaka.

History of 21st February

On that day of 21 February 1952, corresponding to 8 Falgun 1359 in the Bangla calendar, a number of students campaigning for the recognition of Bangla as one of the state languages of Pakistan were killed when police fired upon them. Mohammed Ali Jinnah(the Governor general of Pakistan) declared that the Urdu will be the only language for both west and east Pakistan at a public meeting on 1948, 21 March. The peoples of the east Pakistan (whose main language was Bangla) started to protest against this. A student meeting on 21 February called for a province-wide hartal (strike). But the government invoked Section 144 on 20 February. The student community at a meeting on the morning of 21 February agreed to defy section 144.

Linguapax Prize

The Linguapax Prize is awarded annually on International Mother Language Day (21 February) by the Linguapax Institute "to linguists, researchers, professors and members of the civil society in acknowledgement of their outstanding work in the field linguistic diversity and/or multilingual education. more info

 YearName

Affiliation

2002

 

Bartomeu Melià

(Spanish)

Teko Guaraní 

Paraguay

2002

 

Jerzy Smolicz

(Polish)

University of Adelaide

Australia 

2003

Aina Moll 

(Spanish)

Institute Joan Alcover 

 Spain

2003

 

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

(Finish)

 University of Roskilde

Denmark 

 

2004

 

Fernand de Varennes

(Canadian)

Murdoch University 

Australia

2004

 

Joshua Fishman

(USA)

 Yeshiva University, Stanford University

United States

 

2005

Maurice Tadadjeu

(Cameroon) 

 University of Yaoundé I

Cameroon

      

2006

Natividad Mutumbajoy

(Colombia) 

 Escuela Yachaicury

Colombia 

    

2007

 Maya Khemlani David

(Malaysia)

University of Malaya

Malaysia 

      

2008  ? ? ? ? ? ?

 
Endangered Language
Ainu 1000 Speakers
The Ainu language is spoken by the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō. It was once spoken in the Kurile Islands, the northern part of Honshū, and the southern half of Sakhalin.
 
 
 
Lango Pedia

1. Country with the most languages spoken: Papua New Guinea has 820 living languages


2.Number of living languages: 6912


3. Number of those languages that are nearly extinct: 516


4. First language ever written: Sumerian or Egyptian


5. Oldest written language still in existence: Chinese or Greek


6. Language with the most words: English, approx. 250,000 distinct words


7. The most widely published language: English


8. The most translated document: Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, written by the United Nations in 1948, has been translated into 321 languages and dialects.


9. The most common consonant sounds in the world's languages: /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/


10. Longest word in the English language: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters)


 
Top 10 Language Speaking Country
 LanguageNumber of People
Mandarin 1 billion +
English 508 million
Hindi 497
Spanish 392
Russian 277
Arabic 246
Bengali211 
Portuguage 191
Malay-Indonesian 159
French120 million