International Mother Tongue Day

International Mother Tongue Day which is marked all over the world was an opportunity for the President of the City Assembly, Aleksandar Marton, to remind on the importance of the preserving of language and culture variety as well as the protection of non material heritage. 

 

"Language and language culture are important features of national identity of  every nation, no matter whether they are the Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanian or  other nations. Languages make specific characteristics of the citizens of Serbia and Vojvodina, particularly of cities such as Zrenjanin, where four official languages are used and where more than twenty nations have been living. Today I would like to remind all the citizens of Zrenjanin that the right to use mother tongue is one of the basic rights of each member of each national community that has been present in these areas for centuries. Today in the world about 6000 languages are used, but, unfortunately the estimations say that  even a half of them can die by the end of this century. This  is exactly the reason   this  day is marked to protect  this language heritage." – said Aleksandar Marton.
 
International Mother Tongue Day was established in the memory of the incident in Pakistan in 1952.  when Mohamed Ali Džinah, the Governor of Pakistan, announed Urdu as official language of the Western and Eastern Pakistana, the people of the Eastern pakistan (today Bangladesh), mother tongue Bengali, started a demonstration against this decision. Students organised peaceful demonstrations but the Police opened fire killing several students.