International Mother Language Day 2024
Happy International Mother Language Day from Exeter City of Literature! This is one of the UNESCO International Days we as a City of Literature celebrate.
We spent the day sharing a variety of activity from around Devon and other Cities of Literature across the globe.
Read on to find out about the history of the celebration and what we got up to in 2024.
International Mother Language Day 2024
The idea to celebrate International Mother Language Day was the initiative of Bangladesh. It was approved at the 1999 UNESCO General Conference and has been observed throughout the world since 2000.
UNESCO believes in the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity for sustainable societies. It is within its mandate for peace that it works to preserve the differences in cultures and languages that foster tolerance and respect for others.
Multilingual and multicultural societies exist through their languages which transmit and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures in a sustainable way.
Linguistic diversity is increasingly threatened as more and more languages disappear
Globally 40 per cent of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand. Nevertheless, progress is being made in multilingual education with growing understanding of its importance, particularly in early schooling, and more commitment to its development in public life.
THREADS - Manchester City of Literature
Threads is a new physical and digital exhibition of multilingual writing and material from UNESCO Cities of Literature.
Cotton-spinning is part of Manchester’s heritage as the world’s first industrial city and as a result is inextricably linked through history to slavery, social reform and protest. Manchester City of Literature are following these threads and more through literature, as well as opening the discussion around the world, inviting UNESCO Cities of Literature to look at their own links to textiles and follow these threads as they are interwoven into cultural identities.
The exhibition features creative materials, textiles and writing from Odesa in Ukraine and nine other Cities of Literature, including camouflage nets of the Ukrainian defender created using a technique called “Kikimora”. Kikimora is also a character in Slavic fairy tales and can be good or evil depending on whom she is dealing with. To these nets creators tie in symbolic lines of poetry, woven hearts and ribbons before they are sent to be used to protect people and equipment.
Exeter is represented in this exhibition by the poem Threads, a ‘living’ poem produced by members of the local community in Exeter City, created as part of a workshop with Quay Words Spring 2023 writer-in-residence Davina Quinlivan.
Literature Works has been running the Quay Words programme at Exeter Custom House since 2019, in Exeter City of Literature. Davina Quinlivan was our writer-in-residence in March 2023 for a Threads themed season, in partnership with the Devon and Exeter Institution. Davina is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at The University of Exeter. Her memoir, Shalimar: A Story of Place and Migration, was published with Little Toller Books (2022).
The full poem submitted by Exeter can be seen here.
International Mother Language Day Poems
We're celebrating International #MotherLanguageDay in a variety of ways - thanks to Lecturers from the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at University of Exeter we have a series of videos of poetry to share with you, read in their mother languages on the topic of identity. Hear how these poems resonate with their readers and listen to translations in Kurdish, Italian, German, Ukrainian and Norfolk dialect!
Ліна Костенко.
Усе моє, все зветься Україна
Буває часом сліпну від краси.
Спинюсь, не тямлю, що воно за диво, -
оці степи, це небо, ці ліси,
усе так гарно, чисто, незрадливо,
усе як є – дорога, явори,
усе моє, все зветься - Україна.
Така краса, висока і нетлінна,
що хоч спинись і з Богом говори.
Lina Kostenko
All that belongs to me is called Ukraine
Sometimes, its beauty blinds me.
I pause, unable to fully grasp the marvel before me –
These steppes, this sky, and these forests.
Everything is so beautiful, pure, and genuine;
everything as it is – the road, the maples.
All that belongs to me is called Ukraine.
Such beauty, lofty and never to perish,
you could just pause and speak to God.
Well, Bor, an wot d’ye think on’t now. All mauder of stuff they’re talkin Abeout “Broad Norfolk,” when they know No more’n my old mawkin Which I shuv’d up to frite them bahds Wot play sich mazin capers In fussicken my baanes and paas, Likewise my arly taters. If I could nab them knowin chaps, I’d make ‘em keinder dudder, For laarfin at ower Norfolk tongue, Why I shud like tu smudder Sich fules as haint the sense tu know, They says thay’re clever, rather; (That’s how they say that word, old man) Yow shud a heer’d my mawther, She say, yow heer’d them London chaps Wot sing on Yarmouth Beach, Then yow will see and werry sune Which is the rummest speech.
Yars, or them cockney chaps wot cum And kick up such a duller, In murderin that poor letter H. Yow’l sune see thay are fuller, Of cheek than sense, so let ‘em laarf. Doant it seem mazin funny, If we’re sich fules they care tu cum And glad to take ower money. So doant yow mind a titty bit As yow stand theer a garpin, But let ‘em know ower Norfolk tongue Will stan theers jeers and larfin. Tell ‘em, old man, if we’re slow We arnt at sich a pass, To brake all rules, and be sich fules To call our Dickey – Hass. Ower temper’s smuthe, we’ll stan theer grins, An put up with theer crumplin, We’ll hang the biler on the hake And stick tu Norfolk Dumplin.
Dorge
Pêla kull û keserê,
Min niha nexeniqîne:
Dorgeyê dibînim
Dikim nakim nagihîjimê:
Dorgeyê dibînim
Bi şewq û şemal in xîzên wê:
Pêla kull û keserê
Min bigihîne wir.
Island
Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.
I see the island
And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.
Italian translation TBA.
English translation TBA.
Die Lösung
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
Zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
The Solution
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had lost the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By working harder.
Would it not therefore
Be easier for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Exeter’s Roman Literary History
The Roman army came into an illiterate world in South-West England and Exeter is no exception.
As part of International #MotherLanguageDay, we're harking back to Exeter's rich Roman history with the help of Royal Albert Memorial Museum who have provided us with some of the earliest examples of the written word in Exeter and Devon.
You can learn more about the earliest evidence of literacy in Devon on RAMM's website.
The earliest evidence for a named individual in Exeter
The scratched writing on this samian cup reads ‘L IVLI IPPONIA’ which means ‘the property of Lucius Julius Hipponicus’. This is the earliest evidence for a named individual in Exeter.
The oldest known example of writing in Devon
This tile contains some of the earliest writing from Devon. Along the top edge are the first letters of the Roman alphabet: IABCDIIFF. The tile was made in Exeter and used in the hypocaust of the legionary bath-house.
