Kazakhstan to mark International Mother Language Day on Feb. 21

BISHKEK. February 16. KAZINFORM Kazakhstan will mark International Mother Language Day on Feb. 21, Almaty City Administration told Trend News.

February 21 was proclaimed International Mother Language Day by the 33rd session of the UNESCO General Conference on November 1999. It has been marked since Feb. 21, 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. The International Mother Language Day?s key objective is to prevent languages from vanishing given the fact that at least two languages disappear in a month nowadays. Over 100,000 people are required to speak certain kind language so that it will survive. Since time immemorial, variety of languages were born and died out without leaving any track. The up-to-date technologies hinder national minorities to get their language recognized worldwide as a language not used on internet ?does not exists? for the modern world. According to the French Academy of Sciences, the mankind speaks in almost 3,000 languages today. The New York population alone speaks in 75 languages. The indigenous tribes and nations of America who were mercilessly shot by Europeans who flowed into the continent in large numbers once, speak in their own languages and dialects. Over 700 of these languages lack writing. The Chinese language has dozens of dialects. Seven major languages are so different that some linguists consider them to be kindred languages. Chinese people from different provinces and cities do not almost understand each-other?s languages. There are around 70 nations in Vietnam each of whom has their own languages and dialects. Indian is a more multilingual country. According to the 1931census, there are 203 languages in the country. The 1951 census take into account dialects, so the variety of languages exceeded 700. The Indian states have 14 official languages. Over 10 million people speak in each of these languages. Over 30 of these languages have their own writing and even alphabet. There are about 40 ethnic communities in Philippines. Only 17 of them are major languages. There are numerous of ethnic groups and languages in Africa. The Western Africa has 126 ?major languages? let alone dialects and accents. The Chinese is mother language of 1,113,000,000 people. This is twice as much as the figure for the English language ? 372 million. According to the American calculations, in 2050, the number of the Chinese-speaking population will reach 1, 384,000,000, Hind and Urdu-speaking population ? 556 million and English-speaking population ? 508 million. The English language is followed by Spanish and Arabic with 486 million and 482 million respectively. In 2001, the UNESCO adopted Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Its aims to have a significant impact on humanising globalization and making it more culturally sensitive. The Declaration supports cultural diversity, cultural rights and the role of culture in development. It calls for equality of all cultures, protection of cultural heritage, respect for cultural rights and promoting intercultural dialogue, Kazinform cites Trend News.