The Daltaí Boards: Lá Idirnáisiúnta na Máthairtheanga

http://tinyurl.com/2bpr2o

...as an Daily Star:

Imagine that you were the last person in the world who spoke your language. You would live with the knowledge that when it was your time to go, the world that lived through the words you used to speak and think and dream would be gone forever...

...At present rates, fully one half of all the languages spoken around the world will be gone by the year 2040. For example, in France, there are about 500,000 people over 50 years of age who speak the Breton language, but fewer than 2,000 are under 25 years of age. It is highly likely that this language, which is related to Welsh, Cornish and Gaelic in the British Isles, will die out in the next half-century...

...Bangla is the language that inspired a movement that led to a country's independence. The movement demonstrated that mother tongues should be celebrated and, if necessary, defended.

Bengalis did the latter with their blood. The date chosen to commemorate International Mother Language Day is, therefore, February 21. On this day in 1952, a group of students on Dhaka University campus were gunned down by security forces while claiming their right to use their mother tongue rather than an imposed lingua franca.

Today, the language has up to 230 million speakers in three Bengals; independent Bangladesh, West Bengal state of India, and the Bangla-speaking diaspora around the world…