Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism celebrated International Mother Language Day today, 21 February 2022, through collaborations, projects, social media, and an interview on the Icelandic National Radio.

Móðurmál participated in creating a common greeting on this day, together with five international heritage language coalitions. In this YouTube video, representatives of Heritage Language Education Network in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, International and Heritage Languages Association (IHLA) in Edmonton, Canada, Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools in the US, Mother Tongues in Dublin, Ireland, and Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe (FOHLC Europe) explain how they and their associated schools celebrate the day.

Móðurmál also invited the interested public on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to post photos of languages and multilingual signs in their environment with hashtags #modurmalsamtok #motherlanguageday #ourlanguagegarden. The inspiration for this language awareness initiative came from Mother Tongues in Dublin, Ireland.

Mother tongue groups celebrated with children and families, for example, the Lithuanian school Three Colours (Trys Spalvos) organized a successful reading competition, the Ukrainian group prepared a book exhibition and a concert, and the Russian group offered a guided tour in Reykjavík Art Gallery. The library of Móðurmál organized an online book exchange market between 12 and 22 February. Móðurmál library gave away around 250 good books, extra copies or books not suitable for the library and found them a new home. Interested readers only had to comment or send a message within the Facebook post.

The Icelandic National Radio invited Móðurmál for a short interview for the series “Mannlegi þátturinn” (Eng. The Human Element) about the importance of mother tongues. The recording is available in the archive here (minutes 29:00-37:37).

If you are looking for resources in children’ mother tongues, visit Móðurmál library that currently houses over 8000 books in 86 languages, or find online resources in the Heritage Language Hub, with access to books in over 700 languages and tools for creating books in learners’ home languages. Or visit EU-Speak for bilingual books in adult learners’ home/heritage languages.

Happy International Mother Language Day!

The project took place in spring 2021 and it aimed to empower immigrant youth of foreign origin and encourage more active participation in society.

• The first part of the project:
Youth leader workshop for 6 youth aged 16 to 19. They received leadership training that introduced them to general leadership, self-development, multiculturalism, sustainability, and a regenerative environment. The final step in the leadership training was a weekend trip to Selfoss where they worked together and created a summer camp program for their younger peers. The summer camp then took place on June 11 to 13 where they implemented the program they created as a team.

• Second part of the project:
Younger youth age12 to 16 were led by the leaders, met for the very first time on Friday the 11th of June at Gerðuberg, where the project was introduced, games were played and the 31 youth get to know each other. On June 12th and 13th, the group led by the group leaders and supervised by 2 teachers and 4 adult volunteers head off to South of Iceland (Aldviðra and Selfoss). The children were given the opportunity to discuss many topics that are important to their development such as multiculturalism, sustainability, and nature, their situation as an immigrant, and their power to make a difference. These topics were discussed and introduced through lectures, games, and group work.

• Impact of the project
The project is very important. It is clear that 75% of adolescents of foreign origin in Iceland do not meet the school standards in compulsory school and therefore they fail to attend upper secondary school. This issue will have a significant effect on our society.
Móðurmál and Adventures For Students Iceland believe that empowering our youth is very important. We wanted to contribute to strengthening young people’s self-confidence and encouraging active participation in society.

Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism is an expert consultant organization in the “E-Power” project 2021-2023, a collaboration of the Czech Republic, Norway and Iceland.

This Iceland Liechtenstein Norway Grants project is focused on solving problems with the inclusion of disadvantaged children and youth in primary and secondary schools in North Moravia region in the Czech Republic. Cooperation is an important pillar of the project – many European countries, like the Czech Republic, face similar problems in integrating disadvantaged groups into society, and the transfer and sharing of best practices and examples of good practice can help address them. The aim of this call is to develop, support and strengthen the competencies of primary and secondary school teachers in the inclusive education of children and youth not only in the field of business and social innovation.

For this reason, the CpKP North Moravia has established cooperation with the non-profit organizations Lyk-z & daughters from Norway and Einurd from Iceland, which have experience with inclusive education and training in business and social innovation in these countries.

The expert consultants of the project are representatives of an Icelandic organization Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism  and Pedagogical-Psychologist Counseling Center in Šumperk.

About the project:

In the project partners want to use their experience with the issue of inclusion and experience with social entrepreneurship and innovation training and education, and achieve the following project goals:

• Increase primary and secondary school teachers’ classroom-based skills in inclusive training youth (15-18 years old) in entrepreneurship and social innovation.
• Deliver high quality open and online educational resources for entrepreneurship training of youth.
• Transferring best practices in inclusive teaching methodologies and multicultural classroom settings
• Character building and empowerment of disadvantaged groups of students/pupils.
• Enhance teachers’ skills in training for social entrepreneurship, based upon pupils’ personal strengths, culture and value system.

In the coming two years, we will share the common expertise with Móðurmál community, as well as the professional community of educators and social actors.

A group of organizations in Canada, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United States have come together to focus on what CBHL schools worldwide have in common and to define universal principles and good practices that will help guide these schools. These International Guidelines were developed in 2021 by representatives of heritage language school communities, organizations, associations, and initiatives.

Móðurmál is a proud member of this international group of associations and scholars.

The International Guidelines can be downloaded here.

Forum of Heritage Language Coalitions in Europe

FOHLC Europe is an exciting new collaboration between several organizations involved with heritage language education in Europe. We are initiating an annual conference that we hope will become a new tradition of creating connections. It will be a chance for all involved in this area to come together once per year to share expertise and to discuss the needs of our organizations. Móðurmál is one of the founding members of FOHLC Europe.

More about FOHLC Europe is here.

The new partnership FOHLC Europe is preparing an annual conference Future-proofing Heritage Language Education. Topics will include online learning, succession planning, and other ideas for HL program sustainability.

The goal of organizing an annual conference is to provide a platform for exchanging ideas about how to: 

• promote HL education in Europe 
• promote interest of HL associations (language-based or location-based) in Europe 
• improve the quality and professionalism of HL education in Europe 
• map the situation of HL schools in Europe 
• create connections between HL associations in Europe 
• support / take part in research in HL education 

Full program and registration are on Eventbrite (click here).

Interview with Rósa Björg Jónsdóttir, Project Manager of Móðurmál Library who received the Order of the Falcon from the President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhanesson for her contribution to promoting literature in other languages than Icelandic. The order is awarded annually on 17 June, the national holiday.

Renata: Congratulations Rósa Björg with your Order of the Falcon. Could you tell me what kind of Order it is?

Rósa Björg: It is a recognition for my work. You have to be nominated.

Renata: Who receives the Order? I was looking at the list of people who received the order this year, it seems that usually the nominations are for contribution to Icelandic culture or Icelandic language or Icelandic state. When I was looking at the list, I thought that you were actually different from the others, you were promoting other cultures and children´s literature in other languages.

Rósa Björg:  Yes. I was also different from others because I received it for a completely voluntary job.

Renata: Could you tell me a bit about the library? What did you actually do that earned you this Order of the Falcon?

Rósa Björg: The library will be five years old in December. From the beginning, I have catalogued the books in the National Library System. Now we are up to 7400 books in 85 languages.

Renata: And you found the office for it, you found the place. Are you lending the books to individuals?

Rósa Björg: We have three kinds of people coming to us. I lend the books to the pupils in Móðurmál, some come directly to me, some groups have boxes with books and they do the lending out, then I do interlibrary loans to schools and public libraries around Iceland, and the third group are people interested in learning languages.

Renata: And you also advertise the library, right, you have presented it at conferences?

Rósa Björg: Yes, I presented it at a conference of librarians. After that I got more requests from outside of Reykjavík. The group of librarians is quite small so now actually I am getting books for the library from my colleagues. For example a few days ago I got a book in French, in Slovenian and in German from another library. We are getting a lot of donations. Mainly we have books, but we also have board games, DVDs, audiobooks, some magazines for kids as well.

Renata: Why is it important, why are you doing it?

Rósa Björg: I started with the Italian library eleven years ago. I kept donating books to Reykjavík public library in Italian, they were the books that my children were not reading any more. They could not find any new books in Italian in the library, and they were losing the joy of reading in Italian. So, a group of Italians living here donated books that their children were not reading any more and we started the library. I think you probably did the same with the Czech library as well.

Renata: It was a little different with the Czech library. We organized collections of books in the Czech Republic and a travel agency brought six big boxes of books to us. People from the Czech community wrote the catalogue cards. And then people kept giving us books and we slowly figured what kind of books are important for children going to the Czech school. Because they need books that are age-appropriate but simple, simpler texts than children in the Czech Republic their age.

Rósa Björg: Exactly. We had books mostly from the community in Iceland, but people also brought books from Italy. Things just kept adding up.

Renata: So tell me, is there more space for new books in the library today?

Rósa Björg: Not so much space but we can make more space if we have to.

Renata: Do you still accept more books?

Rósa Björg: It depends on the languages. Nordic languages for example have their own library in the Nordic house. Also English and German, you can get them in public libraries. I am very selective. I prefer to use the space for languages that are more difficult to get.

Renata: So which languages do you actually want to add, languages that you still don´t have or languages of the minorities that live in Iceland?

Rósa Björg: I am always trying to get books for the minorities in Iceland. I also have languages that are not on Móðurmál´s language map. You never know, I was asked the other day whether we had books in Nepalese. We don´t have any, I had already tried to buy some, but it was very difficult. I would love to have more books in the languages that are not so easy to get, like the Asian ones. Even thought they are difficult to catalogue for me. But I see they are requested. Also Romanian because the Romanian community in Iceland has grown from 150 people a few years ago to 2800 now. So there has been an explosion of requests for Romanian books. I never say no. We try to be environmental; we have many second-hand books. Sometimes when I go abroad, I go to second-hand book stores and buy books in different languages.

Renata: How is the financing of the library?

Rósa Björg: We sometimes get grants that are for specific reasons, for example for buying books. But we don´t have a grant to pay for the work or for the rental space. It was really nice to get the grant from the Developmental Fund of Immigrant Issues because it helped us get books in new languages that I could not get as donations from the communities. And nearly all of the 177 books that I bought have already been borrowed. I think it was money well spent. If it wasn´t for Covid, it could have been even better.

Renata: Ok. So how about some final words. Future.

Rósa Björg: I think we actually need to find a space for the library that is not my office. It would be great to have space where people can sit down, maybe having kids over to read. We teach a lot of languages in Móðurmál, we could have people coming and reading for the kids. Our groups could get together at the library. Now it´s more like a space for keeping the books. But it´s great anyway because before I had to go to different places to pick up the books and I had to go to the schools when they asked for the interlibrary loan. Now I just tell them, please come to me.

Renata: Life became simpler.

Rósa Björg: Yes, but with more people, there is more work. I also had to create more library rules.

Renata: But you think that the library has proved itself, right, its value and its place in the Icelandic society, it was needed, it wasn´t there and you created it, it was missing, right?

Rósa Björg: There was a project some time ago, libraries were meant to take care of one language each, but it wasn´t enough for our children. Now I get donations from those libraries because people are not reading them anymore. It is easier to have them in one place, people know where to find them. But the problem is not having books, I am always receiving more and more books. People are coming and saying, ‘Yeah, I didn´t know about the library, I just heard about it, do you want children´s books in this and this language.’

Renata: Come to think of it, maybe we should think about the minorities, the small groups, the poor groups, the refugee groups, these people have no way of flying back to their country and buying books.

Rósa Björg: We need books in African languages, but they are hard to get.

Renata: Should we also collect links to electronic books?

Rósa Björg: That´s a great idea.

Renata: There are some great collections online and oftentimes they are sorted out by ages and skills, so it could be complementary.

Rósa Björg: Yes, I think so, it would help with the languages that are difficult to get. I also see that the loans in big languages are increasing. Maybe people were shy to visit my basement. Not it is more accessible, more visible. Even if it is open only two hours a week.

Renata: That´s much better than nothing.

Rósa Björg: It´s also flexible, if people can´t come at that time, I always find a time when people can come. People can for example return books to my mailbox.

Renata: That´s great. You are doing an amazing job. It´s so important to offer children access to reading in their languages and provide them with a lot of choices. Thank you for the interview and I hope that the library will grow and receive more support in the future!

Rósa Björg: Thank you.

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*English below

Undanfarið ár hefur Móðurmál – samtök um tvítyngi unnið að verkefninu “Heimsmarkmið Sameinuðu þjóðanna og fjöltyngd börn á Íslandi” þar sem móðurmálshópar útfærðu eitt eða fleiri heimsmarkmið Sameinuðu þjóðanna í kennslunni. Verkefnið er styrkt af Mannréttinda- og lýðræðisskrifstofu Reykjavíkurborgar og var það upprunalega hugmyndin að vera með ráðstefnu þar sem börn kynntu starfið. Vegna Covid19 þurfti að endurhugsa verkefnið og verður kynningunni miðlað á rafrænan hátt með þessu myndbandi í staðinn. Um leið er hægt að kynnast samtökunum almennt í orðum og myndum í viðtali við Mariu Sastre, formann Móðurmáls.

Myndbandið birtist í tilefni Alþjóðadag menningarlegrar fjölbreytni sem er 21. maí.

*Last year, Móðurmál – the Association on Bilingualism worked on a common project called “The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and Plurilingual Children in Iceland” in which mother tongue schools and groups elaborated on one or more SDGs of the United Nations in their teaching. The project was financially supported by the Human Rights and Democracy Office of the City of Reykjavík. The original idea was to organize a conference during which children would present the work. Due to Covid 19 pandemic, it was necessary to rethink the project and the presentation takes place online instead. At the same time, this is an opportunity to get acquainted with the association in general in words and images through the interview with Maria Sastre, the president of Móðurmál.

The video is released on occasion of “World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development” which is on the 21st of May.

*Íslenska fyrir neðan

A language treasure hunt was launched at the occasion of International Mother Language Day on February 21, 2021. The purpose was to map languages spoken by children and youth in preschools and compulsory schools in Iceland and to raise positive awareness and discussions about languages and plurilingualism. The goal of the search was also to create such a school culture in which all children and youth experience pride in their language treasure and realize that their languages are important for their feelings and for who they are.

The participation in mapping the languages was very good and this year organizations, i.e. afterschool centers also took part. The discussion about the importance of mother tongues took place around the country which was the main goal of the search for the language repertoire.

Take a look at the 109 languages on the map and dive into the amazing linguistic treasures all over Iceland! Read everything about the Language Map here.

*Nýtt Íslandskort tungumálanna

Í tilefni Alþjóðadags móðurmálsins 21. febrúar 2021 var blásið til tungumálaleitar til að kortleggja tungumál töluð af börnum og unglingum á leik- og grunnskólaaldri og um leið stuðla að jákvæðri umræðu um tungumál og fjöltyngi. Markmiðið er ekki síst að skapa námsmenningu þar sem börn og unglingar finna fyrir stolti yfir tungumálaauði sínum og að öll börn átti sig á mikilvægi tungumálsins fyrir sjálfsmynd og tilfinningalíf hvers og eins. 

Þátttaka í kortlagningu tungumálanna var afar góð. Þá tóku í ár í fyrsta sinn þátt stofnanir á vettvangi frítímans, frístundaheimili og félagsmiðstöðvar. Þannig fór fram umræða um mikilvægi móðurmálsins með börnum og unglingum  um land allt sem er höfuðmarkmið leitarinnar að tungumálaforðanum.

Skoðið magnaða tungumálaauðinn á kortinu og öll 109 tungumálin sem fundust. Hægt er að lesa allt um verkefnið hér.