Posted by Emilie Maj on October 20, 2011
 
By Emilie Maj, researcher at the Musée du Quai Branly and University of Tallinn associate.

Yakut girls at the Yhyakh festival. Yakutia. Siberia. © Emilie Maj 2011

A large majority of Siberian languages are in an alarming situation, in spite of an apparently favorable Russian legislation: all the languages of the Russian Federation are officially recognized with equal rights, and all of them supposedly receive State support.

But after suffering Soviet policy, in fact, they are now faced with Russian-centered standardization. Why? Because the evolution of the economy towards global market makes rural-urban migration and social recomposition difficult.

How many Siberian languages in Russia?

The Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Science accounts for forty-two Siberian languages gathered into three great families: the Altaic, Uralic, and Paleo-Asiatic languages.
Five of them are State languages: Altai, Komi, Tuvan, Buriat, and Yakut (also known as Sakha).
Thirty-six of these languages are presented as those of the “minority indigenous peoples”.
The remaining languages have no particular status: they are considered as dialects derived from the others.

Many endangered languages

For each of these languages, the number of speakers ranges from a few dozens to hundreds of thousands.

Among the least widespread, UNESCO deems the following as “critically endangered”:

– Nenets: ca. 2,000 official speakers
– Nganasan: ca. 1,000
– Mansi: ca. 3,000
– Ket: ca. 500
– Nanai: ca. 5,800
– Gilyak: ca. 1,000

UNESCO also declares the following as being “on the brink of extinction”:

– Selkup: over 500 speakers
– Eastern Mansi: ca. 500
– Tofa: ca. 300
– Ulch: ca. 1,100
– Udege: ca. 500
– Oroqen: ca. 150
– Neghidal: ca. 150
– Jukagir: ca. 100
– Itelmen: ca. 500
– Gilyak: ca. 500

It is worth noting that official figures do not necessarily reflect reality. The actual number of Jukagir speakers, for instance, is more likely counted on the fingers of one hand. Altogether, approximately thirty of these languages are threatened with extinction on the shorter or longer term.

Which mother tongue?

The question of mother tongue is a delicate issue: in Siberia, the indigenous populations sometimes use more Russian than they use their own mother language, learned during childhood and forgotten in school, where Russian predominates. In some cases, acculturation even leads to oblivion of the indigenous language, despite it being a native tongue.

At the end of the day, between those to whom the indigenous language hasn’t been handed down and those who have forgotten it, the number of speakers is gradually falling. Thus out of 22,500 members of the Khanty population, only 67% consider Khanty to be their mother tongue. The figure even drops to 37% among the Mansi population…

Siberian languages in school

Nowadays around one out of four languages of Siberia is taught in primary school. But the amount of teaching time remains insufficient, and the teaching itself is delivered in Russian. What’s more, even when a child does study the language of their community in the early grades, whether they might continue to do so in secondary school is very uncertain.

Certain administrative entities such as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic have created “national schools”, where instruction is delivered in Sakha language up to the governmental exam that students must take at seventeen. But this structure remains the privilege of the elite: there is only a limited number of them, and parents complain not to be able to register their children there because of a lack of space.

Multi-leveled multilingualism

The most endangered languages are generally those of communities living in Republics that have a national language other than Russian. These “small languages” are then faced with two hegemonies: that of Russian, and that of the official local second language.

To overcome the deficiencies of the Russian legislation, some of these Republics, such as Sakha (Yakutia) and Buryatia, display political support to these minority languages – granting them an official language status in regions where the people who still speak them are very concentrated.

Yet an observer might ask if the success of this policy is actually effective. Visiting the Even-Bytantai region, in northern Sakha Republic, gives a prime example of a typical situation in the country: the region is qualified “national” because it is formed of a majority of Even. But the Even were in fact assimilated to the Sakha during the Soviet period, and they no longer speak their own language.

Which leads to quite grotesque situations: the young Natacha, for instance, from a mixed Even/Sakha family, speaks Sakha at home like all the other people in her village. In school she studies Russia, of course. She also studies Even, an “official” minority language, although she doesn’t use it in everyday life because no one else in the area speaks it. Yet she does not study Sakha, her mother tongue, the country’s second official language, the language she’ll be using the most as an adult.

This tangible example shows that the question of indigenous languages is a sensitive issue whose resolution emerged on a case-by-case basis. Time is short, unfortunately, and it is not certain that the authorities will find efficient solutions in time to handle such complexity.

Sources available in French

CONSEIL DE L’EUROPE 2007, Comite Consultatif de la Convention-Cadre Pour La Protection Des Minorités Nationales, Strasbourg, 2 mai 2007, ACFC/OP/II(2006)004, Deuxième Avis sur la Fédération de Russie adopté le 11 mai 2006, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/minorities/3_FCNMdocs/PDF_2nd_Com_RussianFederation_fr.pdf (last visit on 19.09.2011)

ISOHOOKANA-ASUNMAA Tytti (rapporteur) 1998, Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l’Europe, Doc. 8126 du 2 juin 1998, Cultures minoritaires ouraliques en danger, Rapport de la Commission de la culture et de l’éducation, http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/doc98/fdoc8126.htm (last visit on 19.09.2011)

LAVRILLIER Alexandra (to be published), Parlons toungouse, L’Harmattan

MAJ Emilie et LEBERRE-SEMENOV Marine 2010, Parlons sakha. Langue et culture iakoutes. L’Harmattan

Maj Emilie 2009. Interpréter le dialogue interculturel entre Russes et peuples autochtones de la République Sakha (Iakoutie), in K. HADDAD, M. ECKMANN, A. MANÇO (éds), Antagonismes communautaires et dialogues interculturels, Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. « Compétences interculturelles », 2009, L’Harmattan, Paris, pp. 63-83

PERROT Jean 2006, Regards sur les langues ouraliennes. Etudes structurales, approches contrastives, regards de linguistes, L’Harmattan (Bibliothèque finno-ougrienne)

TERSIS Nicole, THERRIEN Michèle 2001, Langues eskaléoutes : Sibérie, Alaska, Canada, Groenland, CNRS Paris

WEINSTEIN Charles 2010, Parlons tchouktche : une langue de Sibérie, L’Harmattan