Bangladesh mission marks Int'l Mother Language Day

By Sorwar Alam

ANKARA (AA) - The Embassy of Bangladesh in Ankara Sunday organized an event on the International Mother Language Day to commemorate the sacrifice of Bengali people in 1952 for their own language.

The event was held at the embassy building with limited participation in line with the COVID-19 measures.

Speaking at the event, Bangladesh's Ambassador to Turkey Mosud Mannan said the 1952 language movement of the Bengali nation led to a movement for an independent Bangladesh in 1971.

"This language movement is a source of inspiration for all languages in the world," he said, and added that a nation cannot live without a language.

The day is being celebrated in almost all UN member states under the theme "fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society."

In 1999, UNESCO recognized Feb. 21 as the International Mother Language Day to honor Bengali demonstrations in then-East Pakistan (current Bangladesh) against the use of Urdu as the sole national language in 1952.

The Bengali Language Movement started in 1952 and after a long struggle, the central government of then-Pakistan accepted Bengali as one of the state languages of the country in 1956.

Around 240 million people across the world speak Bengali as their mother language, making it the fifth largest language in the world, according to Ethnologue, a reference publication on living language.