Yesterday, the 21st of February, was International Mother Language Day. 2019 has also been declared the Year of Indigenous Languages by the United Nations.

In Cameroon, we are part of a Wycliffe partner organization, SIL International, which works to develop indigenous languages all over the world. They have put together a small web site talking about International Mother Language Day

Included in this site is a short video that include many people saying in their mother language “My Language Matters”. Please watch it.

As a mother-tongue speaker of a language of wide communication, English, it’s difficult to understand how it feels to speak a lesser-known language as your mother tongue. One thing that has been clear to me, however, after arriving in Cameroon is that people react to their mother tongue: visibly and emotionally.

Just the other day I was at a celebration, and I witnessed a man come across a small booklet in his mother tongue, a Cameroonian language. The excitement was clear on his face as he began reading it. His connection with the words of his own language could be felt. His joy was pouring out in his words.

His language matters.

Your language matters.

We all matter to God.

Title is “What does that say?” in Hungarian.

A few weeks ago a colleague brought his computer in for assistance. This itself is normal. I’m on help desk Tuesday morning, and even outside of that people often come into the office looking for assistance. It’s always nice to keep get someone back working again, if they’re having trouble.

However, after he left I quickly figured out that this computer was in Hungarian. I usually only see computers in English or French. Hmm. This job turned out to be a little more difficult than usual. Luckily, I didn’t have to do too much, and the location of options on Windows is pretty standard. And Google Translate allowed me to know (approximately) what word I was looking for a times.

This was another challenge I never thought I’d run into (I feel like I’ve said that more than once).