The motto

​​is

.

This is the content and purpose of the celebration, which has been organized for 22 years under the auspices of the Council of Europe.

Its general secretary Mariya Peychynovych-Burich issued a special address:

" This is a

of

what

our

special.

​​in

.

The official page of the holiday has 42 language versions, including European languages ​​that do not have national status.

There is no Belarusian version... There are 46 states in the Council of Europe, but the status of "special invitee" to the Council for the Republic of Belarus was suspended in 1997 after a series of anti-constitutional referendums.

And from 2022, after a large-scale attack on Ukraine, Russia was excluded from the Council of Europe.

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That is why the holiday is not felt in Belarus.

Although concerts and exhibitions, teachers' conferences and thematic school classes are held all over our continent on this September day.

The language festival lasts several days in Graz, Austria, where the European Center for Modern Languages, a center for the cultivation of European linguistic diversity, is located.

The Internet is full of games and entertainment for children and not only that: I was fascinated, for example, by an audio test for recognizing the language spoken by neighbors in a queue or in a cafe.

The goal is to tirelessly show that linguistic diversity is the common wealth of Europeans, to teach respect for the language of the neighboring people, in general for every language, even if it is spoken by a couple of hundred people.

And Putin's government finally broke the "Leninist" decorations from the policy of linguistic Russification.

There they abolished the compulsory study of the languages ​​of local peoples in schools, even Tatar in Tatarstan (where the native language of the indigenous people held the strongest among non-Russians in the Russian Federation), one by one national autonomies are abolished - what a linguistic diversity there is!

This language policy of Moscow obediently echoes in the Minsk government palaces.

It is not by chance that their current manager began his official biography precisely with the language issue, canceling the status of the Belarusian language as the only state language in 1995.

As a result, in 2009, UNESCO included the Belarusian language in the "red book" of endangered languages.

Not only that.

The aforementioned administrator and his propagandists constantly mockingly quote Belarusian words and use them - for example, "conscious", "fighter" - to stigmatize "enemies".

This policy has all the hallmarks of lingucide.

Although the anti-democratic government of Belarus was expelled from the Council of Europe to the "waiting room", the Republic of Belarus repeatedly extended its hand to official Minsk, offering to join specific agreements under its auspices, including the "European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages".

In 2017, Minsk even reported that they were ready to comply with the provisions of the Charter and ratify it.

True, even then the question arose, how do the authorities ensure the rights of Belarusian speakers - the Belarusian language in Belarus cannot be included in the "regional" or "minority languages"?

Well, now, after Minsk closed schools with Polish and Lithuanian languages ​​of instruction, all other issues have become clear.

Sometimes you see replicas in the local press - they say that now there will be Belarusian-language schools everywhere in their place.

Naivety!..

Linguistic diversity is like a bone in the throat of the "Russian world".

They are incompatible.

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• Vintsuk Vyachorka

  Born in Brest in 1961. As a linguist, he studied the language of publications of Western Belarus during the interwar period, initiated the modern arrangement of Belarusian classical spelling, contributed Belarusian programs and reading books for preschool institutions.

  An active participant in the national movement, starting with "Maistrovni" and "Talaki" in the 1980s.

  Author and contributor of popular science texts and books, including about national symbols.

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