Día Internacional de la Lengua Materna / 5 minutos de español + podcast

En este podcast hablamos del Día Internacional de la Lengua Materna que es el 21 de febrero, preservar la diversidad lingüística es una forma de conservar la diversidad cultural. Hay muchos idiomas o lenguas que desaparecen y esto nos preocupa mucho, queremos la multiculturalidad

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are or at what time you listen to us. Another 5 minutes of Spanish Wednesday, how nice to be with you on this day.

 

Thank you very much for being here, participating week after week, in this podcast about Spanish, a language that we love and that today summons us.

 

Today we are celebrating another very important day for all of us, as it is International Mother Language Day. So, in this edition Number 186 of the 5 minutes of Spanish, we are going to reflect on the importance of the mother tongue.

 

What is the mother tongue?

 

It is the first language that a person acquires at birth and later becomes his or her first tool of communication. It is also known as native language.

 

What if the person later learns another language?

 

That other language is considered a second language. In your case, your mother tongue is English or French, German, Danish, Korean, in general, and Spanish is your second language.

 

Or third or fourth in some cases.

 

A little bit of translation, to make the podcast more agile:

 

Lengua materna -    mother tongue 

Idioma -                      language

Adquirir -                    to acquire

 

A language is the language of a people or nation or of several peoples and nations. The word language comes from Greek and means "private property".

As such, language is a system of oral or written communication with grammatical rules that ensure communication between people.

 

That`s why “idioma” and “lengua” are synonyms. How many languages are there in the world?

 

There are approximately seven thousand languages, but the three most widely spoken are Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and English.

 

Why is International Mother Language Day celebrated on February 11?

 

It honors the people of Bangladesh who were attacked by the Pakistani army in 1952 when they were on the streets celebrating the Bengali Language Movement Day. Many people died defending the right to express themselves in their native language.

 

Today, the aim of this day is to preserve and protect all languages and dialects spoken in the world.

 

It is very important to maintain multiculturalism because a mother tongue has a way of living and understanding the world, that is, a culture. The saddest thing in recent times is that many languages are disappearing.

 

How often does a language die out in the world?

 

Every two weeks a language disappears and along with-it part of our history.

 

Terrible, the diversity and cultural identity of many peoples is lost. And in Mexico?

 

Mexico is among the 8 countries with the greatest diversity of languages. Of the 364 linguistic variants, 43 are in high danger of disappearing and 73 are in medium danger.

 

What is being done to take care of these languages?      

 

There are two institutions that are The National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) and the National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI) in theory they have all the rights by the constitution, in practice these peoples are discriminated against.

 

In fact, there are no translators in the courts for example or in the big cities Spanish predominates and people have to learn it to work.

And what do you know about your mother tongue? Is there much diversity of languages in your country?

 

Thank you very much for making it this far in the Podcast.  And thank you for listening, participating, commenting. Spanish in Cabo and SpanishUp2U would not be the same without you. We want you to speak and think in Spanish, that's our mission.

 

Thank you for allowing us to do this work that we love and for listening to this podcast, on your travels in Mexico, do you listen to native languages?

 

And, if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it.

 

See you in the workshops, in the classes, 24/7 on SpanishUp2U, in the Thursday workshop on Zoom, or listen to us next Wednesday.

 

See you soon.

 

Bye-bye.

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