International Mother Language Day

Only the native language can be preserved and cherished by its native speaker.On the proposal of the Member States of UNESCO, the General Conference of the organization in November 1999 proclaimed the International Mother Language Day, which was first celebrated on 21 February 2000 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

The history of the holiday has a tragic beginning. The date of February 21 was chosen because it was on this day in 1952 that five students who had taken part in a demonstration for granting their native Bengali official status in what was then Pakistan, part of which later became the independent state of Bangladesh, died.

It is estimated that of the 6,700 languages currently in existence, most are in danger of extinction within the next decade. Bringing international attention to this topic is an important step towards recognizing the need to protect cultural diversity.

According to the results of the All-Ukrainian Population Census (2002), 67.5% of Ukrainian citizens called Ukrainian their native language.

The Ukrainian language has endured severe trials for a long time. This is his disregard for the Polish authorities, an attempt to turn Russian tsarism into a “narrhechia”, the Valuyev and Emsky decrees on its prohibition, the desire in Soviet times to destroy under the pretext of creating a “united national language” (70 languages died in the USSR for seventy years).

The status of the state Ukrainian language was first received with the adoption on October 28, 1989 of the Law of Ukraine “On Languages in the Ukrainian SSR”. With Ukraine’s independence, the process of Ukrainian language revival began. This was facilitated by the constitutional consolidation of the statehood of the Ukrainian language and the implementation of a number of government measures aimed at raising the role and authority of the Ukrainian language in public life of the country. Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine certifies: “The state language in Ukraine is the Ukrainian language.”

But the status of the Ukrainian language as a state language is formal: it has not yet taken its proper place in the field of culture, education and science.

Ukraine has become home to many nationalities, so its linguistic diversity is great.

“We are aware of our responsibility for the linguistic diversity of the country and are ready to do everything to preserve and develop the cultural identity of our citizens,” President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko said in his message on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day.

On December 1, 2006, the draft law “On the languages of Ukraine” was registered in the parliament.

The purpose of the bill is to stop contrasting, first of all, Russian as the most popular language (according to the 2002 census, it is considered the native language of 29.6% of the population of Ukraine) and the Ukrainian state language.

The bill clearly outlines the status of the Ukrainian language as the state language. At the same time, the concept of “regional language” is given. This can be considered a language used by at least 10% of the population in a certain territory.

In particular, according to the bill, regional languages include Belarusian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Yiddish, Crimean Tatar, Moldovan, German, New Greek, Polish, Russian, Romanian, Slovak and Hungarian.

The fate of every nation is organically intertwined with the fate of its language. History knows countless examples of how an ethnos disappears with the disappearance of language. Only a native speaker can preserve and cherish the native language.