The I International Language Festival took place on September 23-24, 2011 in a conventional manner. 43 languages from various language families were represented by no more than two presentations. On the whole, the festival interested 88 participants from Ufa, Salavat, Sterlitamak, Neftekamsk, Moscow; Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Armenia, Vietnam, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea and other African countries. Students, school children, postgraduate students, professors and other members of cultural and educational or language institutions were also invited. During the 25-minute introductory lessons one could listen to the sound of a particular language, get acquainted with interesting facts of its structure, find out the history of its development, learn some phrases in the language and of course communicate with native speakers. As usual the presentations were held in different lecture halls simultaneously so that participants and guests could develop their own festival route. Because of the small number of assigned lecture halls the reports were combined into six workshops: “Languages of nations of Bashkortostan”, “Slavic chamber”, “East caravan of languages”, “English drawing room”, “European Language Union”, “Rainbow of the world’s languages”. This exciting marathon of language presentations ended with the closing ceremony where certificates of participation and small souvenirs were given to all the speakers and organizers. It was very pleasant to hear from the guests and participants numerous positive comments about the festival and kind advice concerning the future of the event. The Bashkir esperantist GafurGazizov even devoted the whole poem to the festival! It was our first experience, and we hope that many people liked it. We believe that it helped our participants and guests to realize one simple, but enduring truth: all of us are together – and this is the main thing!
List of 2011 Festival languages:
Indo-European languages
- Slavic (Bulgarian, Old Russian, Polish, Russian (children's speech), Russian dialects, Old Church Slavic, Croatian, Czech);
- Romance (Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French);
- German (Australian, British and American English, German);
- Iranian (Persian, Tajik);
- Greek-Phrygian - Armenian (Armenian, Greek);
- Indo-Aryan languages (Bengali).
Turkic languages (Bashkir, Kazakh, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Chuvash).
Uralic languages
- Finno-Ugric (Mari, Udmurt).
Afroasiatic languages
- Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew);
- the Chadic languages (the Hausa language).
Congo- Kordofanian languages (Swahili, Bagirmi, Yorщbб, Bubi, Fang).
Austro-Asiatic languages (Vietnamese).
Sino-Tibetan languages (Chinese).
Japanese-Ryukyuan languages (Japanese).
Creole language Patois.
International Esperanto language.
Internet resources about our first festival:
- the site of BSU
- the site of BST
- the site of the Bashkortostan-Bulgaria People’s Friendship Association
- the blog of the Esperantist Gazizov