Delegates gathered at the City Chambers on Monday, to celebrate “International Mother Language Day”.
The annual event organised by The Edinburgh & Lothians Regional Equality Council (ELREC) promotes linguistic and cultural diversity, aiming to preserve more than 6,000 world languages.
The event promotes peace, diversity and inclusion through learning our mother tongue and other languages. It promotes multilingual education in early school settings and find ways to develop education in public life. It is a national day in Bangladesh where the Head of State and Head of Government lay a floral wreath at the Language Martyrs Monument. A similar floral wreath laying service took place today at the city’s Quadrangle.
Foysol Choudhury MBE, Chair of ELREC and MSP for Lothian Region is the first Bangladeshi Member of the Scottish Parliament and Shadow Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development.
Mr Choudhury said: “It is a true honour for me to observe International Mother Language Day. As we all know our linguistic diversity is threatened every day and we see languages disappearing, as our world is becoming more globalised and urbanised.
“Our mother tongue whether it is English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Bengali, Urdu, French, Brazilian-Portuguese, Chichewa, Polish or Mandarin, is the linguistic device that shapes our personal, social and cultural identities.
“It helps us share our different traditions, the sayings, jokes, songs, poems that make all our lives much more vibrant and interesting. It helps us understand one another, where we come from and what makes us all unique, and to foster tolerance among different groups of people”.
“I hope we can remember this day as a day to celebrate our differences, whether it is our languages, cultures, or identities that make us who we are and enrich our daily lives.
“The local community have requested a permanent Martyrs’ Monument be built in Edinburgh. Initial discussions have already taken place and I hope I can sit down with the Lord Provost and city officers to see what can be done.”
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