International Mother Language Day Posters

UEA IMLD 2023 poster.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. A. Giridhar Rao.

February 21st is International Mother Language Day (IMLD). Universala Esperanto Association (UEA) produces a poster every year to mark the event. Stefano Keller in Geneva designed this year's colourful poster. For several years now, Renato Corsetti in London has been getting Esperantists to translate the text of the poster into various languages. Posters from previous years are archived on the multilingual website Linguistic Rights.

This year too, Esperantists (and friends of Esperanto!) in India and Kenya produced texts in several languages. Rafael Lima in New York rapidly incorporated the text into Stefano's poster. Here is a gallery of those posters in Assamese, Bengali, English, Esperanto, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Luo, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Swahili, Tamil, and Telugu!

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Assamese.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Nazrul Haque

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Bengali.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Sajal Dey.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Esperanto.
Designed by Stefano Keller.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Gujarati.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Himanshu Upadhyaya.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Hindi.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Harjinder Singh Laltu.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Kannada.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. S S Pradhan.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Luo.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Abado Jack Mtulla, Abado Joseph Mtulla.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Malayalam.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Anand Kurien.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Marathi.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Omkar Devlekar.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Odia.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Amalendu Jyotishi.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Punjabi.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Harjinder Singh Laltu.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Sanskrit.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. P V Ranganayakulu.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Swahili.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. Abado Jack Mtulla.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Tamil.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. P. Arul Nehru.

UEA IMLD 2023 poster in Telugu.
Designed by Stefano Keller.
Tr. P V Ranganayakulu.

Linguistic human rights in Iran

We move from Linguistic human rights in Turkey to those in Iran.... Here's a free rendering of what my friend Reza Torabi in Tehran says in his Esperanto blog posted, appropriately enough, on the International Mother Language Day, 21 February:

"Mother! Where is my language?

"To complain about linguistic human rights in Iran is nothing new. Five languages in Iran have more than a million speakers: Persian, Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Arabic and Baluchi. There are also a few other languages whose speakers don't reach a million but a few thousands, for example, the Armenians. In this note, I'd like to touch upon Azerbaijani, which is my mother tongue, and that of some 16-26% of the population of Iran.

"Azerbaijani is a "big problem" in Iran. Many have tried to strongly argue that "Azerbaijani is but an ancient form of Persian, and has no relation whatsoever to Turkish!" (Here's a slew of articles in Persian.) And that the Azerbaijanis are "pure Aryans", and that after the invasion of Azerbaijani territory by the Mongols, the population changed to a Turkic language (?!), and that....

"For 80 years now (since Reza Shah Pahlavi), many linguists, scientists and politicians have tried to prove this theory. The main aim was and remains to wipe out the Azerbaijani language and make the Azerbaijanis believe that "you are lost Aryans, and your language has been poisoned...." Nevertheless, they haven't entirely succeeded in "Persianizing" the Azerbaijanis.

"It's strange that the Iranian revolution changed nothing in this policy of wiping out Azerbaijani, and the new government followed the previous regime in its treatment of minorities, especially the Azerbaijanis.

"The systematic negation of the Azerbaijani language has caused the rise of radical movements in the Azerbaijani region of Iran. The Constitution recognizes the right to learn in the local (mother) language in parallel with the official language (Persian), but it's strange that Armenians (400,000) have a right to do so in their own language, but Azerbaijanis (more than 20 million) don't have a right to even study about their language in Iran (this is true also of the Kurds, the Baluchis, etc.).

"I now want to raise a simple question:

"Millions of people in Iran speak a language called Azerbaijani, which bears no relation to Persian.

"Why can the Azerbaijanis not study in their own language in spite of the fact that their right to do so is enshrined in the Constitution?

"Has the 80-year-old systematic disrespect of the Azerbaijanis in Iran had any success whatsoever?"