Every day of the year seems to marked out as some sort of Day of This or Day of That. However, tomorrow is a special one for the OpenOffice.org community, as International Mother Language Day 2006 will be devoted to the topic of languages and cyberspace.

I have noted before the contribution that OpenOffice.org is making to help preserve digitally-endangered languages though the work of its Native-Language Confederation. Who better to celebrate UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day, observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. As UNESCO’s site states:

Languages are the most powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage. All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

That’s it in a nutshell. It’s a great quote to have at the back of my mind as I’m hoping to be in Bangladesh for the launch of OOo 2.0 Bangla. As one academic noted today, Bengalis are the only nation in the world who shed blood to establish their mother tongue as state language. Let’s hope OOo can help preserve other languages without having to resort to force of arms.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 10:22 pm and is filed under OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.