Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 2 – Despite UNESCO’s
listing of languages under threat of disappearance and complaints from
non-Russians about threats to their languages, Valery Tishkov, director of the
Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, says that minority languages in
Russia not only are not dying out but are experiencing “revitalization.”
In comments to a Duma roundtable on
language policy in the Russian Federation, Tishkov said that “languages are
returning to life after decades of dying off or being forgotten” and that in
Russia, the numbers of people speaking native non-Russian languages has
increased (nazaccent.ru/content/9862-akademik-ran-v-rossii-stali-bolshe.html).
The long-dominant
view that minority languages are fated to disappear under the impact of
globalization needs to be modified, he said, because of this trend, the
increase in the number of places where more than one language is used on a
daily basis, and the spread of multi-lingualism.
(According to UNESCO, 20 minority
languages in Russia must already be described as having disappeared, 22 more
are in critical condition, and 29 face the threat of disappearance. Among those
at great risk now, the agency said, are Yiddish, Udmurt, Kalmyk, Yakut and
Tuvin (nazaccent.ru/content/7203-yunesko-v-rossii-na-grani-ischeznoveniya.html).)
“Despite the dramatic predictions of
certain scholars and politicians,” Tishkov continued, “linguistic multiplicity
will be preserved given the increasing complexity of the language situations
among contemporary nations and the broadening of the language repertoire of
particular individuals.”
Because that is so, the Moscow
ethnographer said, “we do not share the views of the supporters of the
conception of ‘the dying off of languages.” Tishkov’s argument was supported by
Aleksandr Zhuravsky, the regional ministry official now supervising
inter-ethnic relations, who said that he had “doubts” about the way UNESCO had
compiled its list of dying languages.
Other participants in the meeting
offered some alternative views. Zikrula Ilyasov, first deputy minister for
nationality policy in Daghestan, said he wanted to include native languages in
the country’s educational testing program, a step that a Moscow offical said
the law allows (nazaccent.ru/content/9864-v-gosdume-obsudili-situaciyu-s-yazykovym.html).
Yekaterina
Kurasheva, Chechnya’s deputy minister for nationality policy, said that her
republic plans to “equalize the Russian and Chechen languages” to promote the
return of Russian speakers to Chechnya.
She noted that despite the events of the last two decades, Chechen officials
still use Russian in their work.
Danil Mustafin, first deputy
minister of education and science in Tatarstan, said that schools were no
longer the place where the fight for the survival of native languages was being
fought. Instead, he said, officials should focus on the media which sometimes
overwhelms the languages that the schools teach it.
Alfis Gayaov, Bashkortostan’s
education minister, suggested that urbanization is reducing the number of
students of non-Russian languages. There are fewer young people in the
villages, and in cities, “one or two languages” dominate the schools and the
public space. As a result, “linguistic
diversity is disappearing.”
And Aleksandr Akimov, a senator from
Sakha, one of the places where UNESCO says the titular language is under
threat, expressed the view that there are enough problems in this area that the
government needs to come up with a state program designed to preserve linguistic
diversity.
In reporting on this meeting,
Nazaccent.ru pointed out that non-Russians are sometimes among those who oppose
requirements that pupils study their national languages. That is because they fear that if they study
their national languages, doing so will take time away from subjects, including
Russian, they are convinced they need to get ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment