Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Feb 27: Days after International Mother Language Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that people in India should speak their mother tongue proudly. The Prime Minister highlighted that Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world. He said that in 2019 Hindi was the third most spoken language in the world.
“It is our mother tongue, we should speak it proudly. And, our India is so rich in languages that it cannot be compared. The greatest beauty of our languages is that from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Kutch to Kohima, hundreds of languages, thousands of dialects that differ from each other but are intertwined… Many languages – one expression. – Developing others.” The Prime Minister said.
Notably, International Mother Language Day was observed on 21 February.
Addressing the 86th episode of the monthly radio program Mann Ki Baat on Sunday, the Prime Minister said, “My dear countrymen, just a few days back, we celebrated International Mother Language Day. The scholars who are there can give a lot of academic information about this. Where did the word mother tongue come from, how did it originate.
“I would stress about mother tongue that just as our mother molds our lives, mother tongue also shapes our lives. Mother tongue and mother tongue together strengthen the foundation of life, make it permanent. Just like we cannot give up our mother, similarly, we cannot give up our mother tongue either,” he said.
The Prime Minister recalled an incident when he had traveled to the United States and met a Telugu-speaking family there.
“I remember an incident from the past when I went to America, I used to meet different families. Once I went to a Telugu family and I got to see a very pleasant landscape there, he told me that they have made a rule in the family that no matter how busy one is, if they are not outsiders, all the members of the family eat together at the table and eat at the dinner table equally compulsorily in telugu language I was just talking. Governance for the children born there. Seeing this love for the mother tongue, I was very impressed with this family,” he added.
The Prime Minister said that Tamil, the world’s oldest language, is in India and every Indian should be proud that we have such an important heritage of the world.
PM Modi said, “Similarly there are many ancient texts, their expression is also in our Sanskrit language.”
He further added, “The people of India are proud to be associated with 121 forms of mother tongue and 14 of these languages are spoken by more than 10 million people in everyday life. That is, many European countries have no total population. People are associated with 14 different languages in our country. In the year 2019, Hindi was at number three among the most spoken languages of the world. Every Indian should be proud of this too.”
