International Mother Language Day: Celebrating Portuguese, Language and Identity

Every year on 21 February, people around the world celebrate International Mother Language Day: a day dedicated to recognising the importance of languages, linguistic diversity and the cultural heritage carried within them.

The day was proclaimed by UNESCO in November 1999 and has been observed internationally since 2000.

But what exactly is a mother language?

And what happens when you don’t have just one?

For me, that’s where this celebration becomes particularly interesting.

I grew up with two languages from the very beginning: English and Portuguese. Both of my parents spoke to me in their own mother languages from the day I was born, so I’ve always considered both English and Portuguese to be my mother languages.

And then there was a third language.

I picked up Dutch through nursery and television as a baby and toddler. So, when someone asks me what my mother tongue is, I’ve never found the answer particularly straightforward.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’ve always found languages fascinating.

A language isn’t simply a collection of words and grammar rules. It can be connected to our family, our childhood, our memories, our culture and our sense of who we are. And that is what I want to explore in this post.

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🌍 What is International Mother Language Day?

International Mother Language Day is celebrated every year on 21 February to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and to recognise the importance of preserving languages.

The idea behind the day has its roots in the history of Bangladesh, where people campaigned for the recognition of Bengali as one of the country’s official languages.

UNESCO proclaimed 21 February as International Mother Language Day in 1999, recognising the importance of linguistic diversity around the world.

And there is a very good reason for doing so.

There are thousands of languages spoken around the world, but not all of them are thriving. Some are spoken by millions and are passed naturally from one generation to another.

Others are spoken by much smaller communities, and some are at risk of disappearing altogether. When a language disappears, we don’t simply lose a vocabulary list. We can lose stories, traditions, songs, expressions, ways of describing the world and knowledge that has been passed down through generations.

This is happening now in Portugal with Mirandês – the other oficial language in Portugal. It’s spoken in only three parishes in the north of the country where it originates.

A language carries a little piece of the people who speak it. That’s why language preservation matters.

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🗣️ What exactly is a mother language?

The terms mother language, mother tongue and first language are often used interchangeably, but they don’t necessarily mean exactly the same thing.

For some people, their mother language is simply the language they heard and learned first as a child. For others, it is the language of their family or community.

Multilingual people, however, things can become a little more complicated:

• You might grow up hearing two or more languages from birth.
• Maybe you speak one language with your mother and another with your father.
• Using one language at home and another at school.
• You might understand a language perfectly but rarely speak it.
• You could even lose a language you spoke as a child and rediscover it later in life.

So perhaps there isn’t always one simple definition.

Can you have more than one mother language? I certainly think so!

In my case, English and Portuguese are both my mother languages. English was part of my childhood, my family and my environment. Dutch was too.

They aren’t simply languages that I learned. They are languages that were there before I was even old enough to think about learning them. And I think that distinction is relevant!

There is a difference between learning a language from a textbook and growing up with a language as part of your life.

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🇵🇹 My mother languages: English and Portuguese

Having both English and Portuguese from childhood has given me an interesting relationship with the two languages. Sometimes I don’t even think about which language something belongs to.

It is simply the language that comes naturally in that particular situation. A word might remind me of one side of my family. A particular expression might feel more natural in Portuguese. A joke might work better in English. A memory might be connected to a particular sound, phrase or way of speaking.

And this is something I think language learners sometimes underestimate. Language is emotional. We don’t only learn vocabulary: we attach memories to words; associate voices with people – this is a funny one. I have biligual freinds who like me were rbought up with both and they say I sound like a totally different person when I speak one language to when I speak the other!

And there is more. We remember phrases because someone we love used to say them; recognise places through the way people speak. And sometimes a language can make you feel at home.

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🇳🇱 And then there was Dutch…

My linguistic childhood wasn’t limited to English and Portuguese. I also picked up Dutch through nursery and television when I was very young.

I don’t consider Dutch one of my mother languages in the same way as English and Portuguese, but it is still part of my early linguistic story.

And I think this is a good example of how messy real-life language learning can be. We often imagine language learning as something very organised:

Language 1 → Language 2 → Language 3

But that’s not necessarily how it happens. Children absorb language from the people around them. From parents , grandparents, friends, school, television (or nowawadays the internet), neighbours, songs. From everyday life.

Long before they know what a noun or a verb is. That’s one of the reasons children can develop such a natural relationship with language.

They’re not sitting down thinking:

Today I’m going to learn the past tense.

They’re simply living in the language. And this is why I enjoy using Comprehensible Input in my lessons becasue it’s built around attempting to simmulate that but in a more efficient way.

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🌱 Language, heritage and identity

This brings me to another language that is particularly meaningful to me: Irish. Unfortuantely my mother didn’t speak it fluently enough to teach me, I know but a handfull of words.

Part of my own heritage is Irish, and although Portuguese and English are the languages I grew up with, Irish is another language that has always had a place in my family story. I’d like to learn how to speak it someday.

I think the relationship between language and heritage is fascinating. We don’t necessarily have to speak a language fluently for it to be part of our cultural identity.

Sometimes a language is connected to our grandparents, our family history or a place our family came from. But it’s also part of someone’s new identity when they move to a different country.

And this is one of the reasons language preservation matters so much.

When a language becomes endangered, it isn’t simply the words that are at risk. It means losing stories, traditions, songs, expressions and ways of understanding the world that have been passed down through generations.

For some people, learning a heritage language later in life can be a way of reconnecting with that history or keeping the language alive within the family.

Is this something you relate to?

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🌍 One language can have many voices

When we talk about a language such as Portuguese, it’s tempting to think of it as one single thing.

Portuguese is Portuguese, right?

Well… yes and no. Portuguese is spoken across different continents and within communities with very different histories and cultures.

Portugal has its own variety of Portuguese. And then tehre are all the differnt accents and regionalisms within.

Brazil has its own. Portuguese-speaking African countries have their own varieties and linguistic realities.

There are also Portuguese-speaking communities elsewhere in the world. The Portuguese language has travelled, changed and developed over centuries.

And that means that Portuguese doesn’t sound exactly the same everywhere.

The vocabulary can change, pronunciation varied widely, the rhythm can change dramaticaly, expressions are different. And the cultural associations attached to particular words can change too.

This is something I think is worth celebrating rather than seeing as a bicho de 7 cabeças! A language doesn’t have to sound exactly the same everywhere in order to remain the same language.

If you’d like to explore the history and characteristics of Portuguese itself, I’ve written a separate guide:

The Portuguese Language

That article looks more closely at Portuguese as a language. Here, I’m interested in something slightly different: what language means to the people who speak it.

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🇵🇹 Portuguese is more than vocabulary

As a Portuguese teacher, I spend a lot of time talking about words.

Words like:

saudade
desenrascanço
convivialidade

Words that learners often find fascinating because they don’t always have one perfect English equivalent. But learning Portuguese isn’t simply about collecting interesting Portuguese words. It’s about understanding the world in which those words are used.

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🇵🇹 Why I teach Portuguese

I didn’t originally set out to become a Portuguese teacher. In fact, for quite a while, I resisted the idea.

I needed an income, and people around me kept suggesting that I should teach Portuguese. I’d learned languages from a young age, I was naturally good at them, and Portuguese was something I already knew well. But I wasn’t convinced.

Then I found myself thinking about a parable I’d learned when I was younger: the Parable of the Talents.

I’m not going to pretend I was particularly close to Jesus anymore at that point in my life. I wasn’t. But that parable stayed with me, and I remember thinking about the things I’d been given: my languages, my knowledge and my ability to communicate and wondering what I was actually doing with them.

Trying it out

So I decided to give teaching Portuguese a try. And it turned out that there was a reason people had been suggesting it.

I know what it’s like to learn another language and get things wrong.

I’ve experienced the embarrassment of saying something incorrectly. I’ve been laughed at and mocked because of mistakes I’d made while speaking another language. And I know how easily experiences like that can make you afraid to speak at all.

I don’t want my students to feel that way.

Of course, mistakes are an unavoidable part of learning a language. But being made to feel stupid for making them is something else entirely.

I want my students to understand Portuguese, but I also want them to feel comfortable using it: even when it’s not perfect.

And somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened. What started as a way of earning an income became something I genuinely enjoy.

I discovered that I love finding interesting things about Portuguese, explaining them in a way that makes sense to English speakers, creating lessons, writing about Portuguese culture and making videos to help people learn.

I especially love those little moments when something that once seemed confusing suddenly clicks.That’s really what The Sounds of Portuguese has grown from. Not a master plan.

Just a language I grew up with, something I was good at, a need to earn a living, a little encouragement from other people, and one old parable that made me stop and think:

What am I going to do with what I’ve been given?

And I’m rather glad I decided to find out.

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🗣️ A little Mother Language Day challenge

If you’re learning Portuguese, why not use International Mother Language Day as an opportunity to think about your own relationship with language?

Try answering these questions in Portuguese:

Qual é a tua língua materna? (What is your mother language?)

Falas mais do que uma língua? (Do you speak more than one language?)

Que línguas ouviste quando eras criança? (What languages did you hear as a child?)

Quem te ensinou a tua primeira língua? (Who taught you your first language?)

And perhaps the most interesting question:

O que significa a tua língua para ti? (What does your language mean to you?)

You don’t need complicated Portuguese to answer.

Even something as simple as:

A minha língua materna é o inglês.

Também falo português.

Aprendi português com a minha família.

can tell a story.

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🌎 Celebrate your language

International Mother Language Day is a reminder that languages aren’t just tools for communication.

They are part of our human heritage, they carry memories, connect generations, preserve traditions and shape identity. And they allow us to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

For me, English and Portuguese are both part of who I am. Dutch is part of my early childhood story.

And Irish is a language I would like to become more familair with to reconnect with another part of my heritage.

Whatever your relationship with language happens to be, International Mother Language Day is a good opportunity to celebrate it.

And if you’re learning Portuguese, I hope you don’t see it simply as a list of vocabulary and grammar rules.

Listen to it.

Speak it.

Read it.

Make mistakes in it.

Laugh in it.

Learn about the culture behind it.

And eventually, perhaps, live a little of your life in it.

Because a language is never just a language.

É uma parte da nossa história.

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🇵🇹 Keep learning Portuguese

If you’re learning European Portuguese, explore more language and culture resources here at The Sounds of Portuguese:

The Portuguese Language: discover the history, characteristics and varieties of Portuguese.

The Portuguese Language Hub: find Portuguese lessons, grammar, vocabulary and listening practice.

Portuguese Culture: explore Portuguese traditions, food, celebrations and everyday life.

Feliz Dia Internacional da Língua Materna! 🇵🇹🌍

And whatever your mother language is: celebrate it, speak it and pass it on.

Fevereiro