Paul Goble
Staunton, May 5 – Because Russian is
the Russian Federation’s state language, because educational examinations are
given only in Russian, and because Russian is the most widely used language in
that country, many non-Russian parents want their children to study in Russian
rather than in their native language.
At the same time, many non-Russians
are concerned that if their languages disappear, so too will their nations and
the special federal arrangements they have. As a result, the leaders of many of
the republics are seeking to defend non-Russian instruction and even insist
that Russian speakers living among them study it.
Because decisions about this are now
formally the responsibility of the federal subjects, there is a crazy quilt of
outcomes, and these are surveyed republic by republic in a new article that
specifies there are now 89 indigenous languages in the Russiann Federation and
that instruction is taking place in 39 of them (nazaccent.ru/content/11552-89-rodnyh-yazykov.html).
The details about what is going on
in each of the non-Russian republics are fascinating in and of themselves, but
the most important portion of the article consists of a discussion of the impact
of the Internet on language retention and change.
According to this survey, the
Internet is giving “greater possibilities” to those who want to study
non-Russian languages because they are “interested in the preservation of their
own culture.” But in a sharp contrast, “the
world wide web has turned out to be harmful for the Russian language.”
That differential impact of the
Internet may, although the Nazaccent.ru article does not suggest this, be used
by Moscow officials as yet another justification for limiting access to the
Internet. After all, if these findings are correct, restricting access to the
Internet would likely reduce still further the knowledge of non-Russian
languages and protect Russian from change.
The Internet, the authors say, has
led to a large number of foreign borrowings and neologisms and, what is still
worse, “the use of words in ways that do not follow the rules” of grammar. That impact, they suggest, is “exerting a
negative influence on the level of knowledge of school children.”
Olga Artemenko, head of the Education
and Science Ministry’s Center for Nationality Problems ofEducation, says that
because of the Internet, “Russian at the level of mass use is gradually being
transformed from a literary language into a common everyday one.” Where Russian speakers are forced to study in
a non-Russian language, this situation is even worse.
To correct this situation, Artemenko
wants new laws that will eliminate such terms as “native non-Russian,” “Russian
non-native,” and “Russian as a foreign language” from use in schools in the
Russian Federation. She adds that there must not be any conflict between “native
and Russian because Russia is also native.”
Such legislation, which would
further reduce non-Russian instruction, was prepared long ago, Nazaccent.ru
reports, but “despite positive reviews from the regions,” any consideration of
it has been indefinitely postponed.
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