In September, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences Ilyas Valeev published an article entitled “Whose cart you sit on, their song you will sing,” focusing on the linguistic self-identity of the nations of Russia.
In our material, we tried to analyse: which ethnic groups on the territory of Russia today have preserved their native language and that the linguistic component influences the identity of the people.
“For a full-fledged existence in society, the Tatar language must be present in all spheres of life in Tatar society – from family to institute, from folklore festivals to literary translations of new fiction from the languages of the world into the Tatar language, in the circulation of state documents, in science, art – starting from kindergarten and at every stage. All other palliative forms of existence are simply imitations.
Yes, all other models of existence do not work. Either the national language occupies a dominant position, or it is decorative. For the life of me, I can’t imagine any other perspective for a decorative language other than a dignified, majestic, pathetic dying,” says Ilyas Valeev.
Note that according to the 2020-2021 All-Russian Population Census, more than 372 languages are spoken in Russia. 133 of them belong to the languages of Russia according to the classification of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The largest languages in terms of number of speakers after Russian are Tatar (3.3 million people speak it), Chechen (1.5 million), Bashkir (1.08 million), Chuvash (700 thousand), Avar (654 thousand).
What are the “languages of Russia”? These are all languages – the official languages of the republics. This status means that they are used in the activities of government bodies, legislation, legal proceedings, and education. In total, there are more than 30 such languages (in some republics there are more than two official languages, for example, in Dagestan and Karachay-Cherkessia).
The number of speakers of most official languages has declined in recent decades. The only exceptions were Chechen (1.5 million native speakers, +13% by 2020 compared to 2002), Tuvan (253 thousand, +4%) and Tat, one of the languages of Dagestan (3.2 thousand, +7%).
The Tuvan and Chechen languages are indeed preserved very well compared to other languages in Russia; children en masse speak these languages at home, among them, one of the highest proportions of those who do not speak Russian. Plus, the speakers of these languages have a relatively good birth rate, which, together with the first factor, allows the number of speakers to increase.”
The number of speakers of all other languages that have state status has decreased. This is especially typical for the Finno-Ugric languages: Mari (decrease by 43%), Udmurt (–45%), Mordovian, Moksha-Mordovian, Erzya-Mordovian (–54%).
The most significant decline is in the number of people who speak Karelian (-74%). The situation with the Karelian language is the most difficult – the median age of the speaker is the highest among all languages of the republics (64 years). “Karelians have long switched to Russian en masse; only the older generation in some places still uses Karelian for real communication. Children and young people practically do not know the language,” writes the website “To Be Precise.”
Children really hardly speak Karelian: among its speakers, only 0.5% of children under 9 years old. For comparison: for the Chechen and Tuvan languages the situation is the opposite – every fifth speaker of these languages is under 9 years of age.
Karelia is the only republic that does not have its own state language other than Russian. The fact is that the Karelian language uses the Latin alphabet, and according to Russian legislation, all state languages of the Russian Federation must use the Cyrillic alphabet.
As of the beginning of 2022, the statistics given in the “Strategy of the State National Policy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2025” and in the official data of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences are as follows: 193 nations living in Russia use approximately 277 languages and dialects. At the same time, 105 languages are used in the state education system, of which 24 are used as the language of instruction and 81 are used as a subject. The number of languages used does not coincide with the number of nations because some have two officially recognized languages. Such nations include, for example, the Altaians, Maris, and Mordovians.
In many regions of the Russian Federation, there are two languages in use: active bilingualism in Russia is most common in Altai, Buryatia, Bashkiria, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Yakutia, and the republics of the North Caucasus. Moreover, usually the urban population speaks more Russian and has some knowledge of the language of the indigenous people, while the rural population, on the contrary, is more confident in the language of their native ethnic group than in Russian, notes Tamara Skok.
According to modern international research, the number of languages spoken by the inhabitants of the planet is decreasing faster than rare species of animals are disappearing. According to the “Atlas of Endangered Languages of the World” (UNESCO), in Russia there are 136 languages that are on the verge of extinction; 12 indigenous languages can be spoken by fewer than 100 people, and another 11 languages can be spoken by between 100 and 300 people.
UNESCO monitors the languages of the entire planet and calculates their viability according to nine criteria, including the number of speakers, the transition of the language from generation to generation, the availability and accessibility of educational materials, attitude towards the language on the part of society, etc. In addition, all languages are classified into six categories : some are safe, others are in danger, there are endangered languages, languages that are in serious danger, critically endangered and extinct languages.
On the map of Russia there are 20 extinct languages (for example, Ainu, Yug, Ubykh), 22 are considered to be in critical condition (including Aleut, Terek-Sami, Itelmen), 29 are in serious danger (Nivkh, Chukchi, Karelian, etc. ). According to the UN doctrine, language is one of the basic values of society, and its death means the loss of the identity of the people, and this is detrimental to human civilization as a whole.
An obstacle to the “death of the language ” is the preservation of the culture of small peoples, the study of folklore, and the development of ancestral crafts and trades. Recently, in a number of regions, there has been an increase in the interest of young people in national costumes, rituals, and songs. The development of territories through an appeal to regional identity, which becomes the key to their tourist attractiveness, is gaining popularity, and the preservation of native languages in this case is an important factor. For example, the interest of tourists in national cuisine will almost always be rewarded with new knowledge in the field of linguistics: the names of dishes and their ingredients, the names of kitchen utensils, the characteristics of different products or stages of preparation – all this enriches the vocabulary of travellers interested in the culture and way of life of people from different regions of our country.
Why do languages disappear? There may be several factors leading to this: migration processes, peculiarities of geography and climate, the spread of another religion, ill-considered language policy in the localities, a decline in the social status of the language, when the young population considers communication in their native language unfashionable and unprestigious… But today, most often the reason for the disappearance of languages is caused by military or repressive actions, as well as regional conflicts.
In Ukraine, which has been russified by Moscow more than once, Taras Kremin, the ombudsman for language protection, noted the following:
“The fact of a full-scale invasion radically changed the language situation in Ukraine. The majority of citizens of our country have either switched to or continue to communicate in the Ukrainian language, and this is the dominant number of Ukrainian citizens. For the first time in the years of Independence, we have such a language surge, the results of which are evident in the service sector, in the mass media, and in the public speeches of top officials.
There are things that we pay attention to in everyday life – every day we buy bread, use transport, visit cultural institutions. The Ukrainian language has really increased. All sociological studies conducted by various institutions during the year 2022 also speak of the rapid transition of Ukrainians to the Ukrainian language, of the recognition of the Ukrainian language as the only state language. It is a question of identity.”
Therefore, the conclusions are self-evident – cherish and pass on the knowledge of your native language to the younger generation. Language is the key to a nation’s self-identity.
The material is based on research materials: Ilyas Valeev, Tamara Skok, Irina Shirmanova and Anastasia Kokourova.
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