The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated February 21st as International Mother Language Day to highlight the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity.
What is mother language? It is the language you learn first and use at home – also called mother tongue, native language, or first language.
Research shows the easiest way to learn a second language is to be fully literate in your mother language. Why? Children who learn in their mother tongue:
- Learn sounds more easily (since they match them to ones they already speak)
- Read with meaning since the words they read (vocabulary) match their spoken language
- Develop a positive personal and cultural identity
- Are more likely to have their parent communicate with their teacher
- Are more likely to stay in school and succeed
Good news – researchers have shown that literacy and comprehension skills learned in a mother language are completely transferable to any other language learned later, such as your country’s official language.
Unfortunately, forty percent of the world’s population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand. Here are a few organizations trying to help reduce this gap:
- NABU ambitiously aims to eliminate illiteracy by 2030 by helping local authors and illustrators create books that are distributed for free on its phone reading app. It also trains community reading ambassadors to motivate families to read with their children every day. Books are available in many languages, including Haitian Creole, Kinyarwanda, Pashto, and Romanian.
- Bloom Library is an open-source book production platform with over 11,000 books in 500 languages, which can be downloaded even without internet access.
- StoryWeaver has over 45,000 books in 323 languages, with over sixty percent written in Indigenous languages.
Remember – Mother knows best! Mother tongue education supports learning, literacy, and the acquisition of additional languages.
Read more:
UNESCO. (n.d.). International Mother Language Day. UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/days/mother-language.
Oxford University Press. (2023, February 27). Why it is important that a child learns how to read in their mother tongue. Oxford Resource Hub. https://resourcehub.oxford.co.za/road-to-literacy/why-it-is-important-that-a-child-learns-how-to-read-in-their-mother-tongue/.
Benson, C. (2002). Real and potential benefits of bilingual programmes in developing countries. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 5(6), 303-317. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050208667764.