I have never been able to understand and will never understand those who oppose the mandatory study of the Bashkir language (or any other language of the national republic).
You have no idea how disgusting you look from the outside!
Your ancestors once came to these lands, seized our territories, settled here, spread their Russian language through forced labour, destroyed our schools, Russified our children, us Bashkirs, and now you are trying to convince us that our language is inferior and unnecessary to anyone in the republic.
There is a term called “victim blaming” – this is when the blame for the loss of a language is shifted to a specific indigenous people. At the same time, this is the state policy of the Russian (Soviet) state and, to a large extent, the Russian population.
“Learn the language at home,” they say, “the family should preserve the language,” they convince us.
Of course, no one argues with this; language should begin in the family, but few people understand that at home, people mainly speak everyday (colloquial) language, and everyday language makes up no more than 30% of the entire literary language. It is impossible to fully master it without a system of education in the native language, without studying the language at school. At home, parents do not teach their children all the names of flora and fauna in the Bashkir language, as well as biological, geographical, and many other scientific terms.
At home, parents do not have time to teach their children to write in Bashkir, to count, or to study mathematical terms. At home, it is impossible to read the entire layer of Bashkir literature, to study the poems of Bashkir poets. At home, they do not write essays and notes in Bashkir.
There is a school for that!
When we are deprived of everything that is native to us, and instead they forcefully shove a foreign language, literature, and culture, and then say that we don’t know our native language. It’s just incredible arrogance!
When they tell us that we won’t learn your worthless native language, they don’t even realize how insulting they are and how disgusting they look!
Bashkortostan will be an independent state, and the Bashkir language will be the only state language in it!
But we will approach the language issue very carefully. During the first 30 years of independence, the Russian language will receive the status of an official language and will be spread throughout the republic. Many of those who today oppose the Bashkir language will remain Russian-speaking and will not necessarily study the Bashkir language, but their children will study it in school, and it will be mandatory.
Gradually, the Bashkir language will occupy all niches of life in the republic and the language issue will disappear by itself.
Ruslan Gabbasov
