International mother language day

The international mother language day, proclaimed by the UNESCO General conference on 17 November 1999, has been celebrated since 2000 annually on 21 February to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. The date for the Day was chosen to commemorate the events that took place in Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh) on 21 February 1952, when police bullets killed students who demonstrated in defense of their native language Bengali, which they demanded to be recognized as one of the state languages of the country. All steps to promote the dissemination of mother tongues not only serve to promote linguistic diversity and multilingual education, to develop a better understanding of linguistic and cultural traditions around the world, but also to strengthen solidarity based on mutual understanding, tolerance and dialogue. On 21 February 2003, on The occasion of international mother language day, UNESCO Director-General K. Matsuura said: "Why so much attention is paid to the native language? Because languages are a unique expression of human creativity in all its diversity. As an instrument of communication, perception and reflection, language also describes how we see the world and reflects the connection between the past, the present and the future. Languages bear traces of random encounters, different sources from which they were saturated, each in accordance with its own history. Native languages are unique in the way they affect everyone from the moment of birth, giving him a special vision of things that will never really disappear, despite the fact that later people master many languages. Learning a foreign language is a way to get acquainted with a different vision of the world, with different approaches." In revolutionary Russia in 1917 there were 193 languages, and at the time of the signing of the agreement on the collapse of the USSR in December 1991 — only 40. On average, two languages disappeared every year. Currently, 136 languages in Russia are in danger of extinction, and 20 have already been declared dead. Experts believe that for the survival of the language is necessary to speak it at least 100 thousand people. At all times, languages were born, existed, then died out, sometimes without even leaving a trace. The territory of the Geopark is densely populated by native speakers of three major languages - Bashkir, Tatar and Russian. We have created all conditions for the preservation and development of all languages, because it is our diversity - our wealth