On 12 October, a Guinness World Record was set at the Museum of Islamic Art for the largest number of languages entered in a sequential reading competition. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s remarkable novel “The Little Prince” was read in a record time of 1 hour 19 minutes, only 10 seconds apart, in 55 languages, including Russian. A total of 177 people took part in the event, including readers, judges and volunteers.
The following languages were used in the record project: Russian, Arabic, French, Spanish, Irish, English, Dutch, Romanian, Portuguese, German, Tamil, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Afrikaans, Armenian, Azeri, Kyrgyz, Marathi, Amharic, Bengali, Kinyarwanda, Malay, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chinese (mandarin), Czech, Tagalog, Greek, Hindi, Georgian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Ukrainian, Kurdish, Swahili, Thai, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Urdu, Slovak, Gujarati, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Sanskrit, Kazakh.
Prominent personalities attending the sequential reading competition included Salem Abdullah Al-Aswad, Deputy Director of the Museum of Islamic Art for Education and Public Awareness, Dr Julia Gunilla, French Ambassador to Qatar, His Excellency Jean-Baptiste Vivre, and official Guinness Book of World Records arbitrator Pravin Patel.
Before the start of the Challenges, Mr Salem Al-Aswad, nephew of the book’s author and general secretary of the Antoine de Saint-Exupery Youth Foundation, addressed the participants and visitors via video link and said: “We are delighted that the Museum of Islamic Art has set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of languages participating in the sequential reading competition. This achievement is a celebration of the cultural diversity of the community. So many languages will be spoken during the FIFA World Cup FIFA 2022 in Qatar. My heartfelt thanks go to all the participants who have worked together to set this record”.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Foni.club