Languages of Russia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Over 100 languages are spoken in Russia, with the largest and most common being Russian. Russian is the only official language of Russia, but “autonomous” federal subjects of Russia such as the Republics of Russia have given official status to local languages.

Contents 1 History 2 Official languages 3 Endangered languages in Russia 3.1 Languages near extinction 3.2 Other endangered languages 4 Languages 5 See also 6 External references

[edit] History

Russian was the sole official language of the Russian Empire which existed until 1917. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. The state helped develop alphabets and grammar for various languages across the country that had previously been lacking a written form. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian.

Russian lost its status in many of the new republics that arose following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Russia, however, the dominating status of the Russian language continued. Today, 97% of the public school students of Russia receive their education only or mostly in Russian, even though Russia is made up of approximately 80% ethnic Russians.

[edit] Official languages

See list of official languages in Russia.

[edit] Endangered languages in Russia

There are many endangered languages in Russia. Some are considered to be near extinction and put on the list of endangered languages, and some may have gone extinct since data was last reported. On the other hand, some languages may survive even with few speakers.

Some languages have doubtful data, like Serbian whose information in the Ethnologue is based on the 1959 census.

[edit] Languages near extinction

Most numbers are according to Michael Krauss, 1995. Given the time that has passed, languages with extremely few speakers (such as Kerek) might be extinct today.

• Ainu
• Akkala Sami (0?)
• Enets (70)
• Karagas (25 to 30)
• Kerek (2)
• Mednyy (10)
• Orok (30 to 82)
• Ter Sami (6)
• Udege (100)
• Yugh (2 or 3)
• Northern Yukaghir (30 to 150)
• Vod (25)

[edit] Other endangered languages

• Chukchi
• Chulym
• Erzya
• Ingrian
• Ludian
• Moksha
• Udmurt
• Veps
• Votic

[edit] Languages

See list of languages of Russia.

[edit] See also

• Languages of the Caucasus
• List of languages
• Russian Academy of Sciences, the language regulator in Russia
• Japanese language education in Russia

[edit] External references

• Languages of European Russia (Ethnologue)
• Languages of Asian Russia (Ethnologue)
• Minority languages of Russia on the Net project, which aims at presenting the languages of Russia to the Web and at facilitating their usage on the Web (most information is in Russian; it provides scientific references on each individual language as well as links to online language descriptions, educational and scientific institutions related to the language, resources on computer-processing of the language and some sites written in this language)