MINELRES: RFE/RL: Plight of Nani language in Russia
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Fri Aug 2 17:09:49 2002
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RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
Vol. 2, No. 25, 31 July 2002
A Weekly Review of News and Analysis of Russian Domestic Politics
REGIONAL VOICES
DEATH OF A LANGUAGE. "They study the Nani language at lesson once a
week. At that level, they already forget what they have learned from
one lesson to the next. English they know more of. If they spoke
[Nani] in everyday life, at home, then it would somehow survive. [But]
they do not speak it at home, their parents themselves do not speak
it, everywhere Russian is spoken. We live among Russians. If one goes
to study a language somewhere, then it is the Russian language or for
a foreign language, English. I occasionally speak [in Nani] with my
own children, they understand, but they answer me in Russian. And my
grandchildren, naturally, will not know this language. This is how a
language silently dies out."
Zhanna Oktanko, former middle-school teacher in village of
Sikachaalyan in Khabarovsk Krai, interviewed on 20 July 2002 broadcast
of RFE/RL's Russian Service program, "Korrespondentskii chas" (Nani is
a member of the Tungus language group; at the time of the 1979 Soviet
census it had only 6,900 speakers.)
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