International Mother Language Day 2013

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Yesterday was UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. Theme: Books for mother tongue education. Interesting, engaging, pleasurable, informative written material in people’s mother tongues. A great hope, a great challenge.

And Jeanie Bell got to be interviewed on ABC Radio National Drive – they had a lovely peacful lowkey conversation, covering lots of ground – and punctuated by some snippets of different languages, which allowed the interviewer, Waleed Aly, to express pleased surprise that someone was talking about savings accounts in an Indigenous language.

Update: a few other IMLD stories:
in PNG, in South Africa (nice graphs but sad to see the San relegated to “Other”), in Ghana, in Belarus, and in a Crikey post by Aidan Wilson in Australia.

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2 thoughts on “International Mother Language Day 2013”

  1. This is slightly off the point, but I just received a link < <http://www.thejakartapost.com/bali-daily/2013-03-02/new-curriculum-brings-fear-scholars-students.html to an article about a change in the curriculum in Bali such that Balinese, as a language, will no longer be on the curriculum in Balinese schools. It will be subsumed as part of 'arts and culture' and, as any of you who have experience in developing and implementing language curricula will know, that it the thin end of the wedge driving towards language loss. I feel very concerned about this happening in a place that has been resisting linguistic and cultural imperialism on two major fronts for so long. What to do? In the first instance, I am letting you all know about it in the hope some of you may have some insight into how such decisions are made and swayed.

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