Every year since 2014, 21^st February has marked #TweetYorùbá day, an online campaign running concurrently with UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day, in which we flood our social media streams with posts in Yorùbá and bring attention to issues of language diversity online and offline.

This year, we start the fun early with a very exciting concept: an international meme campaign in languages such as Bambara, Swahili, Galo, Bininj Kunwok, Euskara, Pular and more, all under one hashtag: #MemeML.

A fun way to celebrate linguistic diversity

Co-organized by Rising Voices and the Living Tongues Institute, First Peoples’ Cultural Council, Indigenous Tweets, Endangered Languages Project, First Languages Australia, and the Digital Language Diversity Project, the project is a fantastic opportunity to connect with other groups around the world who are working towards advancing their own languages, whether it be in the form of revitalisation efforts or a struggle for greater recognition in the public sphere. The official website’s introductory message has already been translated into 23 languages including Pular, Bambara and Afrikaans, and speakers of other languages are warmly invited to join in.

In previous editions of International Mother Language Day, online activities focused primarily on using Twitter as a way to promote endangered, minority, indigenous, and heritage languages. But this year is a bit different, as Eddie Avila, director of Rising Voices, explains:

We are hoping to make it a month-long activity culminating on February 21. We chose to try something different this year, and thought memes might be a fun and more creative way to encourage and celebrate linguistic diversity on the internet. 

With just 17 days to go, #MemeML needs all hands on deck to make this month-long event a true representation of language diversity and language activism online. Participants are already flooding in from all corners of the globe and together, we can make a point of adding our voices to showcase important aspects of Yorùbá culture as well as the need to preserve the language.

Add your creative voice!

At YorubaName, we were instantly taken with the idea and we’d love for Yorùbá memes to be a part of the global #MemeML. Here is how you can help:

1. Draw attention to Meme ML by sharing social media posts and inviting others to participate.

2. Create a meme and share it on all your social media platforms with the hashtags: #MemeML and #Yorùbá or #Yoruba. Feel free to tag all your friends as well, since fun is known to be contagious! You can also share your creations on this Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mememl

3. Translate this page into Yorùbá and send your translation to project@yorubaname.com