IML Day – and mother tongue/script monuments

21 February 2015 by Jane Simpson

It’s International Mother Language Day, and Canberra’s celebrations can be seen here from the ABC.

So.. the mother language whose defence led to the choice of 21 February for the day:

and the second Shaheed Minar monument in Dhaka:

And the Afrikaans Language monument:

And a mother script – image from Armenians celebrating IML Day:

Seeking more examples of public commemoration of speech communities and their ways of talking and writing….

2 thoughts on “IML Day – and mother tongue/script monuments”

Lauren Gawne

21 February 2015 at 9:11 pm

There’s a small monument in Sydney that celebrates the Bangla uprising, and mother languages more generally:

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/fullysic/2013/02/21/international-mother-language-day/
Jane Simpson

22 February 2015 at 10:35 am

Thanks! There’s a campaign to have an equivalent monument in Canberra. I’d love to see examples of monuments to other languages or speech communities (and that’s really the tricky thing – the ambiguity between celebrating the product and the people who create that product.

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