International Mother Language Day!

Language Is Culture.  When I used to work as a consultant training foreign language and ESL teachers, one thing I used to repeat over and over is that Language is Culture.  You can’t separate them because they are so intertwined and they really must be taught intertangledly  (my own new word!) The United Nations obviously thought it was important enough to declare today as International Mother Language Day.  You can read more about International Mother Language Day HERE, but in short, The United Nations summarizes it as the following:  “International Mother Language Day has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh.” Teaching cultural understanding and tolerance will pave the way to peace. It’s a huge task that can only be accomplished one tiny little pebble at a time. Of course we hope that OUR Little Pebble will pave an even greater peace-path than what we could ever fathom!)