Paul Goble
Staunton, August 1 – A language grows only when it extends the spheres in which it is used, Marina Shapovalova says. If it doesn’t, it stops developing and loses the spheres it had to other languages which are attracting speakers by the level of use they already enjoy or by being open to borrowings rather than seeking to maintain their language unchanged.
Russian is losing out to English on both counts, the St. Petersburg literary scholar and blogger says. On the one hand, it is ceding ever more segments of life to English; and on the other, its speakers want to control its development in the name of “saving” Russian (gorod-812.ru/mozhno-li-spasti-russkij-yazyk/).
But that is a hiding to nowhere, Shapovalova continues. English has expanded into ever more fields because of its economic and cultural attractiveness and also because of its tolerance for borrowing from others. “Half the world speaks strictly speaking not English but American and a multitude of ‘pidgin’ tongues.”
It doesn’t suffer from this nearly as much as do languages where the authorities remain obsessed with establishing and maintaining “the only correct” language. Instead, people who spoke other languages – and that includes those who speak Russian – are drawn in and increasingly speak a kind of English that reinforces English dominance.
Unless Russians and especially Russian officialdom recognize this reality and change course, it will soon be time to ask “Can Russian be saved?” And according to Shapovalova, there is ever less reason for an optimistic answer. Indeed, Moscow officials seem committed to helping English by the harm their approach is inflicting on Russian.
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