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….
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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/
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.