Mother tongue, identity and culture

Language plays a huge role in promoting relations between people. Mother tongue, in particular, is regarded as a key element in communicating culture, familiarity, social status and cultural identity. As Nelson Mandela once said, ‘If you talk to a man in…his language, that goes to his heart.’ Mother tongue, therefore, brings about a sense of belonging and identity since when people communicate in their mother tongue, they are able to acknowledge their roots and appreciate the history of their existence. Mother tongue brings about the unique and distinct identity of an individual through the names and naming systems, artistic skills, knowledge systems and cultural practices that the individual adopts. Despite the numerous benefits of using mother tongue in promoting culture and identity, the evolution of culture in the contemporary world has acted as a hindrance to the use and growth of mother tongue. In many places in the world, popular languages have been held more highly compared to the mother languages and people have resulted to restricting the use of their mother languages to ritualistic functions. Language genocide is becoming more popular when people forego their own mother tongues and adopt other languages fully. The result of language genocide is the complete disappearance of languages. Efforts have been put in place to redeem the glory of mother tongue language. For instance, the International Mother Language Day (IMLD) adopted in 2000 to be celebrated every 21^st day of February.  People from all over the world have been able to use this day to explore the significance of mother tongue languages as well as to come up with ways through which mother tongue language can be sustained despite the current trends of language in the world.