Lisbon – On Sunday, February 21 from 11:00am to 6:15pm, the Italian Cultural Institute of Lisbon participates in the International Mother Language Day, organized by the Gabinete Lisboa Encruzilhada de Mundos of the City of Lisbon. The day will be celebrated with events taking place in different areas of the Colina de Santana, a neighborhood in Lisbon with an exceptionally strong foreign presence, especially Chinese and Bengali. All day on Sunday a series of initiatives covering theater, music, art and literature will take over the area. For literature, there will be a real marathon of poetry readings with Italian, German, Arabic, Bengali, and Chinese texts read both in the original language and their Portuguese translation. The readings in Italian will be realized by Giacomo Scalisi, Giulia Lamoni, Paola D’Agostino and Luisa Violo, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute. International Mother Language Day, set up by UNESCO in 1999, is celebrated on February 21 every year to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. In 2007, it was recognized by the General Assembly, and 2008 was announced as the International Year of Languages. The date was chosen to commemorate February 21, 1952, when a group of Bangladeshis students from the University of Dhaka were killed while protesting against the police forces of Pakistan (which then included Bangladesh) for the recognition of Bengali as an official language. (9Colonne)
