International Mother Language Day was declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) General Conference in November 1999, and is celebrated annually on Feb 21 to promote the diversity of languages and cultures.
The date was chosen to commemorate the events of Feb 21, 1952, in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh (part of Pakistan then), when local students were killed during demonstrations to make their mother tongue — Bengali — as one of the official languages in the country.
Language is the most powerful tool for the sustainability and development of world cultural heritage. Mother tongue dissemination activities not only supported the diversity of linguistics and language, but also a full understanding of language and cultural traditions around the world.
By introducing the International Mother Language Day, Unesco has called on the countries of the world to organise, support and revitalise actions aimed at respecting and defending all languages, especially languages that are on the brink of extinction.
The theme of this year is "Fostering multilingualism for inclusion in education and society". Experts argue that if no action is taken, then half of the 6,000 languages spoken the world over today will be extinct by the end of the 21st century, and mankind will lose the most important ancient knowledge contained in the vernacular.
Currently, 43 per cent (2,465) of languages are facing extinction. Among the countries with a big number of moribund languages are India (197), the United States (191), Brazil (190), China (144), Indonesia (143) and Mexico (143).
According to the Unesco's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, more than 200 languages have gone extinct over the last three generations. The extinction is seen in all parts of the world and in the various conditions of economic development.
In Europe, 33 languages are seriously threatened, including 13 categorised as "endangered". Only six people now speak the Galich dialect of Karaim, which was once quite widespread in Western Ukraine.
In sub-Saharan African countries, where there are about 2,000 languages (almost a third of all the world's languages), at least 10 per cent may be extinct in the next 100 years. Only a few extinct languages, according to the Atlas classification, are undergoing an active revival process. Among them are Corn (Cornwell) or Sishi (New Caledonia).
In Malaysia, there are 136 languages in use and 80 per cent of them are considered endangered. There are several indigenous groups whose native languages will probably die if efforts are not made to protect and preserve them. One example is the Bateq Orang Asli tribe. Today, there are only about 750 of them living in the jungle.
The same situation is with the Kristang language. In Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, it is classified as a "severely endangered" language, with only about 2,000 speakers. Active measures to revive Kristang is taken by Malaysian scholar Joan Margaret Marbeck, who intensely published dictionaries and other books in Kristang in Malaysia, Portugal and even in Russia.
In the past, a language became extinct as a result of physical destruction of the people due to epidemics, wars or declining birth rate. Nowadays speakers often voluntarily switch to other more dominant languages if they feel that this can help them and their children integrate with society.
In some cases, the authorities put pressure on their citizens to speak in a dominant language; the existence of several languages is often considered a threat to national unity.
Dr Stefanie Pillai, former dean of Universiti Malaya's Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, opposed such a move, saying: "We are all Malaysians, but a sense of identity is very important. Sometimes, in Malaysia, assertion of an ethnic identity is made out to be a bad thing, but it's not."
To prevent the extinction of the language, there must be favourable conditions for people to speak in their mother language and teach it to their children. It is necessary also to form an education system that helps learning in the mother tongue.
Since the main factor is the attitude of community members towards their own language, it is important to create a social and political atmosphere that encourages respect for the mother tongue, so that its' use is an advantage and not a disadvantage.
The writer, writing from Russia, is a former lecturer at Universiti Malaya
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times