International Mother Tongue Day at Unisa
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Unisa, Professor Mandla Makhanya Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Unisa, Professor Mandla Makhanya
Pretoria -The beauty of languages sparked conversations around the globe yesterday when International Mother Tongue Day was observed.
The day is used to encourage linguistic diversity and fuller awareness of cultural traditions.
To celebrate the day, Unisa in partnership with UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, hosted a round table discussion. The theme was “My language, my heritage: promoting children’s literature and reading in South Africa’s indigenous languages”.
Authors, producers, storytellers and other role players joined in on the discussion.
Elinor Sisulu, of the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, said promoting indigenous languages, reading and books meant creating new content constantly.
She said the foundation was committed to improving the quality and quantity of books in all South African languages.
Weighing in on the importance of this matter was Professor Mongane Serote, who said the lack of linguistic diversity in the country was a cry for cohesion.
Explaining the objective of the discussion he said: “The objective is to hear the cultural voice within the cultural diversity of our nation, and to understand that the relationship between culture and language is one of the cornerstones of nation building.”
Professor Mandla Makhanya, Unisa principal and vice-chancellor, said the discussion brought forward an opportunity for role players to deliberately reflect on indigenous languages to come up with strategies to protect, promote and preserve these languages.
“Mother tongues are not only mere instructional tools but they are deep reservoirs of people's heritage,” Makhanya said.
Speakers encouraged parents, teachers and guardians to help in raising awareness of the importance of indigenous languages, to even go to the extent of teaching children as soon as they learned to talk, other languages.
International Mother Language Day originated in Bangladesh in 1952 and was officially launched by Unesco in 1999.