A cultural platform yesterday organised a march in Dhaka, calling on people around the world to respect and protect mother tongues.
The organiser said all nations across the globe should organise similar marches as a sign of showing respect to all the languages and to take initiatives for protecting the endangered languages.
Under the banner of Bangladesh Sangskritik Karmi Sangha, the participants marched from the TSC on Dhaka University premises to Shaheed Minar.
They were carrying colourful flags of around a hundred countries.
Addressing the march, cultural activist Bhaskar Rasha said: “Our language movement in 1952 showed us how to respect and protect mother tongues.”
Unesco says on its website that an estimated 3,000 plus languages spoken today will disappear by the end of this century.
It also says with the disappearance of unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge embedded, in particular, in indigenous languages.
Artiste Golam Mostafa said the world might know because of the march that we all should respect other languages.
“Let spread the message to every nook and cranny of the world that we have to protect languages,” said actor Khairul Alam Sabuj.
The march is arranged at this time every year, said the organisers.
The participants paid tributes to the language martyrs at Shaheed Minar before ending the march.
