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[Peter Austin] 21st of February is International Mother Language Day.

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This is the day that celebrates mother languages all around the world,

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and it commemorates the date on the 21st of February 1952, that is, 60 years ago,

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when a group of students protesting in Dacca, in what is now Bangladesh,

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in the fact that they were being forced to use Urdu, the national language of Pakistan,

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since it was then East Pakistan, and not able to use their mother tongue, which is Bengali or Bangla.

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The vast majority of communities around the world are bilingual or multilingual:

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that is, people are speaking two or more languages as part of their regular daily lives.

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In order to support multilingualism and bilingualism, it's very helpful to have mother tongue, mother language education,

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and for children and students to study two or more languages as part of their process of learning and studying at schools.

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In Australia, the government is currently carrying out a national review, looking at the role of languages,

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multilingualism, bilingualism, indigenous aboriginal languages and immigrant languages across the whole community,

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and they have called for submissions, and the parliamentary committee that's looking into this

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is currently interviewing a range of people, to try and understand the role of language and multilingualism and bilingualism within the Australian community.

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So here at SOAS, the Endangered Languages project is concerned with recording, documenting and helping to support endangered languages all around the world.

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We are training students, post-doctoral researchers and giving grants for researchers to travel to distant places,

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and to record and document languages that are under threat.

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We also have a major archive, with ten terabytes of material that is being collected and made available

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to communities and to researchers and to members of the interested public.