Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 8 – This year, for the
first time since regular monitoring of language use patterns in the Daghestani
highlands began, Nina Dobrushina says, youngsters in these groups are not
learning their peoples’ native language.
A year ago, the Moscow linguist continues, “I would have said that this
could not be.”
“I had thought that the threat to
local languages came only when residents of the mountainous villages shifted to
the valleys” because “in cities, numerically small languages are not surviving,”
the head of the International Laboratory of Linguistic Convergence at Moscow’s
Higher School of Economics says (nazaccent.ru/content/30082-parlez-vous-kubachi.html).
The expert says that “in this year,
for the first time, inn one village of the Dakhadayev district, a teacher told
me that she had in the second grade four children, of which three did not speak
the native language of their ethnic community but instead communicated with one
another in school in Russian.”
There are more than 40 distinct
languages in Daghestan and many more dialects, the Moscow scholar says. “People
have lived alongside one another for many centuries and possibly even millenia,
and it is very interesting how they interact over all this time. Until the
mid-19th century, few knew more than one other language than that of
their village.
The men began to travel further for
seasonal work in Georgia, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan. “But for the majority the
distance they travelled was a maximum of 20 to 30 kilometers; and “this means
that knowing two or three languages in addition to one’s native tongue, was
sufficient, Dobrushina says.
When transportation made it possible
to travel further, Daghestanis had to learn more languages, frequently adopting
a lingua franca to speak with others. Sometimes this took the form of
asymmetric bilingualism, but sometimes, it involved “passive bilingualism,”
where understanding was far broader than the ability to speak.
But – and Dobrushina stresses this –
“until the 20th century, there is no evidence that any Daghestani
language was lost” as far back as scholars can look. People retained the languages of their
village, insisting in the rare cases of intermarriage that new wives
immediately learn the local language even if they spoke one of the larger
tongues or a lingua franca.
Dobrushina says that she “does not
believe that it is possible to preserve langauges in cities and in valley
villages where there is a mixed population. But in villages in the mountains,
this is still possible. The process has only begun and nothing fatal has yet
happened.” But the signs are not good.
Children in these villages need to
learn Russian, but in addition to the schools, they are bombarded by Russian
radio and television. Not long ago, real
knowledge of Russian was rare – and highly valued as a result. But now it is spreading, even though many
people deny that the native languages are being displaced and even lost.
Today, the Moscow linguist says,
“the situation has changed and the priority given to Russian over native
languages has become dangerous. But people still don’t recognize this, and when
they do, it will be too late because the break with the native language occurs
in an instant, literally in one generation.”
“Children who do not know the
language grow up and the language disappears. Therefore,” she argues, “it is
necessary that in the villages everyone understand this. Let them learn
Russian, but in the family and school they should speak in their own language.”
And speaking is critical.
In reality, she says, most schools
do not in fact teach the native language. “For example, in the Dargin zone,
they teach literary Dargin which is very far from the native dialects and not
very much needed. As a result, the children can forget their native language
without learning the literary version.”
Today, Dobrushina says, is “a period
of transition” and one that is very “complicated.” Tragically, she concludes,
“the people do not recognize the dangers.”
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