Today is International Mother Language Day and our blog is turning multilingual today. We are hosting a series of blog posts by different authors, illustrators, parents, educators and children – sharing their thoughts on languages and more. International Mother Language Day is an observance held annually on 21 February worldwide to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. 2015 is the 15th anniversary of International Mother Language Day.
मैं चॉकलेट खाने में माहिर हूँ. ( I am an expert at eating chocolates)
My younger son when he was as young as 4 years stumped a friend of mine using the hindi word “mahir”. Wow she said, looks like your son is a pro at Hindi. I did not know whether to be proud or just thank god that my mother-in-law was not around.
You see, we are Gujaratis! Could the boy not have just said “હૂ ચૉક્લેટ ખાવાં માં માશૂર છૂ”. Well I wish, but I can’t blame him.
With more and more nuclear families and my kids being a product of the same they hardly get any exposure to hear their mother tongue.
Lucky me, since I work at Pratham Books I am surrounded by hundreds of multilingual books every day. Promptly bought a bunch of Gujarati books and for many nights they were a staple bed-time diet for my kids. Even though my kids still don’t speak fluent Gujarati at least when they speak the pronunciations are correct.
So this International Mother Language Day I am going to be reading to my kids વાર્ષિક વાળ કાપવાની દિવસ. What will you read to your child today? If you don’t have time to buy a language book, read a digital version on the Pratham Books app.
(This post was sent in by Purvi Shah (Head, Digital projects at Pratham Books). Purvi is a momma of two lovely boys and when she isn’t busy working on our upcoming platform’s launch, you will find her on a badminton court).