UN Arabic Language Day
The United Nations launched UN Language Days on February 19, 2010. The initiative seeks to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six of its official working languages throughout the Organization.
UN duty stations around the world would be celebrating six new observances dedicated to a UN official language: French (March 20), English (April 23), Russian (June 6), Spanish (October 12), Chinese (November 13) and Arabic (December 18).
The new initiative – which seeks to increase awareness and respect for the history, culture and achievements of each of the six working languages among the UN community – is part of this year’s observance of International Mother Language Day, observed annually on February 21.
Arabic became a UN official working language on December 18, 1973 by virtue of General Assembly Resolution No. 3190.
Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa and by 250 million more as a second language.
Arabic has many different, geographically distributed spoken varieties some of which are mutually unintelligible Modern Standard Arabic is widely taught in schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the media.
Egyptian Sawt al-Arab Radio Network dedicated the whole day of Saturday, December 18, 2010, to celebrating UN Arabic Language Day. Day, evening and night programmes were presented, under the title of: “Arabic Unites Us”, which emphasized the role played by Arabic in promoting and protecting Arab culture and civilization.