February 21 is celebrated worldwide as International Mother Language Day. On November 1999, February 21 was declared International Mother Language Day by UNESCO at the initiative of the Ambassador of Bangladesh.
International Mother Language Day once again revives in people's memory the incident of the killing of 4 students who fought for their mother tongue to be an official language in Bengal, Bangladesh, on February 21, 1952.
International Mother Language Day, celebrated annually with the aim of protecting languages facing the threat of extinction worldwide, once again reminds everyone of their right to feel the existence of their native language, to be proud of it, to protect it, and to develop it.
According to Modern.az, there are currently about 7,000 languages in the world, and 45 percent of them are endangered. Only a few hundred languages play a significant role in education systems and government, while fewer than a hundred languages are used in the digital world. Multilingual and multicultural societies exist thanks to languages that continuously transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures.
The comprehensive development of the mother tongue in Azerbaijan is among the issues in the focus of President Ilham Aliyev.
The adoption of the Law “On the State Language in the Republic of Azerbaijan” on September 30, 2002, was an important step towards the use, application, protection, and development of our language as a state language, and meeting the national-cultural self-defense needs of Azerbaijanis worldwide related to the Azerbaijani language.
The decrees of the Head of our State “On the implementation of mass publications in the Azerbaijani language with Latin script”, “On the publication of the Azerbaijan National Encyclopedia”, “On the approval of the State Program on the use of the Azerbaijani language in accordance with the requirements of the time in the context of globalization and the development of linguistics in the country”, “On the approval of the new composition of the State Language Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan”, “On a number of measures to ensure wider use of the Azerbaijani language in the electronic space”, the Decree “On measures to protect the purity of the Azerbaijani language and further improve the use of the state language”, and the work carried out in this direction are a manifestation of great care for the development of our language.
President Ilham Aliyev emphasized the importance of protecting the Azerbaijani language from foreign influences during his speech at the 80th anniversary meeting of ANAS and in his interview with local television channels on January 5 this year.
