The International Mother Language Day — held at the Belarusian State University — lasted a whole week, with organisers (students and lecturers of the Philology Department) inviting guests and colleagues from other universities. The holiday opened with the Wings Grow From Words event, hosted by the Belarusian State Aviation Academy’s Military Department. Among Belarusian poems read were those by Yakub Kolas, Yanka Kupala, Maxim Bogdanovich, Rygor Borodulin and Pimen Panchenko.
Day of Mother Language, hosted by BSU
Most events took place at the Belarusian State University’s Philology Department. Initially, students and lecturers enjoyed a lecture by Timofey Avilin — a special guest from Belarus’ National Academy of Sciences. Those present spent 90 minutes questioning the specialist on ethno-astronomy, hearing how our ancestors viewed the night sky. Students and teachers were interested in whether a dream would come true if made while a star is falling, and in knowing how the name of the Milky Way originated, and whether Slavonic astrology existed.
The next day, the intellectual baton passed to first year students specialising in Belarusian, Russian and Slavonic philology. They played an educational-and-entertaining game: Philology and Me. A linguistic parlour crowned the event, including a lecture by National Academy of Sciences member Alexander Lukashanets: on ‘Belarusian Language in the Early 21st Century: Problems of Belarusian Language Competence and Education’.
The Day of Belarusian Translation closed the week, with Mikhail Kenko, an associate professor at the Literary Theory Chair of the Belarusian State University’s Philology Department, sharing his experience. The literary expert has translated works in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Slovakian, Czech and German into Belarusian — enabling readers to enjoy Belarusian language texts.
By Olga Pasiyak
