My Mother Tongue

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.

(This post was sent in Kaushik Vaghela. Kaushik Vaghela is a State Resource Group member for Language in Gujarat – his understanding of community – community strengths, weaknesses, organizing meetings for create awareness is one of his unique abilities. In this post, Kaushik talks about how ?despite technology and exposure to other languages through TV – attention to mother language does not diminish. He also talks of how some schools in interior villages face a problem when teachers come from other districts and do not understand the dialect of the village – this time taken in the relation between children and teachers is an issue which is discussed in education fora. He also shares through a proverb, how dialects change with some distance between villages. – he says that if people do not accept the different dialects, how can they accept different languages.)