Language festival (Esperanto)
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A language festival (Esperanto: Lingva Festivalo) is a cultural and educational event held by Esperanto and other organizations in different countries around the world. The purpose of language festivals is to teach and provide information about the world's languages to people interested in languages and cultures, and to show the wealth and diversity of language. Language festivals also aim at demonstrating that all languages in the world are equally important and valuable, and that there should be no "major" and "minor" languages, which are ideas broadly promoted by Esperanto-speakers.
During the first Language Festival in France in 1995, 32 languages were presented. In the second festival in 1996 there were already 65 languages. In the third, 85. The biggest festivals up till now took place in China and England with more than 100 languages in both events.[1]
The first language festival was held in 1995 by an American Esperantist, Dennis Keefe, in Tours, France. The following year, a festival organized in a similar way was held in Cheboksary, Russia. The Cheboksary Language Festival has since been the largest-scale language festival in Russia.
Since then, language festivals have been held in various countries of the world, such as Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Ukraine, United States and Venezuela. In 2008, Dennis Keefe organized a language festival at Nanjing University, China. In 2014, Ghil'ad Zuckermann founded the Adelaide Language Festival, Australia.[2][3] In 2018, the first ever language festival in Indonesia was organized in Surabaya.[4][5]