Contest “Bilingua” 2024

On November 21, 2024, award ceremony was held for the winners of the “Bilingua” contest, which this year was held for the tenth time. During this time, more than 4,500 people from different regions of our planet took part in the contest.

The Contest was initiated by the Moscow City Government represented by the Center of cross-cultural education “ETNOSFERA” and the Moscow Pedagogical State University. The Contest is designed to support native languages and to foster in children and young people a valuable attitude to the languages and cultures of the peoples of Russia and the world.

The contest was held in two nominations. The first nomination “My heritage” was revealed in parallel texts – essays in two topics: “Names and their meaning in the language of my people” and “What a photo from a family album tells about”. Due to the fact that the year 2024 in Russia was declared the Year of the Family, special topics were also offered for writing essays: “The Roads of My Relatives: Geography of the Family” and “The Link of Times: If I were in the childhood of my parents, I would…”. In the second nomination “National Artistic Heritage in Modern Reading” authors of essays  made research research of the common and different in Russian and national (ethnic) cultural heritage.

The finalists of the contest vividly presented works in Russian and their native language – a total of 42 this year. Not only prose texts, but also poems and songs in Lezghin, Tatar, Udmurt, Chuvash, Khanty, Erzyan, Yakut, Belarusian, Tajik, Kazakh, Slovak and many other languages were performed. Ethnic music and dances performed by the contestants and their teachers supported the atmosphere of the jubilee celebration and energized the participants with new creative energy.

Moscow open contest of children’s and youth creativity “Bilingua” is of great importance for preserving rare and endangered languages. Over 4,000 participants for 10 years; in 2024, over 300 people presented essays in their languages, including those of indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North and Far East of Russia. Over the years, international students from Africa have submitted about 80 works, 10 of which are in rare African languages.