Languages of Russia

Languages of Russia
Official languages	Russian official throughout nation;[1] twenty-seven others co-official in various regions
Main languages	Russian
Main foreign languages	13–15% have foreign language knowledge[2][3] English (80% out of all foreign language speakers or 11% of the population) German (16%) French (4%) Turkish (2%)
Sign languages	Russian Sign Language
Common keyboard layouts	Russian keyboard

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Of all the languages of Russia, Russian is the only official language at the national level. There are 35 different languages which are considered official languages in various regions of Russia, along with Russian. There are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today.^[4]

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.

Official languages

Although Russian is the only federally official language of the Russian Federation, there are several other officially recognized languages within Russia's various constituencies – article 68 of the Constitution of Russia only allows the various republics of Russia to establish official (state) languages other than Russian. This is a list of the languages that are recognized as official (state) in constitutions of the republics of Russia:

Language	Language family	Federal subject(s)	Source
Abaza	Northwest Caucasian	Karachay-Cherkessia	[5]
Adyghe	Northwest Caucasian	Adygea	[6]
Altai	Turkic	Altai Republic	[7][8]
Bashkir	Turkic	Bashkortostan	[9] see also regional law
Buryat	Mongolic	Buryatia	[10]
Chechen	Northeast Caucasian	Chechnya	[11]
Chuvash	Turkic	Chuvashia	[12]
Crimean Tatar	Turkic	Republic of Crimea[lower-alpha 1]	[13]
Erzya	Uralic	Mordovia	[14]
Ingush	Northeast Caucasian	Ingushetia	[15]
Kabardian	Northwest Caucasian	Kabardino-Balkaria Karachay-Cherkessia	[16]
Kalmyk	Mongolic	Kalmykia	[17]
Karachay-Balkar	Turkic	Kabardino-Balkaria  Karachay-Cherkessia	[5][16]
Khakas	Turkic	Khakassia	[18]
Komi	Uralic	Komi Republic	[19]
Hill Mari, Meadow Mari	Uralic	Mari El	[20]
Moksha	Uralic	Mordovia	[14]
Nogai	Turkic	Karachay-Cherkessia,  Dagestan	[5]
Ossetian	Indo-European	North Ossetia–Alania	[21]
Tatar	Turkic	Tatarstan	[22]
Tuvan	Turkic	Tuva	[23]
Udmurt	Uralic	Udmurtia	[24]
Ukrainian	Indo-European	Republic of Crimea[lower-alpha 1]	[13]
Yakut	Turkic	Sakha Republic	[25]

The Constitution of Dagestan defines "Russian and the languages of the peoples of Dagestan" as the state languages,^[26] though no comprehensive list of the languages was given. In the project of the "Law on the languages of the Republic of Dagestan" 32 languages are listed.^[27]

Karelia is the only republic of Russia with Russian as the only official language.^[28] However, there exists the special law about state support and protection of the Karelian, Vepsian and Finnish languages in the republic.^[29]

The federal law "On the languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation" ^[30] allows the federal subjects to establish additionally official languages in the areas where minority groups live. This is the case, for example, of the Kazakh language in Altai Republic.^[8]

Migrant languages

As a result of mass migration to Russia from the former USSR republics (especially from the Caucasus and Central Asia) many non-indigenous languages are spoken by migrant workers, among them most prominent are (from 2010 Census, in thousands):

However, many migrant workers were not counted in the Census and many work illegally, so these numbers may be much greater. Compare 2.4 million Uzbek citizens and 1.2 million Tajik citizens entered Russia in 2014.^[31]

Some groups such as Kazakhs of Altay Republic, Armenians from Myasnikovsky District, Azerbaijanis from Derbent are not recent immigrants and have lived in their area for a long period of time.

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 in Russia, 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.

Foreign languages

According to the various studies made in 2005-2008 by Levada-Center^[2] 15% of Russians know a foreign language. From those who claim knowledge of at least one language:

Knowledge of at least one foreign language is predominant among younger and middle-aged population. Among aged 18–24 38% can read and "translate with a dictionary", 11% can freely read and speak. Among aged 25–39 these numbers are 26% and 4% respectively.

Knowledge of a foreign language varies among social groups. It is most appreciable (15-18%) in big cities with 100,000 and more inhabitants, while in Moscow it rises up to 35%. People with higher education and high economical and social status are most expected to know a foreign language.

The new study by Levada-Center in April 2014^[3] reveals such numbers:

The age and social profiling are the same: knowledge of a foreign language is predominant among the young or middle-aged population with higher education and high social status and who live in big cities.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, French was a common language among upper class Russians. The impetus came from Peter the Great's orientation of Russia towards Europe and accelerated after the French Revolution. After the Russians fought France in the Napoleonic Wars, Russia became less inclined towards French.^[32]

Languages of education

Every year the Russian Ministry of Education and Science publishes statistics on the languages used in schools. In 2014/2015 absolute majority^[33] (13.1 million or 96%) of 13.7 million Russian students used Russian as a medium of education. Around 1.6 million or 12% students studied their (non-Russian) native language as a subject. The most studied languages are Tatar, Chechen and Chuvash with 347, 253, 107 thousand students respectively.

The most studied foreign languages in 2013/2014 were (students in thousands):

See also

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

References

Further reading

• Offord, Derek, Lara Ryazanova-Clarke, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent. French and Russian in Imperial Russia: Language Use among the Russian Elite. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Available at JSTOR.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Languages of Russia.

• 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)
• Population by mother tongue and districts in 50 Governorates of the European Russia in 1897
• "The History of the French Language in Russia." University of Bristol