Language in the Age of AI

On 21 February 1952, students in Dhaka stepped into the streets carrying nothing but conviction and the sound of Bangla in their throats. They were young. They were unarmed. They believed their language deserved to live in classrooms and courts. When bullets were fired, the earth of Dhaka absorbed more than blood. It absorbed unfinished sentences, interrupted dreams, and the trembling insistence that a mother tongue is not negotiable. Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar and others did not fall for a slogan. They fell for the right to speak, learn and exist in the language that shaped their earliest thoughts. Their sacrifice later inspired global recognition of International Mother Language Day, proclaimed in 1999 by UNESCO and observed worldwide since 2000. For Bangladesh, this date is not ceremonial nostalgia. It marks a foundational truth that language is tied to dignity, citizenship, and political presence. In 2026, that truth carries renewed urgency. UNESCO estimates that 8,324 languages are spoken or signed across the world today, and around 40 per cent of them are endangered. The United Nations has declared 2022 to 2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages in recognition of accelerating linguistic decline. Each disappearing language takes with it memory, environmental knowledge, inherited ethics, and distinct cognitive frameworks. The martyrs of 1952 defended the right to speak Bangla in classrooms and courts. The present generation faces a different but equally serious challenge: ensuring that languages remain visible and functional within education systems, governance structures and digital platforms shaped by global power.
Education remains a decisive arena. Research from the World Bank and UNESCO confirms that children develop literacy and comprehension more effectively when early schooling occurs in a language they understand. When instruction begins in an unfamiliar language, students often struggle with foundational learning. UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report indicates that approximately 272 million children and youth were out of school in 2023. In multilingual societies, language barriers contribute significantly to exclusion and dropout. Bangladesh celebrates Bangla as a unifying national language, yet dozens of indigenous languages within its borders lack sustained curricular support. The challenge is not unique. Canada enacted the Indigenous Languages Act in 2019 to support revitalisation efforts. Wales adopted a national strategy aiming to reach one million Welsh speakers by 2050. The European Union operates with 24 official languages, investing heavily in translation infrastructure to protect democratic participation. These examples demonstrate that linguistic diversity requires structured policy, funding and institutional commitment. International Mother Language Day in 2026 must therefore be measured not only by commemorations at Shaheed Minar but by tangible reforms in multilingual education and inclusive public communication.
Generation Z introduces a new dimension to this global conversation. The International Telecommunication Union reports that 82 per cent of young people aged 15 to 24 use the internet worldwide, making them the most digitally connected generation in history. Bangladeshi Gen Z communicates through fluid linguistic hybridity. Bangla blends with English in online conversations. Regional dialects surface in viral videos. Internet slang reshapes everyday speech. Linguists describe such code switching as a natural sociolinguistic pattern in multilingual societies rather than cultural erosion. At the same time, digital visibility often favours dominant global languages. Content produced in English frequently gains broader algorithmic reach. Subtle pressures encourage creators to adapt to linguistic norms that promise greater exposure. This dynamic shapes identity and expression. Yet Gen Z also holds transformative capacity. Young programmers design applications that support regional scripts. Content creators produce podcasts celebrating local heritage. University students publish bilingual blogs that bridge global research and local discourse. The linguistic choices of this generation influence cultural continuity more directly than policy statements alone. In 2026, youth agency intersects with digital architecture in powerful ways.
The age of artificial intelligence intensifies both opportunity and inequality. AI systems rely on massive digital datasets for training. Languages with extensive digitised text and speech receive stronger representation in machine translation, speech recognition and large language models. English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi dominate global data ecosystems. Thousands of other languages remain underrepresented in AI corpora. Research in computational linguistics consistently identifies significant performance disparities between high-resource and low-resource languages. Voice recognition accuracy declines sharply for languages with limited data availability. Automated translation tools demonstrate uneven quality across linguistic groups. In a future shaped by AI-driven public services, this disparity carries serious implications. Government portals, healthcare chatbots, legal information platforms and educational technologies increasingly depend on natural language processing. Linguistic invisibility in these systems can translate into reduced access to essential services. The European Union’s investment in multilingual digital infrastructure reflects recognition that language access underpins democratic inclusion. UNESCO’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages prioritises digital documentation and technological integration for precisely this reason. Bangladesh, shaped by a historic language movement, carries symbolic authority in advocating for equitable language representation within global AI development. Community investment-led documentation, digital corpora and inclusive software design become a matter of justice rather than nostalgia.
International Mother Language Day in 2026 stands at a convergence of history, verified data, and technological acceleration. The world counts 8,324 languages today, yet nearly four in ten face endangerments. Hundreds of millions of children and youth remain outside formal education systems, often in contexts where language exclusion deepens inequality. More than four-fifths of the world’s youth navigate digital environments that reshape linguistic habits and hierarchies. Artificial intelligence systems amplify both innovation and disparity, influencing which languages thrive in public life and which recede into private memory. Against this backdrop, 21 February demands sustained action. Multilingual education reform, digital inclusion strategies, youth engagement, and international cooperation must move beyond symbolic rhetoric. The students of 1952 defended the right to think and speak in Bangla within public institutions. The responsibility of 2026 extends to ensuring that every language retains presence in classrooms, research, governance, and algorithms. A world that safeguards linguistic diversity preserves intellectual diversity. A nation that honours its mother tongue through evidence-based policy and technological imagination safeguards its heritage while securing the generations yet to come.

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The writer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at IUBAT and is currently on study leave, residing in Oslo, Norway