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For Indigenous Families in Russia, Keeping Language Alive Is an Impossible Task - The Moscow Times
Friday marks the 25th annual International Mother Language Day, a holiday established by UNESCO to “underscore the role of languages in promoting inclusion.” Russia has 155 living and 15 extinct languages native to the country as classified by the Linguistics Institute of the Russian Academy of Science. While Russian is named as the sole “state-founding” language in the country’s Constitution, more than 30 languages of minoritized Indigenous communities are also recognized as official in Russia’s 21 ethnic republics. In Dagestan, a North Caucasus republic known for its high linguistic diversity, this applies to 13 of more than 50 languages Indigenous to the region. On paper, this special legal status allows these Indigenous languages to be used in lawmaking, court proceedings and as the language of school instruction. But in reality, the number of speakers of most languages of Russia’s republics is on the decline, as they are primarily spoken inside the home.
