LangFest 2018: 4th International Conclave on Mother Tongue

ONI Bureau:  For the last three years, LangFest has been providing a platform for all stakeholders to come together, discuss and create action plans and metrics to carry this agenda forward. While in the first two years, it focused on Odia language, in the third year, it brought together experts representing all classical languages of India and deliberated on how to make the best use of the status to develop and enrich those languages.

This year’s LangFest aims to bring together stakeholders from all major regional languages in India. LangFest2018 is the IV edition of Amari Bhasa Pathe, an endeavor by The Intellects that started to commemorate classical status to Odia language and World Mother Tongue Day.

Today, it has broadened its scope to become a major event focusing on mother language and is attended by scholars and stakeholders from various regions and quarters.

LangFest 2018: The 4th International Conclave on Mother Language One of the biggest challenges in restoring the preeminent position a regional language enjoyed just a few decades back is the gradual alienation of youth from their mother language. It is extremely worrying given the fact that India is a young country close to 45% India’s population is below 20.

No effort to preserve, develop, enrich and promote the usage of mother language will bear fruit without addressing this challenge.

LangFest 2018 will also be unique in the sense that it will focus on creating an actionable agenda around the theme. Some of the areas it will focus on :-

Making mother language the occupational language: How can mother language be the language of work? Alot of practical issues will get resolved if we successfully tackle this big challenge.

Making them reconnect by making it cool: Making the youth identify with the mother language. What changes in outlook is needed and approaches to make that happen.

Beyond the identity politics: How to use and enrich your mother language while respecting others’; learning from each other. In addition, it will also have updating sessions on the agenda started in the previous years.

Creating a specific action plan for popularizing Odia language among youth.

LangFest 2018 will also have youth sessions, display of arts and movies from Odisha. It will also celebrate the 4th anniversary of the classical language status to Odisha.