UNESCO established this special day in 2000:
"The idea to celebrate International Mother Language Day was the
initiative of Bangladesh. It was approved at the
1999 UNESCO General Conference and has been observed throughout the world since 2000. UNESCO believes in the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies. It is within its mandate for peace that it works to preserve the differences in cultures and languages that foster tolerance and respect for others." (
UNESCO.org)
Students from the 5th grade Spanish program provided incoming students with stickers that they wore proudly throughout the school day. Over the course of an hour, we cataloged close to 30 languages spoken in our school community, including:
Amharic, Arabic, Bangla, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Fulani, German, Guaraní, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Quichua, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian.