Today is my youngest son's birthday and so I just checked to see if February 21 marks anything else significant. It turns out that since November 17 1999 February 21 has been marked as International Mother Language Day, a UNESCO initiative building on Language Movement Day, which has been commemorated in Bangladesh since 1952, when many Bengali-speaking people were massacred by the police and army in Dhaka (formerly Dacca). International Mother Language Day is observed yearly by UNESCO member states and at its headquarters to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.
The Linguapax Award is presented annually today. UNESCO sets the theme for each International Mother Language Day and holds related events at its headquarters in Paris on or around this date each year.
My son's main language is Welsh. I put it that way because
Sometimes the term first language is used for the language that the speaker speaks best (his second language then being the language he speaks less well than his first language, etc).
Sometimes the terms first language, second language and third language are used to indicate various levels of skill in a language, so that it can be said that a person knows more than one language at first or second language level.
Sometimes the term native language is used to indicate a language that a person is as proficient in as a native inhabitant of that language's base country, or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language.
Sometimes the term mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learnt at home (usually from his parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can according to this definition have more than one mother tongue.
In the context of population censuses conducted on the Canadian population, Statistics Canada defines mother tongue as "the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census".
Sometimes the terms first language, second language and third language are used to indicate various levels of skill in a language, so that it can be said that a person knows more than one language at first or second language level.
Sometimes the term native language is used to indicate a language that a person is as proficient in as a native inhabitant of that language's base country, or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language.
Sometimes the term mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learnt at home (usually from his parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can according to this definition have more than one mother tongue.
In the context of population censuses conducted on the Canadian population, Statistics Canada defines mother tongue as "the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census".
I think that as far as Welsh is concerned my other sons are becoming what one would call heritage speakers. A heritage speaker is someone who learned a certain language in childhood, but has subsequently used it only in a limited set of contexts (often only with family). While the heritage language would be considered a first language, the person often falls short of the full range of abilities one would expect from a native speaker. Children who immigrated before they began formal education in their native country, and children who are exposed to their immigrant parent or parents' native language at home are likely to become heritage speakers.
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