February 21st marks UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. IMLD has been observed yearly since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.

IMLD  originated as the international recognition of Bangladesh’s Language Movement Day, which has been commemorated in Bangladesh since 1952 following government attempts in 1948 to make Urdu the sole national language  and thereby angering the Bengali-speaking majority of East Pakistan.  Anger and discontent peaked in 1952 when protesting students at the University of Dhaka were killed at a protest on 21 February.

Bengali was recognised as the second official language of Pakistan on February 29, 1956, and  the constitution of Pakistan was reworded to “The state language of Pakistan shall be Urdu and Bengali.”

For more on the topic of the Bengali Language Movement, the 2008 book State language movement in East Bengal, 1947-1956 by A.M.A Muhith takes a comprehensive look at the issues.  Tariq Rahman’s Language and politics in Pakistan (1996)  looks at other political and cultural aspects of language in Pakistan,with chapters on British Language Policies and Imperialism; Pashto Language Movement; Urdu-Hindi Controversy; Language Movements of Balochistan, and more. Both of these titles are available at Koerner Library.

If you just want a summary, the Wikipedia entry on the Bangladesh Language Movement provides a good starting point; check out the list of citations at the end for more articles, newspaper reports, and more.

A fascinating new language documentation project gets under way next week. The BOLD:PNG project (Basic Oral Language Documentation :  Papua New Guinea) involves training university students and literacy teachers to collect and curate oral texts from native speakers of the 830 indigenous languages of  Papua New Guinea, many of which are at risk of disappearing.

As the overview page for the site points out, this type of work has been done by linguists for years, however, this painstaking individual work can’t keep pace with the rate of language loss. The BOLD-PNG project addresses the problem of scale by training university students and literacy teachers to collect language data from native speakers over the course of the one-year project using voice recorders donated by Olympus.

For more on languages of New Guinea, check out the entries on New Guinea Languages, Papuan Tip Languages and North New Guinea Languages in the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, available online to UBC folks. The language lists in the entries on Papuan Tip Languages and North New Guinea Languages also  include location and approximate number of remaining speakers.

We have a number of books on Papuan languages in Koerner, including a key text called  Papuan languages of New Guinea by William Foley (part of the Cambridge language surveys).

Good luck to all involved in the project!

Just noticed a number of new books on African languages which have arrived in Koerner Library:

• The languages of urban Africa / edited by Fiona McLaughlin

• Globalization and the future of African languages / edited by Francis Egbokhare, Clement Kolawole

• Grammar of the Kilba language / Mohammed Aminu Mu’azu

• Coding participant marking : construction types in twelve African languages / edited by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal

• The languages of Africa and the diaspora : educating for language awareness / edited by Jo Anne Kleifgen and George C. Bond

• Negation patterns in West African languages and beyond / edited by Norbert Cyffer, Erwin Ebermann, Georg Ziegelmeyer

• Oral and written expressions of African cultures / edited by Toyin Falola and Fallou Ngom

• Globalization and language vitality : perspectives from Africa / edited by Cécile B. Vigouroux, Salikoko S. Mufwene

• Grammar of Yeyi : a Bantu language of Southern Africa / Frank Seidel

We have a strong collection of materials on African languages and linguistics. If you want to search the library catalogue for more, this Guide to Subject Headings, Classification, and Call Numbers for African Languages will help get you started.

If you’d like to browse the stacks to see what’s available, the call number ranges are below. The majority of the collection is in Koerner Library; some material is housed in the ASRS (storage).

PL8000-8844 African languages and literature

If you are interested in the Inuktitut language or oral traditions, you may want to see the upcoming screening of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner at the Vancouver International Film Centre.

Atanarjuat is based on an ancient Inuit legend which takes place in the area around Igloolik. The film is in the Inuktitut language (with English subtitles).

Details:
Vancouver International Film Centre (Vancity Theatre)
1181 Seymour Street (corner Davie Street)
April 19, 2007 at 7:30 pm
http://www.academy.ca/events/screenclassics07.cfm

You may also wish to check out these books on the Inuktitut language at UBC Library:

For students in Linguistics 319 (Comparative and Historical Linguistics) who are searching for books and articles on a specific language family for your annotated bibliography, here are some tips for finding resources.

The handbooks on different language families in the Reference section of Koerner Library (2nd floor) are a good starting point. We have handbooks on these language families: