The United Nations' (UN) International Mother Language Day is annually held on February 21 to celebrate languages spoken worldwide. It also observes the human right to use these languages. This special day celebrates language diversity and variety and more importantly remembers the shooting of four Indian students while they were demonstrating for their right to use their mother tongue, Bengali, in their home Bangladesh.

At the partition of India in 1947, the Bengal province was divided according to the predominant religions of the inhabitants. The western part became part of India and the eastern part became a province of Pakistan known as East Bengal and later East Pakistan. This, of course, eventually led to tension between the separated parts. This tension came to its peak in 1948 when Urdu was declared as the only official national language of East Pakistan.
Following this announcement the Bengali-speaking inhabitants started protests against this new law and its government. In fact these people made up the majority of all people living there which might make their outrage even more relatable.
The government outlawed these protests but this did not stop the people to speak up their minds. On February 21, 1952, students at the University of Dhaka and other activists organized another protest that resulted in the local police opening fire which caused the unfortunate death of four of the demonstrating students.

The unrest continued as Bengali speakers campaigned for the right to use their mother language. Bengali became an official language in Pakistan on February 29, 1956. Following the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Bangladesh became an independent country with Bengali as its official language. Still people had to die for their right to speak their very own language and this is the reason why we want to commemorate these people on the International Mother Language Day.
These students are honoured by the encouragement of multiculturalism and the promotion of protective measures for endangered languages. It’s hard to imagine the challenges faced by students who have been ordered to learn in a foreign language, as without linguistic inclusion, there is no equal access to education.

An International Mother Language Day monument was erected at Ashfield Park in Sydney, Australia, on February 19, 2006 after several other memorials have been destroyed at the actual place where the events have took place. There are the words "we will remember the martyrs of 21st February" in English and Bengali and words in five alphabets to represent mother languages on five continents where people live displayed on the monument.

In order to celebrate and also commemorate this Day accordingly many institutions such as the UN and UNESCO are participating in events that promote linguistic and cultural diversity. These activities may include international group discussions, poetry gatherings, multicultural festivals with hearings in various languages and much more. Activists also use this day to encourage people to maintain their knowledge of their mother language while learning and using more than one language. Governments and non-governmental organizations may use the day to announce policies to encourage language learning and support.

The unique nuances and subtleties of linguistic communication which connect individuals to culture and personal identity are valued and encouraged.
Languages are the most powerful way to preserve and develop culture and to promote it all across the world. Because of this unfortunate incident, International Mother Language Day is celebrated in all over the world, while it is a public holiday in Bangladesh.

Here is a list of the title of the day in various languages in honour of the International Mother Language Day 2018:
 

• International Mother Language Day (English)
• Día Internacional de la Lengua Materna (Spanish)
  
• יום שפת האם הבינלאומי (Hebrew)
  
• اليوم العالمي للغة الأم (Arabic)
  
• 국제 모국어의 날 (Korean)
• Internationaler Tag der Muttersprache (German)

written by Karolin VR

The 21th February is worldwide annual of International Mother Language Day. On this day UNESCO promote awarness of multilingualism, linguistic and cultural diversity. 
The goals of this international day are to save the cultural traditions and inspire the society to solidarity, tolerance for each other in the hope of a better future.
Mother tongue is the first language that you learn when you are a baby, rather than a language learned at school or as an adult. Elementary schools have a big role to teach the using of the mother language completely because this is that institute where we learn read and write. In the present we use in the education and in the digital world only few hundred words. If we don't take care with this problem more than 50 per cent of the 70000 today used languages will die out within a few generations.  
Unesco has devoted so much attention to this problem since February 2000.  The goals are to promote peace and multilingualism around the world and protect all mother languages.
Written by: Ágnes Illés
Resources used:
​http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/
http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/background.shtml

We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?
 
Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
 
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
 
Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

​written by Cristo 

The 11th of February is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This day assistance to those women who want to work in scientific fields like technology, engineering and math education. The United Nations General Assembly enunciated the 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on December 22, 2015. Science and gender equality are both developement goals of the 2030 Aganda for Sustainable Development. Over the past 15 years the local community supported the women and girls who want to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree and Doctor’s degree in science-related fields but the percentages of male students are still the double. 
Perhaps many people don't know that women are present in science from the earliest times. Women are excited in the field of medicine and natural philosophy. The first country which supported women's study was Greece. Agnodike was the first female physician who  worked legally in Athens in the fourth century. The other example is Aglaonike who was the pupil and the wife of Pytagoras. She gained results in mathematics field. Pythagoras founded the first school where women could study. The name of the school was Crotone.
Over the centuries many women have achieved success in the scientific field. Marie Curie was the first woman who recieved a Nobel Prize in 1903 and double Nobel Prize in 1911, both for her work in radiation. Fourthy women have been awarded the Nobel Prize from 1901 to 2010,  among them 17 women in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine.
It would be long to list all the successes of women, but the history also proves that science needs women, so it is important to support their education.

Written by: Ágnes Illés

Resources used: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/int-day-of-women-and-girls-in-science/international-day-of-women-and-girls-in-science-2017/#.Wm7fuajibIX
http://www.un.org/en/events/women-and-girls-in-science-day/