Didn’t know
they had a day for mother tongue language – the International Mother Language
Day, which fell on 21st February this year and of course will fall on that date
and month every year. On googling, I found out that it was mooted by the United
Nations in 1999 to recognize and promote multilingual diversity of the world.
They seem
to have a day for everything. The other day, I had written a post in this blog,
saluting the all-spicy chicken, and later discovered that they had a day for
the chickens, too! How nice! How very nice! And now when I was feeling all
proud for having Tamil, which is the oldest existing language in the world, as
my mother tongue, I got to know through a Tamil TV channel in Malaysia, that there
is a day for the mother tongue, too. The news reader, a young Tamil lady, was
telling or rather conveying about sending of children of Tamil parents to Tamil
schools that exist in Malaysia, so that the Tamil Language does not die of, as had
many ancient languages, Sadly, she failed to mention that Tamil is the oldest
language in the world, I, being a proud Malaysian of Tamil origin, who started
his education in a Tamil school, felt deeply disappointed,
Anyway, a little info about the language of
the Tamilians, Historic engravements in ancient times show that Tamil language
existed about 5000 years ago. It was found spoken commonly around the Godavari River in Southern
India. Tamil is called as a Dravidian
language as Tamils were one of the tribes of the Dravidian family, which
existed in southern India in ancient times. Linguists say there are touches of the Tamil language in many other languages of the world. The language of the Tamils can be summed up as The Ancient Main International Language!
I am sure
everyone of us is proud of his/her native language and desire to portray the
beauty and the benefits of their own mother tongue. Sure, go ahead!