The 53rd Foundation Day of the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in the city was celebrated on Saturday through virtual mode and will also be marked by a series of lectures over the year.
There will also be a consultative meeting on language education to mark the completion of 50 years of the four Regional Language Centres of the CIIL. This includes the Southern Regional Language Centre at Mysuru, Eastern Regional Language Centre at Bhubaneshwar, Northern Regional Language Centre at Patiala and the Western Regional Language Centre at Pune. The consultative meeting will be conducted throughout the year commencing July 18, according to the authorities.
In addition, there will be 10-15 panels on various aspects of language education involving eminent national and international experts while efforts will be made to showcase the academic achievement of CIIL for a wider target audience.
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C.G. Venkatesh Murthy, Director, CIIL, Mysuru, in his presidential address recalled the contribution of the institute in the sphere of language and linguistics. He said that the Centres of Excellence for Studies in Classical Languages are being realised through the CIIL and there were four such centres – for Kannada, Telugu, Odia and Malayalam. While Kannada and Telugu centres have full strength, the CIIL was in the process of recruiting staff for Odia and Malayalam centres and they were expected to become fully functional in due course.
Prof. Venkatesh Murthy said under the Bharatavani Project, the CIIL was working for digitisation and web hosting of published resources in Indian languages. The portal has representation of 98 Indian languages in about 92 sub-domains including textbooks, dictionaries and teaching-learning materials in textual and multimedia formats. It provides mobile-based apps to its users and the same would be disabled-friendly based on the intent of the Universal Designs of Learning, he added.
Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Founder Director, CIIL, was the chief guest of the programme held in the virtual mode.
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Nicholas Evans, Director, ARC Centre for the Dynamics of Language, and Distinguished Professor in Linguistics, Australian National University, spoke on the challenges of fragile linguistic diversity in the 21st century. He said as the world confronts huge environmental crises, there is growing realisation how much knowledge and wisdom is held by tribal populations and transmitted through their languages. He said one could learn from it and this is what may save the world from being destroyed but it requires linguists to approach the study of tribal languages with great humility and an openness to genuine collaboration.