In which countries do people speak Russian. How many people in the world speak Russian
World status
Until 1991, it was the language of interethnic communication of the USSR, de facto performing the functions of the state language. It continues to be used in countries that were previously part of the USSR, as a native language for part of the population and as a language of interethnic communication. In places of compact residence of emigrants from countries former USSR(Israel, Germany, Canada, USA, etc.) - Russian-language versions are issued periodicals radio stations and television channels. In countries of Eastern Europe Until the end of the 1980s, Russian was the main foreign language in schools.
Russian is the only one of the 10-12 leading world languages, which over the past 15 years has been steadily losing its position in all major regions of the world.
Distribution in the world
According to data published in the journal Language Monthly (No. 3, 1997), approximately 300 million people around the world speak Russian (which puts it in 5th place in terms of prevalence), of which 160 million consider it their native language (7 th place in the world). Russian is the working language of the CIS, one of the six official languages of the UN, and one of the working languages of the OSCE.
The electronic database of the Index Translationum translation registry has more than two million entries for 500,000 authors and 78,000 publishers in 148 countries; her data show that Russian is one of the most translated languages in the world. Among the languages into which most books are translated, Russian is in seventh place. Among the languages from which they are most often translated, Russian is in fourth place.
Main article: Russian language in the CIS and Baltic countries
Russian speaking countries
Political aspects
According to local law, in order to obtain Latvian citizenship through the naturalization process, one must pass an examination in the Latvian language, history, and the Constitution. Due to the fact that many Russian-speaking residents do not speak Latvian or for some other reason do not want to naturalize, about 18% of the country's population are non-citizens, of which two-thirds are Russians. A large number of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia are citizens by inheritance, that is, either they themselves or their ancestors were citizens of the country before June 17, 1940.
Throughout the summer of 2004, protest rallies of the Russian-speaking population against the discrimination of the Russian language in schools were held in Riga. The protesters were able to achieve: mitigation of the law (now in the 10th - 12th grades up to 40% of education can be conducted in the minority language), consideration by the Constitutional Court of Latvia of a complaint about the reform of schools of national minorities filed by twenty deputies of the Seimas (all members of the parliamentary factions ZaPcHeL ( “For Human Rights in a United Latvia”, PCTVL), the People’s Consent Party and the Socialist Party), the absence of mass checks on the implementation of the relevant norm of the law. At the same time, representatives of the Latvian authorities insist that the rallies against the education reform are nothing more than a political farce that has nothing to do with the defense of the Russian language: school programs are developed by the schools themselves, and the authorities do not intend to control the implementation of the law by minority schools.
There is an opinion that restrictions on the use of the Russian language in Latvia are aimed at encouraging emigration among the Russian-speaking population. After the restoration of independence, about 200 thousand Russian-speaking residents left Latvia. At the same time, the number of Russian speakers receiving Latvian citizenship is increasing. Currently, about 1,000 people a month receive citizenship.
Supporters of the Latvian language policy argue that it is aimed at eliminating the consequences of the mass immigration of Russian speakers to Latvia in -1989, as a result of which the proportion of the indigenous population (Latvians) in the country decreased from 77% (g.) to 52%.
Lithuania
In Lithuania, the Russian language has the status of a foreign language, despite the fact that the level of Russian language proficiency reaches 78% of the country's population.
Turkmenistan
According to Art. 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine, its citizens are guaranteed the free use of the Russian language and other languages of the national minorities of Ukraine.
In Ukraine, from time to time there are disputes about giving the Russian language the status of a state language. One side believes that the Russian language should become the second state or official language, since approximately half of the citizens of Ukraine use it in everyday communication. The other side believes that national and official language Ukraine has historically been the Ukrainian language, and Russian, as the language of a national minority, should not be recognized as a state language, even if it is a second one.
The Russian language has been repeatedly used as one of the tools in the political struggle, its role was especially great in the presidential campaigns in 1994 and in the years. The promise made at the end of September 2004 to make Russian the second state language allowed Viktor Yanukovych to enlist the support of part of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine and enter the second round of the presidential elections.
The status of the Russian language is still the subject of controversy and political struggle. In 2006, in Ukraine, a number of local councils (regional, district, city) gave the Russian language on the territory of the respective administrative-territorial units the status of a regional one. However, by the end of the year, most of these decisions were appealed by the Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine in the courts, many of which satisfied the claims, thus canceling the decisions of the councils as illegal, , , , , . Litigation continues, so this issue has not been fully resolved legally.
Estonia
In November 2004, the same institution found during an audit that most Russian-language media outlets regularly use the spelling "Tallinn" instead of "Tallinn". As the director of the language inspectorate states, “ ... there is a decree of the Estonian government, according to which the transliteration of geographical names is carried out with an accuracy of one letter. If in Estonian Tallinn is written with two "n", then in the languages of national minorities, at least in the territory of Estonia, the word "Tallinn" should also be written with two "n". The opinion of Russian scientists who believe that the spelling of the name of the Estonian capital with two "n" is a spelling mistake has the right to exist, but Estonia has its own rules. We do not demand and cannot demand that in Russia the name of our capital be written with two "n". Even at home in Estonia, we can only recommend writing geographical names, taking into account the Estonian grammar rules". The largest non-state center for the study, teaching and certification of the Russian language (both foreign and native) is the Tallinn Pushkin Institute www.pushkin.ee (see Russian language in the world. Moscow, MFA, 2005). It is in this institution that you can take the exam in the TORFL system (also known as TORFL) and the language exam for entry into Russian citizenship. The Pushkin Institute was one of the founders of the ESTAPRYAL (Estonian Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature), an organization that finally brought together teachers of Russian studies from Estonian and Russian schools in the Republic of Estonia. Currently, ESTAPRIAL is the largest public organization of Russianists in Estonia.
Kyrgyzstan
The developers of the drafts of the new Constitution of Kyrgyzstan (2006) decided that the Russian language in the republic should be deprived of its official status, enshrined in the current fundamental law of the country. “Ex-president Askar Akayev once gave the Russian language the status of an official language in order to get the support of the Russian-speaking population of the country. But in fact, there is no difference between the official and the state language,” said a member working group on the development of versions of the new Constitution, the leader of the party "Erkindik" ("Freedom") Topchubek Turgunaliev.
According to the leader of the party, such a situation "infringed on the Kyrgyz language". The drafters of the Constitution believe that today in the republic “it is not Russian, but the Kyrgyz language that is being ignored”, which “did not become a state language” during independence. According to Turgunaliev, the Russian language is a world language and therefore does not need any protection. The members of the working group believe that it will be quite enough if the Russian language in the country retains the status of the language of interethnic communication. “We will not force everyone to speak Kyrgyz, and until the Kyrgyz language becomes the language of interethnic communication, this status will be Russian,” said Justice Minister Marat Kaipov, who is also a member of the working group.
Kazakhstan
Moldova
Uzbekistan
In Uzbekistan, the Russian language has a status minority language, while the Russian language is actively used both in society and in government structures.
Azerbaijan
In Azerbaijan, the Russian language has the status of a foreign language. About 70% of the population speaks Russian.
Armenia
In Armenia, the Russian language has the status of a foreign language, however, Armenia has ratified the European Charter for Regional Languages, according to which the Russian language in Armenia is recognized as the language of a national minority. About 70% of the population speaks Russian.
Georgia
In Georgia, the Russian language has the status of a foreign language, while 55% of the inhabitants are fluent in Russian.
Russian language in the USA
Main article: Russian language in the USA
Fund of English language The United States (the most influential non-governmental organization dealing with issues of state language policy) published the report "Many Languages - One America" in March, based on data from a study of the languages that the population of this country uses in everyday situations (at home, at work, on the street). According to this report, the most common native language in the United States is English. It is spoken as a native language by 215.4 million people out of 293 million Americans (73.5%). Spanish is the native language of 28 million US residents (9.55%). The Russian language ranks 10th in terms of the number of speakers in the United States - over 700 thousand (0.24%). The largest number of them live in the state of New York (218,765 people, or 30.98% of all native speakers of the Russian language), the smallest - in the state of Wyoming (170 people, or 0.02%). The top ten states where Russian is spoken also include California, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, Florida, Maryland and Oregon. In terms of prevalence, the Russian language in the United States is also inferior to French (1,606,790), Chinese (1,499,635), German (1,382,615), Tagalog (1,224,240), Vietnamese (1,009,625), Italian (1,008,370) and Korean (894 065).
Alaska
Main article: Russian language in Alaska
The highest proportion of Russian speakers is in Alaska - about 3% understand Russian to some extent, and about 8.5% of the inhabitants profess Orthodoxy. This is a consequence of the former belonging of the state of Russia.
New York
Main article: Russian in New York
In terms of the absolute number of the Russian-speaking population, the state of New York is in the lead. On August 3, 2009, New York State Governor David Paterson signed an amendment to the electoral law, according to which all documents related to the electoral process must be translated into Russian. After the collapse of the USSR, interest in the Russian language among Americans declined sharply, but after 2000 there was a reverse trend.
Canada
Russian language in Germany
Of the 82 million people permanently residing in Germany, about 6 million speak Russian to some extent, including more than 3 million immigrants from the former USSR (and their descendants), of which 2.2 million have arrived in Russia since 1988. as German settlers mainly from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine and for the most part speak Russian at the level of their native language. Most of the rest are former citizens of the GDR, where Russian language instruction was compulsory from the 5th grade of secondary school and was widespread in universities.
In 2006/2007 academic year about 135 thousand people studied Russian in schools, in institutions of secondary vocational education about 7 thousand. In the 2005/2006 academic year, about 10 thousand students in 30 universities studied Russian in universities as a specialty, and about 10 thousand more people studied Russian simply as a foreign language. In addition, several thousand more people study Russian at various courses and in “people's universities” (evening form of education for adults). In terms of the number of students of foreign languages in the academic system of Germany, Russian shares third or fourth place with Spanish, after English and French. There is no unified program for teaching and learning the Russian language either in secondary or higher education in Germany. Nevertheless, the level of teachers' qualifications is assessed as satisfactory, since there are a large number of native Russian speakers among teachers in Germany.
Main article: Russian language in Bulgaria
According to the newspaper Rzeczpospolita (Rzeczpospolita), the growing interest of Polish youth in Russian is due primarily to economic reasons. Russian is still the most widely spoken language in Europe geographically and by the number of speakers. Many Russian and Western companies that came to Poland in the late 1990s put knowledge of the Russian language as one of the conditions for hiring. According to information provided by the Russian Cultural Center in Warsaw, in 2007 (the Year of the Russian Language) the number of students enrolled in Russian language courses increased by 35%. If in the 1990s there was a competition of 2 people per place for the department of the Russian language at the University of Poznań, now it reaches 6.
A similar surge of interest in Russian is also observed in Bulgaria.
Russian language in Israel
Of the nearly 6.9 million people living in Israel, over a million speak Russian. Most of them are repatriates who came from the countries of the former USSR after 1990. Cm. .
The percentage of Russian speakers is especially high in Ashdod, Beersheba, Karmiel (more than a third of the inhabitants), Haifa, Petah Tikva and some other cities. Signboards in Russian and Russian bookstores are common.
In many places, such as the social security service, sickness funds, banks, you can get service in Russian. ATMs also in many cases have a Russian interface.
There are several associations of Russian-speaking writers living in Israel. It should be noted such well-known authors as Dina Rubina and Anatoly Aleksin.
Russian language in Turkey
Other Asian countries
Trilingual inscription on a store sign in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, China
Main article: Russian language in China
Main article: Russian language in Afghanistan
As an international mother tongue, the presence of Russian is traditionally significant in the Republic of Mongolia, in the PRC (especially in the north, west and northeast of the country) and in the Republic of Afghanistan (especially in the north), and in Tajikistan - also as a language of interethnic communication.
Notes
- Ethnologue 14 report for language code:RUS
- Will Russian be among the world languages in the future?
- English, French, German and Russian are the most translated languages in the world (Russian). UN News Center (April 19, 2012). Archived from the original on July 23, 2012. Retrieved July 23, 2012.
- State Language Law (Latvian) (English)
- 2000 census data on native language of residents, csb.gov.lv- select "2000. g. tautas skaitīšanas rezultati īsumā”, then “Iedzīvotāju dzimtā valoda un citu valodu prasme” (Latvian)
- In Latvia, they are fighting for the recognition of the Russian language as the second state language
- Resolution of the 59th session of the UNGA No. A/RES/59/206 (eng.) See par. 2, subparagraph c
- Estonian Language Act (unofficial English translation)
- Furman D. E., Zadorozhnyuk E. G. Attraction of the Baltic (Baltic Russian and Baltic cultures) // World of Russia. 2004. Vol. XIII. No. 3. S. 98-130
- Instruction of the Language Inspectorate to the portal rus.delfi.ee
- List of declarations made with respect to treaty no. 148 (English)
- GOVERNOR PATERSON SIGNS LEGISLATION TO EXPAND VOTING OPPORTUNITIES FOR RUSSIAN AMERICANS | Room Eight
- Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation "Russian Language in the World", Moscow, 2003
- Arefiev A. L. Studying the Russian language by young people in Germany Demoscope
- - Russian language in tropical version
- [Russian is the first language of communication in space. Proceedings of the International Regional Forum of Russian Scientists and Teachers. Kuala Lumpur, October 28 - November 2, 2007]
see also
- Russian language in the CIS and Baltic countries
- Russian language in Eastern Europe
- Russian language in foreign countries
Links
- How many people speak and will speak Russian? Demoscope
- Alpatov V. N. Russian language in the modern world // Analytical Bulletin. Issue 14, part 1. State language Russian Federation: issues of legislative support. Moscow: State Duma, 2002
- Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation "Russian language in the world"
Will Russian be among the world languages in the future?
At the beginning of the 20th century, about 150 million people spoke Russian - mostly subjects of Russian Empire. Over the next 90 years, the number of those who knew Russian (actively or passively speaking it) more than doubled to about 350 million people, and 286 million of them lived in a country where Russian was the state language and for most of its inhabitants was relatives. More than 70 million people (mainly in the Soviet Union republics of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and a number of Asian countries) knew the Russian language to one degree or another. Fourteen years after the collapse of the USSR, by 2005, the number of Russian speakers to varying degrees had dropped to 278 million, including 140 million in the Russian Federation itself.
At present, the Russian language is native for 130 million citizens of the Russian Federation, for 26.4 million residents of the CIS and Baltic republics, and for almost 7.4 million residents of non-CIS countries (primarily Germany and other European countries, the USA and Israel), then eat for a total of 163.8 million people. More than 114 million people speak Russian as a second language (mainly in the CIS and Baltic countries) or know it as a foreign language (in non-CIS countries). In 10 years, by 2015, the number of those for whom Russian is their native language will decrease, according to our estimates, to 144 million (including 120 million in Russia itself). In addition, another 68 million people will speak it as a second or foreign language.
At present, the degree of prevalence of the Russian language still ranks fourth in the world. Leading are English (an estimated 500 million people use it as their first or second language and over 1 billion more speak it as a foreign language) and Chinese (more than 1,350 million speak almost exclusively as a native language (including Mandarin) 900 million people).The third place is occupied by Spanish (about 360 million people speak it, including an estimated 335 million as their native language).If the current trends continue, in 10 years the number of those who know Russian to varying degrees will be reduced to 212 million people, and it will be surpassed by French (which is currently spoken by about 270 million people), Hindi / Urdu (260 million people), Arabic (230 million people), and by 2025, when the number of people who know Russian in various countries of the world will decrease to approximately 152 million people (that is, it will reach the level of the beginning of the 20th century), the Russian language will outstrip Portuguese (currently it is spoken by over 190 million ion people) and Bengali (about 190 million people). The dynamics of the spread of the Russian language in the world over the course of the 20th century and the forecast for the next 20 years are shown in Fig. eight.
Figure 8. Trends in the spread of the Russian language in the 20th century and in the first quarter of the 21st century (assessment and forecast)
Of course, the role of a particular language in world civilization is determined not only by the number of its speakers (that is, those who speak it as a native language, but also know it as a second or third (foreign) language. The level of economic and scientific and technological development plays an important role countries using this language, as well as areas human activity where the use of the appropriate language is prioritized. The contribution is also important. national culture, based on a particular language, into world culture.
The Russian language has great internal potential for further development and rich cultural heritage. Nevertheless, Russian is the only one of the 10-12 leading world languages that has been steadily losing its positions in all major regions of the world over the past 15 years, and this negative trend will continue in the next 20 years (Table 7), unless appropriate measures to effectively support the Russian language and culture within the country, in the near and far abroad.
Table 7. Forecast of the dynamics of the number of those who speak Russian in various countries / regions of the world in 2004-2025 (millions of people)
Countries / regions of the world |
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CIS and Baltic |
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Eastern Europe and the Balkans |
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Western Europe |
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Middle East and North Africa |
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Africa south of the Sahara |
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Latin America |
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USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand |
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The possibility of maintaining in the foreseeable future the place of the Russian language among the 10 leading world languages depends primarily on the ability of the Russian economy in the coming years to overcome the raw materials bias and switch to the production of knowledge and the export of educational and scientific and technical services, which are today the most demanded human products in the world. activities. Therefore, the priority development of the sphere of education and science and the introduction of new technologies on their basis into the production sector of the domestic economy is the only way to keep from slipping to the sidelines. scientific and technological progress and revive interest in the Russian language and culture. At the same time, the volume of trade with the most industrialized and populous countries and the scale of international tourism will continue to play a significant role in the spread of linguistic and cultural influence. The question is how exactly Russia and its language will be useful, interesting and attractive for representatives of various countries and peoples (the niche of a supplier of hydrocarbon raw materials for industrialized countries, as well as a manufacturer of weapons for Afro-Asian states, occupied today by the Russian Federation, objectively cannot contribute to a significant strengthening of the positions of the Russian language).
An important direction in the dissemination of the Russian language is teaching foreign citizens in the Russian Federation, acquiring stable language skills during training. Therefore, the task of strengthening the positions of Russian universities in the global education market, including by increasing the effectiveness of their advertising educational services, international recognition of Russian diplomas, etc. is inseparable from the strengthening of state support for the study of the Russian language abroad.
Strengthening the positions of the Russian language in the world requires not only more significant resource support, but also improved interaction between all state and public departments and organizations designed to support, develop and promote the Russian language and culture. At the same time, it is necessary to better take into account the specific features of the following main groups of foreign and Russian citizens (in addition to students of educational institutions with the Russian language of instruction and Russian language teachers), on which all this work is focused:
- residents of near and far abroad countries who can potentially study Russian outside the academic sector in their home country for educational, professional, domestic or cultural and educational purposes;
- labor migrants from neighboring countries who are in Russia;
- residents of non-CIS countries (adults, schoolchildren, students) who can potentially (and are inclined) to come to Russia to study the Russian language for various language courses;
- foreign students, interns, graduate students who come to study at Russian higher and other educational institutions;
- graduates of Soviet and Russian universities and their national associations, which exist today in almost 70 countries of the world;
- compatriots living in the near and far abroad, for whom the Russian language is native;
- special attention should be paid to children of compatriots from the CIS countries, as well as children from Russian and mixed families in non-CIS countries, organizing group cultural, study and study trips to Russia for them;
- to harmonize cultural and linguistic relations in the Russian Federation, to encourage the study of the Russian language by children and youth national republics on the one hand, and getting to know the culture and national languages children and youth from Russian families to develop internal Russian cultural and language tourism.
13 - The author's calculations based on data from the embassies of the Russian Federation, national population censuses and estimates by various experts. They generally correspond to the estimates of foreign research organizations studying the prevalence of world languages.
The second half of the 20th century was the period of the widest dissemination of the Russian language and Russian culture (as a multinational Soviet culture) throughout the world. The Russian language has become one of the world's leading languages used in all major international organizations. The total number of those who spoke Russian by the end of the 1980s was about 350 million people. A great contribution to the spread of the Russian language abroad was made by Soviet system education, which, according to Western experts, is one of the best in the world: in the 1989/1990 academic year in various civil, military, party, trade union, Komsomol educational institutions about 180 thousand foreign citizens studied in Russian. In addition, from 1960 to 1991, with economic and technical assistance Soviet Union at 36 foreign countries- the allies of the USSR created 66 higher educational institutions (universities, institutes, university centers, specialized faculties and branches), 23 secondary specialized educational institutions (technical schools), over 400 training centers vocational education (vocational school), 5 general education schools. The USSR equipped these educational institutions with equipment, provided educational and methodological literature, organized training in them with the help of Soviet specialists (sending them up to 5 thousand people a year only through the Ministry of Higher Education, including over 700 Russian teachers).
In addition to the large-scale study of the Russian language in the academic sector (secondary and higher educational institutions) in many countries (primarily in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa), significant efforts were made to expand foreign Russian language courses, which were attended mainly by the adult population, mastering the skills colloquial speech and reading. In the late 1980s, 600,000 people in 90 countries of the world studied Russian in these courses.
The collapse of the USSR and the loss of Russia's former economic, technological and geopolitical influence in the post-Soviet space and in the world as a whole affected the position of the Russian language and culture in the near and far abroad.
During the existence of the Soviet Union, 286 million people spoke Russian as the main state language, almost all residents of the Union republics knew it well, and without fail - every schoolchild. To date, the population of the 14 former republics of the USSR has over 140 million people (equal to the population of Russia), but Russian is actively spoken there (constantly used at work, in the learning process, at home), according to experts, only 63.6 million people , another 39.5 million people speak Russian passively (understand it to some extent, but do not use it as a means of communication and gradually lose their language skills), and almost 38 million no longer speak Russian (Table 1, Fig. 1) .
Table 1. Number of people who speak Russian to some extent in the CIS and Baltic countries in 2004 (thousand people)
Countries | The status of the Russian language in the country | The total number population density leniya |
Number of counts native speakers of Russian |
Number of active owners speaking Russian |
The number of passive speaking Russian |
The number does not own speaking Russian |
Azerbaijan | foreign | 8200 | 250 | 2000 | 3500 | 2700 |
Armenia | foreign | 3200 | 15 | 1000 | 1200 | 1000 |
Belarus | states. | 10200 | 3243 | 8000 | 2000 | 200 |
Georgia | foreign | 4500 | 130 | 1700 | 1000 | 1800 |
Kazakhstan | official | 15100 | 4200 | 10000 | 2300 | 2800 |
Kyrgyzstan | official | 5000 | 600 | 1500 | 2000 | 1500 |
Latvia | foreign | 2300 | 960 | 1300 | 700 | 300 |
Lithuania | foreign | 3400 | 250 | 500 | 1400 | 500 |
Moldova | language of international face-to-face communication |
3400 | 450 | 1900 | 1000 | 500 |
Tajikistan | language of international face-to-face communication |
6300 | 90 | 1000 | 2000 | 3300 |
Turkmenistan | language of international face-to-face communication / actually foreign |
4800 | 150 | 100 | 900 | 3800 |
Uzbekistan | language of international face-to-face communication |
25000 | 1200 | 5000 | 10000 | 10000 |
Ukraine | national language shinstvo |
48000 | 14400 | 29000 | 11000 | 8000 |
Estonia | foreign | 1300 | 470 | 500 | 500 | 300 |
Total | 140700 | 26408 | 63600 | 39500 | 37700 |
Figure 1. Distribution of the population of the CIS and Baltic countries by the degree of knowledge of the Russian language (2004),%
According to our forecasts, in another 10 years the number of those who do not speak Russian in these countries (today referred to as the near abroad), while maintaining current trends, will almost double (that is, to about 80 million people) and exceed the number of those who speak Russian to some extent. Russians (60 million people). The number of those who speak Russian among the younger generation of many former Soviet republics is declining especially rapidly. For example, in Lithuania today, on average, 60% of the population speak Russian, including 80% among middle-aged and older people, and only 17% among children and adolescents under the age of 15. A similar picture is emerging in the western regions of Ukraine, in Moldova there is a reorientation of young people to knowledge of European languages), in Azerbaijan (the economic, cultural and linguistic influence of Turkey and English-speaking states has sharply increased there), in Armenia, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Estonia and some others. countries. The number of ethnic Russians as the main carriers of the Russian language and culture who found themselves outside their historical homeland has decreased over the past 15 years from 25-30 million people to 17 million people - not only as a result of leaving for other countries, but also as a result of depopulation, as well as national identity due to the need for self-realization in a new ethno-cultural environment, and this process, with the invariance of the factors influencing it, will intensify in the coming years.
A total of 23.5 million people (mostly living in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, as well as in Uzbekistan and Latvia) consider Russian as their native language in the CIS and Baltic countries, but this figure last years also tends to steadily decrease (for example, in Tajikistan, according to the 1989 census, 36.4% of the population of the republic called the Russian language their native or second language, and according to the 2000 census - only 20.1%; while the number of ethnic Russians in Tajikistan decreased over the past 15 years by 10 times - from 500 thousand people in 1989 to 50 thousand in 2005). In addition, it should be borne in mind that 1/3 of the Russian-speaking community (Russian-speaking diaspora) in the CIS and Baltic countries are representatives of other nationalities (Ukrainians, Tatars, Belarusians, etc.), who also consider Russian their native language.
By 2005, Russian remained the state language only in Belarus. It still dominates the Belarusian media, 75% of children study in Russian-language schools, and in universities the share of subjects taught in Russian is at least 90%. The position of the Russian language in Kazakhstan is still relatively strong, where it has the status of “official communication language” (in order to stop the flow of Russian-speaking specialists from the country), however, office work in a number of regions of the country has already been fully translated into Kazakh, as well as in Kyrgyzstan, where Russian the language was given a similar official status in 2000 (despite this, over the years of independence, the number of the Russian-speaking population in the republic has halved and continues to decrease).
In other CIS countries, the Russian language has a lower status as a language of interethnic communication (in Moldova, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and also formally in Turkmenistan), a national minority language (in Ukraine) or a foreign language (in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia ). In the last group of countries, the Russian language actually serves as a means of interethnic communication, but legally, according to national laws on language, it is not.
The most important indicator of the position of the Russian language in the post-Soviet space is the number of educational institutions teaching in Russian and the number of schoolchildren studying in them. Compared with Soviet period the number of secondary schools with instruction in Russian decreased in the CIS and Baltic countries (with the exception of Belarus) by an average of 2-3 times (and in individual countries- 10 or more times) and amounted to 7536 in the 2003/2004 academic year (for comparison, in the 1989/1991 academic year there were more than 20 thousand Russian-language schools in the national republics of the USSR). In addition, almost 3,528 schools were bilingual or had Russian-speaking (Russian) classes. The number of schoolchildren of these educational institutions in the 2003/2004 academic year was 4.8 million people, including 3.7 million people in Russian-speaking schools of the CIS countries (with teaching in Russian only) (mainly these are schools in the north-eastern regions of Kazakhstan, Belarus, eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, as well as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea).
It should be noted that the composition of students in Russian-language schools in the CIS and Baltic countries is heterogeneous. Children from Russian families make up no more than 2/3 of them, and sometimes less than half, as, for example, in Georgia, where out of 32 thousand students in schools with instruction in Russian, less than 7 thousand are actually Russians, and 25 thousand are mainly from Georgian families. families. A similar picture is observed in the schools of Kyrgyzstan. In Latvia, the share of ethnic Russians in Russian-speaking schools is 75%, in Ukraine and Kazakhstan - 55%. The reason for the multi-ethnic composition of students in Russian schools is, on the whole, a higher quality of education than in national schools, which has been preserved since Soviet times.
From the 2005/2006 academic year, the number of Russian-language schools and the number of children studying in them will further decrease due to the introduction in Latvia in Russian-language schools of teaching most subjects in the Latvian language, a ban on teaching in non-state languages from the 2005/2006 academic year in schools in Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as the desire of the new leadership of Ukraine to drastically reduce the number of Russian-speaking schools, especially in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, where they make up 85% of all secondary general educational institutions, as well as in other Russian-speaking regions.
Data on the number of secondary specialized educational institutions (lyceums, colleges, vocational schools) in the CIS and Baltic countries, where instruction is provided in Russian, is incomplete (there is information on 153 secondary specialized educational institutions with about 12,000 students), but in In a number of CIS countries, such educational institutions with instruction in Russian simply do not exist - for example, in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Today, higher education in Russian is most accessible in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Moldova (in total, in the CIS and Baltic countries, about one million people study in Russian in 428 national universities and 68 branches and educational and consulting centers of Russian universities). However, there is a general trend of narrowing the scope of the Russian language in the national high school.
"Outpost" of the Russian-speaking higher education in the CIS countries there remain joint universities established by the Ministries of Education of the Russian Federation and the national republics (Russian-Kyrgyz (Slavonic) University, Russian-Tajik (Slavonic) University, Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University and Belarusian-Russian University), the number of students in which increases every year and currently amounts to a total of about 20 thousand people, of which 12.5 thousand are engaged in Russian educational programs.
The number of students studying Russian as a foreign compulsory language or as one of the foreign ones in the schools of the CIS and Baltic countries in the 2003/2004 academic year was approximately 10 million people (for comparison, in the 1986/1987 academic year, in almost 50,000 national schools of the Union Republics, Russian as more than 15 million children studied non-native), however, behind this still impressive figure is a generally low level of language knowledge due to the constant decrease in the number of teaching hours for studying the Russian language and literature, the transfer of the beginning of its study from the first or second grade (as it is was in the early 1990s) for the fifth grade, or even the removal of the Russian language from curriculum as a compulsory subject. The growing shortage of qualified teachers of Russian language and literature for secondary schools also has an effect (their output in the former post-Soviet republics has decreased to several thousand people a year - they are mainly trained in universities in Belarus, Kazakhstan and the eastern regions of Ukraine), as well as the lack of high-quality educational and methodological literature.
Russian language in Europe, USA, Canada - the language of emigration
Russian language in Eastern European and Balkan countries
The second most important region in terms of the prevalence of the Russian language outside of Russia has traditionally been the states of Eastern Europe - allies of the Soviet Union, which were part of the countries - members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, that is, united by common economic, political and military interests, as well as, in most cases, a common Slavic culture. The widespread use of the Soviet industrial and military equipment(and, accordingly, its maintenance), intensive economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation made it necessary to study the Russian language as the main means of communication within the framework of the above organizations. Suffice it to say that the Russian language was a compulsory subject of education in secondary schools and universities in Eastern Europe and was in a clearly privileged position in relation to other foreign languages \u200b\u200bcompeting with it (English, French, German), millions of people also studied it in Russian language courses outside the academic sector. Russian was also the most popular foreign language in Yugoslavia. In the Soviet Union itself, up to 1/4 of all foreign students were citizens of Eastern European countries.
After the collapse of the USSR, the liquidation of the CMEA and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, as well as the sharp weakening of Russia's economic ties with the Eastern European states and their reorientation towards political, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation with the EU, as well as the United States, the prestige of the Russian language and its practical significance declined sharply, and the number of those who actively use it or study it in the academic sector or outside it has also decreased significantly. So, if in 1990, according to our estimates, in the Eastern European countries, including the republics of the SFRY, there were 44 million people who knew the Russian language, then after 15 years there were 19 million of them, and those who actively knew the Russian language - no more than 1/3 of this numbers. The rest speak passively, that is, they still understand oral and written speech and, with certain difficulties, can be explained at the everyday level.
The decline in the number of schoolchildren, gymnasium students, lyceum students, students of vocational schools in Eastern Europe and the Balkan countries who study Russian has also become a landslide - from 10 million in 1990 to 935 thousand - in the 2004/2005 academic year. For example, in Poland, the number of Russian language learners in the period from 1992 to 2004 decreased by almost 10 times - from more than 4 million in 1992 to 500,000 in 2004. In Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, it almost completely disappeared from school programs(today it is taught as one of the foreign languages by 0.1% to 1% of students in this group of countries, and Russian is on average only third in terms of popularity among other foreign languages - after English and German) (see Table 2) .
Table 2. Prevalence and study of the Russian language in Eastern European and Balkan countries
Countries | Numerical ness of the Russian language. diaspora in 2004, thousand people |
Number of people who spoke Russian language, thousand people |
Number of secondary education vateln. establish- Deny, where the Russian language is studied |
The number of students studying speaking Russian, thousand people |
Number of universities, in whichstudying Russian |
Number of students comrade, studying speaking Russian, thousand people |
|
1990 | 2004 | ||||||
Albania | 300 | 50000 | 20000 | 1 | 50 | 7 | 40 |
Bulgaria | 150000 | 7000000 | 4500000 | 250 | 232000 | 7 | 2000 |
Bosnia and Herzegovina | No data | 700000 | 10000 | 60 | 3500 | 2 | 150 |
Hungary | 20000 | 2800000 | 300000 | 35 | 21500 | 8 | 957 |
Macedonia | 400 | 50000 | 10000 | 69 | 2400 | 1 | 144 |
Poland | 9000 | 20000000 | 7000000 | 5000 | 487000 | 20 | 15500 |
Romania | 120000 | 250000 | 125000 | 30 | 2000 | 10 | 500 |
Slovakia | 10000 | 2500000 | 500000 | 627 | 42000 | 16 | 3000 |
Slovenia | No data | 25000 | 5000 | 3 | 60 | 1 | 220 |
Czech | 30000 | 3000000 | 1450000 | 183 | 12000 | 20 | 850 |
Serbia | 40000 | 6800000 | 4900000 | 2500 | 131400 | 3 | 420 |
Montenegro | 5000 | 350000 | 200000 | 70 | 1000 | 1 | 50 |
Croatia | No data | 500000 | 40000 | 1 | 30 | 2 | 230 |
Total | 384700 | 44025000 | 19060000 | 8829 | 934,94 | 98 | 24060 |
The dynamics of the number of schoolchildren studying Russian in Bulgaria is somewhat different: having decreased over 10 years (from 1991 to 2001), as in many other Western European countries, by 10 times (from 1 million to 100 thousand people), this figure has increased over the past 3 years almost doubled (up to 180 thousand) and, together with those studying Russian in technical schools and colleges (52 thousand), is already almost a quarter of a million people. It should be noted, however, that in recent years the majority of Bulgarian schoolchildren have begun to study Russian only as a second or even third foreign language.
In the higher education system of Eastern European and Balkan countries, the Russian language is almost “lost” - today it is studied as a specialty in the departments of Russian studies (Russian language and literature) or as one of the foreign languages by only 24 thousand students of this group of states (in the late 1980s about 1 million students studied Russian there).
A large role in promoting the Russian language and culture has traditionally been played by graduates of Soviet (Russian) universities, both civilian and military (there were about 150,000 of them in this group of states), united in national alumni associations. Unfortunately, after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR, many of these associations ceased to exist, and their former activists tried not to advertise the fact of their studies in the USSR, as well as their knowledge of the Russian language, so as not to be classified as “agents of influence of Moscow”. The number of young men and women from Eastern European and Balkan countries who come to study in Russia has also sharply decreased: in the 2002/2003 academic year, there were a little more than one thousand people in the daytime departments of Russian universities, which accounted for only 1.5% of the total number of foreign citizens. who studied full-time in Russian higher education (during the Soviet period, the proportion of immigrants from socialist countries in the composition of foreign students reached 23%).
According to our forecasts, with the current volume of economic, scientific and technical ties with the Russian Federation unchanged, the number of people who speak Russian due to the lack of incentives for its use in the group of states under consideration will be halved in 10 years, that is, to about 10 million people, of which actively no more than 5 million people will be able to speak the language (that is, constantly or periodically use it at work, study or everyday life) (mainly in Poland, as well as in Bulgaria and Serbia), while the rest will steadily lose their former language skills.
Russian language in Western Europe
The peak of interest in the Russian language and culture in the countries of Western Europe was the end of the 1980s, which was associated with the so-called perestroika and certain expectations from it.
At that time, due to the greater openness of the USSR, the influx of foreign tourists and various specialists into Russia increased; in the Western countries themselves, the number of people studying Russian in educational institutions and at language courses. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, interest in Russia, which no longer had the international status that the USSR had, fell sharply.
In almost all countries of Western Europe during the 1990s, the number of schoolchildren studying the Russian language also decreased (for example, in Sweden and Switzerland it decreased by 1/4, in Germany - by 2 times, in France - by 2.5 times , in Norway - 3 times, in the Netherlands - 5 times). At the same time, the Russian language in most cases is not the first, but the second or even the third foreign language studied. For example, in Finland, only 0.3% of all schoolchildren chose Russian as their first foreign language, while 5% chose Russian as their second (optional) language; in France, out of 14 thousand students of secondary educational institutions studying Russian, only 4 thousand, or 28%, master it as a first language, 32% - as a second and 40% - as a third.
As a rule, at least half of Western European schoolchildren studying Russian are children of emigrants from the Soviet Union or Russia, as well as other CIS and Baltic countries.
In general, about 225,000 schoolchildren, gymnasium students, and lyceum students study Russian in Western European countries today in almost 11,000 secondary educational institutions (before the early 1990s, the number of Western European students who studied Russian as a foreign language was over 550,000 people). The number of schoolchildren studying Russian in Western European countries is more than 4 times less than in Eastern European and Balkan countries (935 thousand people).
28.5 thousand students and graduate students study Russian in higher education in Western Europe. They study at 178 universities, most of which are located in Germany, France and the UK, where the largest Russian-speaking communities are located (Table 3). It is noteworthy that the number of students studying Russian in Western European universities even slightly exceeds the number of Russian students studying Russian as a foreign language in Eastern European and Balkan universities (24,000 people in total).
Table 3. Prevalence and study of the Russian language in Western European countries (as of 2004)
Countries | Numerical ness of the Russian diaspora, human |
Number of owners speaking Russian, human |
Number of secondary education vateln. establish- days, training speaking Russian |
Number of students, human |
Number of universities, in which they study Russian |
Number of students Comrade, human |
Austria | 10000 | 15000 | 96 | 4500 | 5 | 3000 |
Belgium | 2000 | 3000 | 4 | 100 | 5 | 4000 |
Great Britain | 200000 | 250000 | 57 | 424 | 24 | 1000 |
Germany | 3000000 | 6000000 | 9700 | 190000 | 53 | 9000 |
Greece | 350000 | 450000 | 75 | 1500 | 3 | 520 |
Denmark | 5000 | 6000 | 30 | 320 | 4 | 170 |
Ireland | 1000 | 1500 | 1 | 50 | 1 | 90 |
Spain | 60000 | 75000 | 80 | 1600 | 16 | 400 |
Italy | 1200 | 25000 | 10 | 700 | 10 | 60 |
Cyprus | 25000 | 40000 | 5 | 367 | 1 | 16 |
Luxembourg | 300 | 500 | 3 | 32 | 0 | 0 |
Malta | 50 | 100 | 2 | 50 | 0 | 0 |
Netherlands | 50000 | 70000 | 4 | 10 | 4 | 20 |
Norway | 4000 | 6000 | 10 | 100 | 4 | 215 |
Portugal | 150000 | 155000 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 432 |
Finland | 30000 | 50000 | 61 | 9000 | 9 | 1000 |
France | 550000 | 700000 | 748 | 14000 | 14 | 6000 |
Switzerland | 7000 | 10000 | 25 | 1600 | 5 | 350 |
Sweden | 15000 | 95000 | 10 | 500 | 11 | 700 |
Total | 4384735 | 7952100 | 10919 | 224853 | 178 | 28513 |
Maintaining interest in the Russian language and culture in the countries of Western Europe, to a certain extent, can be facilitated by the Russian-speaking community, which was formed from several waves of emigration. Its number is, according to our calculations, 4.3 million people, the largest part of which lives in Germany, France, Greece, Great Britain, Portugal, and Spain (Table 3). At the same time, the greatest contribution to the development of Russian culture in the far abroad within the framework of the activities of friendship societies and associations of compatriots is made, as a rule, by “old” emigrants - the descendants of those who came to Europe many decades ago.
The total number of people who speak Russian to some extent in the countries of Western Europe is currently 7.9 million people. Despite a certain decrease in interest in Russia and in the Russian language among citizens of Western European countries, a decrease in the number of students studying Russian in the system of secondary and higher education, the total number of those who know Russian, compared to the end of the 1980s, not only did not decrease, but even slightly increased thanks to migration factor: Germany alone received more than two million emigrants from the former USSR - mostly ethnic Germans from Kazakhstan and Russia, as well as many migrants from Ukraine (whose number in Germany is more than half a million people). However, as recent immigrants from Russia, the CIS countries and the Baltics integrate into Western society, their role in maintaining the interest of the population of these countries in the Russian language and culture will decrease. It should also be taken into account that, in contrast to the first wave of Russian emigration (1917-1920s), caused by emergency circumstances (threat to life), whose representatives made great efforts to preserve national traditions, religion, spiritual values, culture (in families they tried to speak only in Russian), participants in the last (post-Soviet) emigration, pragmatic in terms of goals, tend to assimilate as quickly as possible in the recipient countries, voluntarily losing their national identity, and without their own practical benefit not to advertise their Russian origin (on the effectiveness of their propaganda of Russian culture and Russian, as a rule, does not have to be spoken).
Russian language in countries North America, in Australia and New Zealand
In the countries of North America, Australia and Oceania, a total of 4.1 million people speak Russian (mainly in the USA and Canada). Interest in the Russian language, as in European countries, reached its peak in 1989-1991 (for example, in the United States in 1980, 24 thousand people studied Russian, and in the 1990/1991 academic year - 45 thousand), after which interest in it fell, but then gradually began to revive in the early 2000s.
In the system of secondary education, Russian as a foreign language is currently taught in a limited number of schools (about 120 in total), where less than 8,000 students study it. In addition to the system of secondary education, the study of the Russian language by children and adolescents is also carried out in Sunday schools at Orthodox parishes and public organizations and associations (this form of education covers several thousand people). The Russian language is much more widely represented in the system of higher education. In this group of states, about 30,000 students study it in more than 200 universities (Table 4).
Table 4. Prevalence and study of the Russian language in North America, Australia and New Zealand, 2004
Countries | Number of people who speak Russian, human | The number of secondary education vateln. institutions where the Russian language is studied |
Number of students, human | Number of students, human | |
Australia | 85000 | 8 | 650 | 4 | 230 |
Canada | 500000 | 9 | 520 | 18 | 2000 |
New Zealand | 7500 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 82 |
USA | 3500000 | over 100 | 6500 | 178 | 27000 |
Total | 4092500 | 117 | 7670 | 202 | 29313 |
In Asia, Africa and Latin America, our language is rapidly losing its role
Foreign countries Asia- the most significant in terms of population, among them there are many former long-term allies and trade and economic partners of the USSR, but the Russian language is much less common in them than in Europe. If before the collapse of the USSR, about 5.5 million people in foreign Asia owned it, today, to one degree or another, no more than 4.1 million people, including freely - about 1/3 (that is, 1.3 million people) . These are mainly those who in previous years studied, trained or worked and even lived in the Soviet Union, or worked at national enterprises built with the help of the USSR and serviced by Soviet specialists together with national personnel.
Until the end of the 1980s, Russian as a foreign language dominated in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, North Korea, Laos, and Mongolia. In the 1990s, in most of the above countries, as a means of international communication, it gave way to English or was largely replaced by it. To date, the "stronghold" of the Russian language is still Mongolia and the DPRK (although the monopoly status of the Russian language in them is weakened), to a lesser extent - China, where knowledge of Russian is distributed not so much by the education system, but thanks to "shuttle" entrepreneurs, constantly traveling to the Russian Federation (according to expert estimates, there are more than half a million Chinese citizens permanently in Russia, mainly engaged in trade) and acquiring stable language skills in the course of their activities (often very long), as well as mass trips of Russian citizens (mainly from border areas ) to China (up to 1.4 million people per year). For similar reasons, Turkey is becoming more and more “Russian-speaking”.
In the secondary education system of the Asian region, Russian is studied as the first (main) or second (additional) foreign language or an optional subject by more than half a million people in 1203 schools, gymnasiums, lyceums, and 55% of them are Mongolian students (in Mongolia there are even two dozen specialized schools teaching in Russian). In a number of countries (Afghanistan, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Turkey, the Philippines, Sri Lanka) the Russian language as subject in the system of state secondary education in 2004 did not exist (Table 5).
Table 5. Prevalence and study of the Russian language in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, 2004
Countries | Number of owners speaking Russian, people |
The number of secondary education vateln. establish- denia, in which the Russian language is studied |
Number of students, people | Number of universities where the Russian language is studied | Number of students, people |
Asian countries | 4076680 | 1203 | 520183 | 582 | 218034 |
Including: | |||||
Afghanistan | 100000 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 30 |
Vietnam | 150000 | 110 | 11328 | 10 | 9120 |
China | 600000 | 97 | 70000 | 159 | 36415 |
North Korea | 1000000 | 280 | 150000 | 24 | 20000 |
Mongolia | 1300000 | 688 | 288000 | 180 | 112000 |
Turkey | 500000 | 1 | 35 | 8 | 400 |
Japan | 100000 | 10 | 400 | 117 | 30000 |
Countries of the Middle East and North Africa | 1449150 | 242 | 12450 | 26 | 3650 |
Incl. | |||||
Israel | 1150000 | 238 | 12000 | 8 | 1000 |
Sub-Saharan Africa | 121120 | 130 | 11310 | 16 | 1485 |
Latin American countries | 1155175 | 3 | 65 | 23 | 2071 |
Including: | |||||
Cuba | 1000000 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 30 |
Argentina | 100000 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 40 |
In higher educational institutions in Asia, 218 thousand students and graduate students study Russian, of which only 15% study it as their main specialty (that is, they are future Russianists), the rest study Russian as a first, second or third foreign language or study optional.
The conductors of the Russian language and culture in the countries of the region are primarily graduates of Soviet and Russian universities. Them total number exceeds 200 thousand people, including 60 thousand in Mongolia, 50 thousand in Vietnam, about 35 thousand in China, 11 thousand in India, etc.
Russian language in countries of the Middle East and North Africa was until recently fairly widespread (Table 5). The Arab world, which widely used the economic and military assistance of the USSR, was the second most important region of developing countries in terms of the prevalence of the Russian language. Its main carriers were graduates of Soviet and later Russian universities and universities of a number of CIS countries, especially Ukraine, Belarus and Uzbekistan. In the Middle East and North Africa, there are a total of 220 thousand graduates of Soviet and Russian universities (both civilian and military), as well as those who have completed other forms vocational training, including 100 thousand - in Syria, 40 thousand - in Yemen, 30 thousand - in Libya, 15 thousand - in Jordan, 10 thousand - in Egypt (but excluding Israel, where more than a million Soviet and Russian citizens emigrated).
Among the native speakers of the Russian language and culture in Arab countries can be attributed to several tens of thousands of Soviet and Russian women who married Arab citizens, mainly during their studies in the USSR and Russia, as well as their children, who, as a rule, know Arabic, one of the European and Russian languages.
The total number of people who speak Russian to some extent in the Arab countries is 290 thousand people, and in the Middle East, together with Russian-speaking residents of Israel (immigrants from the USSR, Russia and the CIS countries), almost 1.5 million people.
The prevalence of the Russian language in sub-Saharan Africa extremely weak. No more than 121 thousand people currently own it to one degree or another (Table 5), including about 100 thousand graduates of Soviet and Russian universities (civilian and military) and universities of the CIS countries, as well as their Russian-speaking wives and part of the children who studied Russian in the national education system or in language courses. Most of the graduates of Soviet and Russian universities are in Ethiopia (over 20 thousand), Mali (over 11 thousand), Congo (7 thousand), Nigeria (4.3 thousand), Ghana (4 thousand), Burkina Faso (3.5 thousand), Guinea (3 thousand), etc.
Until the 1990s, the Russian language was studied to some extent in almost 40 countries located south of the Sahara, including in secondary specialized and higher educational institutions built with the help of the USSR, in which Soviet teachers also worked. To date, the Russian language in the national education system is studied only in 13 countries: in 130 secondary schools, lyceums and gymnasiums, where it is mastered (mainly as a second foreign language) by 11.3 thousand students, as well as in 16 universities, where it about 1.5 thousand people are taught as one of the foreign languages or a specialty.
At 30 countries of South (Latin) America about 1.2 million people speak Russian to some extent (mainly in Cuba, but also in Argentina), but the study of it in educational institutions- even more rare than in Africa (Table 5). There are only three national schools (a lyceum in Uruguay and two private schools in Peru), where 65 people study Russian as one of the foreign languages. In addition, in Cuba and Chile, several dozen local children (mostly from mixed families) also learn Russian in high school at Russian embassy. In the system of higher education, Russian as a foreign language (and very rarely as a specialty) is taught to 2,000 students in 23 universities in 9 countries.
Fewer Russians - fewer Russian speakers
In the Russian Federation itself, in accordance with the national language policy, Russian is not the only state language: in the national republics, along with Russian, 28 other state languages coexist. According to the latest All-Russian population census (2002), out of 145.1 million people in the country, 142.5 million spoke Russian, and 2.6 million did not. The share of Russians by nationality - the main carriers of the Russian language and culture - in the composition of the population of the Russian Federation was equal to 79.8% (116 million people). By early 2005, the Russian population had shrunk by 1.6 million, mostly Russian, while the total number of those who spoke Russian had fallen from 142.5 million to 140.9 million, respectively. From the beginning of 1994 to the beginning of 2006, Russia's population decreased by 5.9 million people. According to demographers' forecasts, the population of Russia will continue to decline, and the number of people who speak Russian in the Russian Federation will also decrease accordingly.
In the national republics, especially the North Caucasus, the place of the Russian language, including in the field of education, is increasingly being occupied by the languages of the titular nations (especially since ethnic Russians from these republics, by virtue of various reasons in large numbers move to the central regions, as well as other regions of Russia). In the schools of Tatarstan, teaching is carried out both in Russian and in the Tatar languages, in Kabardino-Balkaria - in Russian, Balkar and Kabardian, etc. Residents of ethnically homogeneous settlements of national republics (primarily in rural areas) often prefer to communicate with each other, as well as in local authorities, in their native national language.
In the European part of Russia, in Siberia and on Far East the population and especially young people are increasingly drawn to learning English, which is associated with the growing use of Western technologies, especially information technologies (the monopoly language of computer programs and the Internet is English), expanded opportunities for foreign tourist and business trips, study and employment abroad. Every year more and more Russian schoolchildren and students go abroad to study foreign languages (primarily English, but also German, French and a number of others).
In the Russian language itself, along with Western culture, economics, technology and technology, foreign language borrowings (mainly Americanisms or Anglicisms, used both to designate new phenomena or concepts, and to replace Russian terms) are becoming more widespread.
Due to the significant influx of migrants from the CIS countries (primarily representatives of the titular nations), as well as from the national (mainly North Caucasian) republics to the central regions of Russia, where several million of them, mostly illegally, settled permanently, the national and ethnic composition is also changing. students of educational institutions (in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation in Russian schools are obliged to take a child of any nationality without propiska and registration). Teachers are faced with the fact that an increasing number of students lower grades whose native language is not Russian, need additional Russian language classes. For example, the Moscow Department of Education was forced to open in 2000 advanced training courses for secondary school teachers in the specialty "Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language". It is worth noting that in this way a channel for the expansion of the Russian language appears.
An important channel for the spread of the Russian language abroad is the labor migration to Russia of citizens from the CIS countries, as well as from far abroad. It is mainly of a pendulum nature and, therefore, contributes to an increase in the number of those who know the Russian language in these countries. It's about about millions of labor migrants (mainly workers, as well as entrepreneurs - "shuttle traders", less often - specialists) from the former Soviet republics, China, Vietnam, Turkey, etc.
The actual number of foreign labor force located in Russia in a number of regions is 8-10 times higher than officially registered with the Federal Migration Service. There are many illegal workers in Russia, even among those who came at the invitation of the enterprise. A large number of undocumented foreign workers are employed in construction agriculture, in transport, in energy (oil and gas production).
As a sociological study showed, the period of their stay in Russia lasted an average of 2 years and two months, including those staying in Russia for 3 or more years - these are citizens of India and Turkey; from 2 to 3 years - citizens of Vietnam, Armenia, Georgia, China, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Germany; from 1 to 2 years - citizens of Ukraine and Uzbekistan, staying less than a year - citizens of Tajikistan and Belarus. While living and working in Russia, almost all of them use the Russian language (Fig. 2), therefore, upon returning to their homeland, they replenish the part of the indigenous population that actively speaks Russian, and this factor must be taken into account when assessing the prevalence of the Russian language in the respective countries.
It should be noted that the bulk of illegal migrants come from the CIS countries; they come already knowing the Russian language to one degree or another. Their trips to Russia contribute to maintaining the knowledge of the Russian language in their countries, and to some extent counteract the weakening of the Russian language.
Figure 2. Share of foreign labor force using Everyday life in Russia in Russian, native and other languages (in %)
The spread of the Russian language outside the Russian Federation is also facilitated to a certain extent by foreign citizens studying in Russian in various Russian educational institutions (mainly universities). For the entire period of the existence of the Soviet Union and the next 14 years of the post-Soviet development of the Russian Federation in Soviet and Russian civilian and military universities and other educational institutions, including secondary specialized ones, at various training courses, retraining, advanced training, educational and industrial internships, etc. with a total of about one million students enrolled. The peak of the number of foreign citizens studying was reached in 1989/1990, when various forms of training took place in the USSR (civilian and military, in the system of higher and secondary special education, internships and advanced training courses, etc.) up to 180 thousand foreign citizens. In the early 1990s, there was a decline in the education of foreigners in Russia, which began to be gradually overcome in the 2000s. Trends in the number of foreign students, trainees, graduate students who studied at the full-time departments of Russian universities (the main form of training specialists for foreign states in the domestic education system) over the past decades is clearly reflected in Fig. 3.
Figure 3. Dynamics of the number of foreign students, interns, post-graduate students of the full-time departments of Soviet/Russian universities in 1950-2005 (thousand people)
The majority of foreigners who studied in Russian universities in 2004/2005 were citizens of Asian and CIS countries (Fig. 4).
Figure 4. Composition of foreign citizens who studied full-time at Russian universities in 2004/2005, by country of origin (in %)
The largest contingents of foreign citizens (students of preparatory departments, students, trainees, graduate students) of full-time education are from Kazakhstan (13.3 thousand people), China (12.4 thousand people), Vietnam (4.8 thousand people), Ukraine (3.7 thousand people), India (3.6 thousand people). In addition, another 18.1 thousand people (mainly from the CIS countries) study in the evening, correspondence and remote form. In total, representatives of 168 countries are currently studying in Russia, including 32 European, 20 Arab, 46 African, 25 Asian, 27 Latin American. Most of them are engaged in long-term programs of graduates and have good opportunities not only to master, but also to improve the Russian language in a few years of their stay in Russia.
On average, every sixth foreign student, trainee, graduate student, student of the preparatory department studied the Russian language as the main subject at the full-time departments of Russian universities, including most of all - in the composition of immigrants from North America (primarily the USA) and Europe (Fig. 5) .
Figure 5. Percentage of foreign citizens from various countries studying Russian Language and Literature at Russian universities in the 2004/2005 academic year (in %)
It should be noted that in recent years there has been a trend towards a decrease in the level of knowledge of the Russian language among applicants arriving in Russia not only from far abroad, but also from neighboring countries. Increasingly, representatives of the CIS, if they are not compatriots who grew up in Russian-speaking families, have to be sent to Russian language courses or preparatory departments before they start their studies in order for them to master the language of instruction to the minimum required extent.
To stimulate the arrival of representatives of various countries to study in Russia and to help compatriots (every fourth student from the CIS and Baltic countries studying today in a Russian higher school is an ethnic Russian), the Russian Federation allocates annually 7,000 state scholarships (quotas for free education at the expense of funds federal budget). Preference is given to people from the CIS countries (Fig. 6).
Figure 6. The composition of foreign citizens-state scholarship holders who studied in Russian universities in 2004 at the expense of the federal budget, by country of origin (in %)
Supports interest in the Russian language and culture in various countries of the world and foreign tourism. The greater, in comparison with the Soviet period, openness of Russia contributed to mass travel and cultural and linguistic contacts with Russian citizens of tens of millions of people from Europe, America, and other regions. According to a sample survey of foreign tourists conducted in 2002 State Committee Russian Federation, according to statistics, more than 3% of them came to Russia to study the Russian language, including German tourists - 7.7%, American - 3.4%, etc. Unfortunately, in 2004-2005 the number of foreign citizens from far abroad who visited Russia for tourism purposes decreased for the first time in the last 7 years (Fig. 7), while the global trend of tourism growth remains unchanged.
Figure 7. Dynamics of the number of foreign citizens who arrived in Russia for the purpose of tourism outside the CIS countries in 1998-2005
Mostly subjects of the Russian Empire spoke. In total, there were about 150 million Russian-speaking people in the world. During Soviet times, the Russian language was compulsory in schools, had the status of a state language, and therefore the number of people speaking it increased. By the beginning of perestroika, about 350 million people spoke Russian, most of whom lived on the territory of the Soviet Union.
After the collapse of the USSR, the number of people whose main language of communication was Russian decreased. By 2005, 140 million people spoke it in Russia, and about 278 million in the world. This language is native to 130 million people living on the territory of the Russian Federation, and for 26.4 million of those who permanently reside in the Baltic countries and the CIS republics. Slightly more than 114 million people on the planet speak Russian as a second language or have studied it as a foreign language. W3Techs conducted a study in March 2013, during which it turned out that Russian is the second most common language on the Internet. It was surpassed only by English.
In 2006, the journal "Demoscope" published the research of the director of scientific work Center sociological research Ministry of Education and Science of Russia A.L. Arefieva. He claims that the Russian language is losing its position in the world. In the new study "The Russian language at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries", which was published in 2012, the scientist predicts a weakening of positions. He believes that by 2020-2025 it will be spoken by about 215 million people, and by 2050 - about 130 million. In the countries of the former Soviet Union, local languages are being elevated to the status of state languages; in the world, the decrease in the number of Russian-speaking people is associated with a demographic crisis.
The Russian language is considered one of the most translated in the world. According to the electronic database of the Index Translationum translation registry, it is currently in 7th place.
The official status of the Russian language
In Russia, Russian is the official state language. In Belarus, he also has state status, but shares a position with Belarusian language, in South Ossetia- with Ossetian, in Pridnestrovian Moldavian - with Ukrainian and Moldavian.
In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Abkhazia, as well as a number of administrative-territorial units of Ukraine, Moldova and Romania, office work is carried out on. In Tajikistan, it is used in lawmaking and is recognized as the language of interethnic communication. According to the laws american state New York, some election-related documents must be translated into Russian without fail. Russian is a working or official language in the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Society, the International Organization for Standardization and others.
Russian is the mother tongue of 147 million people. Another 113 million speak it as a second language. According to the degree of distribution (the number of native speakers), Russian is the fifth language in the world (after English, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic). Among native languages, Russian was ranked 8th in the world in 2009 after Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali and Portuguese.
Based on statistics from the United Nations and a study group Euromonitor International, the Russian-speaking population of the former Soviet republics has been steadily declining over the past twenty years. For example, in Kazakhstan - minus 2 million Russian speakers in 22 years. In 2016, the number of citizens speaking it at home was 20.7% (3 million 715 thousand people) compared to 33.7% (5 million 710 thousand people) in 1994. In addition, Kazakhstan plans to switch to the Latin alphabet.
. The most popular languages in the world. Infographics ↓
According to various estimates, 7,000 languages are spoken in the world, but only a few dozen of them have global importance or used officially. The UN recognizes only 6 official languages: English, Arabic, Russian, French, Chinese and Spanish. Currently, 80% of the inhabitants of the Earth use only 80 languages, which allows scientists to make disappointing predictions. So, according to their calculations, in 30-40 years, more than half of the currently existing languages will be out of use.
The spread of a particular language is associated with several factors. Firstly, when learning a foreign language, the choice falls on the most universal way of communication. Today, the most popular languages in the world are used for interaction in the field of trade, political relations, culture, and Internet communications. In Asia, many communications take place in Arabic and Chinese. In the CIS countries remains big number native speakers of the Russian language. Today, English is the most universal in the world: it is common on all continents and is included in the educational standards of many countries.
Secondly, the most popular languages in the world have undergone changes due to the migration of the indigenous population of England, Spain and Portugal. Spanish is official language in many countries South America and the second most common among neighbors: residents of the United States. Portuguese dominates in Brazil and is gaining momentum in prevalence in the world due to the country's growing role as a resource and economic partner.
An important role is played by the territorial neighborhood with the countries where native speakers live. For example, among the inhabitants of the eastern outskirts of Russia, Japanese and Chinese are the most popular. Equally important are your own preferences, when you just like the language for one reason or another. So, French and Spanish are chosen for their euphony, while Chinese seems exotic and original to residents of non-Asian regions.
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