Translated material
One hundred languages of Russia
Residents of Russia use more than a hundred languages to communicate. But not all of them are well described by the linguists. And some may disappear at all without waiting for their researchers. Is it possible and necessary to maintain language diversity? About this Olga Orlova , the host of the Hamburg account program on public television of Russia, asked Sergei Tatvosova , Dokt. Filol. sciences, professor of Moscow State University named after MV Lomonosov.
Sergey Georgievich Tatevosov was born in 1968 in Moscow. In 1993 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. In 1996, he defended his thesis "Typology of Quantification". Since 1997, he has been working at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the Philology Faculty of Moscow State University. In 2010, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic "Activity in vocabulary and grammar." Since 1990, he participated in 28 scientific expeditions in the North Caucasus, in the Volga region, Siberia and in the Far North, where he studied the Caucasian, Altai, Ural and Iranian languages. The author is more than a hundred scientific articles, the author and editor of several scientific books. Since 2014, he has also been teaching at the Higher School of Economics.
Profile in the intellectual system of thematic research of scientific and technical information of Moscow State University (Truth): http://istina.msu.ru/profile/tatevosov
How do they describe languages?
- Sergey, you have been conducting linguistic expeditions for more than 20 years, describe languages. And all this time you are visiting the remote corners of our country. Are not all languages in Russia still described in Russia?
- There is no such description that a linguist would recognize completely final. Paradoxically, however, there is still a lot of unexplored in the Russian language. I would not be surprised if any linguists wanted to come and work with informants in the Russian language and find out the facts that are still either unknown or not fully realized.
- For example?
“It works up to ten percent longer.” Is it Russian or non -Russian? It seems to have always been non -Russian, but now it is incomprehensible. Seriously, ask, for example, some specialist in semantics that he knows about the sphere of action of quantors in the Russian language. And he, most likely, will answer: this is a complete chaos.
- And what exactly linguists call the description of the language?
- You can describe the language in the linguistic sense at different levels. You can start with a simple one - find out what kind of words there are: nouns, adjectives, verbs. Understand how they change: declension, conjugation; cases, verb forms. And then deeper questions begin. How is syntax arranged? What is a possible and impossible sentence in this language? What and why is it limited? At some point, even more fundamental issues begin. After all, what does linguistics are ultimately doing? She wants to understand where the language ends and the non-language begins. And we must understand where this border takes place in each specific language.
- By what principle do you decide, what language do you need to describe? What is the principle of selection? Is it important for you to have writing? Or the number of people who speak this language?
- Writing is not absolutely important. Written languages, as a rule, are better studied. Usually they have a larger number of carriers. On the other hand, the uninigned language is most likely forgotten by God and deprived of attention. Therefore, it promises interesting finds, a new experience.
- Does the description mean that you learn this language?
- The project to describe the small languages of the peoples of Russia (at one time - the USSR) began in 1967. I was not born yet. It was initiated by my supervisor Alexander Evgenievich Kibrik. He said: "It is not necessary to be able to fly in order to work as an ornithologist." In the same way, it is not necessary to grow gills in order to work as an ichthyologist. It is not necessary to speak the language in order to understand how it is arranged. Of course, we learn the basic dictionary. But the main thing is that we look at grammar.
- And how connected by the number of people who speak the language and its development? How, in principle, linguists compare languages from the point of view of “full/inferior, developed/undeveloped”?
- On this score in linguistics there is a completely distinct opinion: there are no developed and undeveloped languages - there are languages described and witnesses and there are undeveloped and incomprehensible. We do not look at how many native speakers, there is literature or not. If it is, this is a help, you can get acquainted with the texts. But if the language is processed with literature, this does not mean that it is linguistic more interesting.
- Does linguists have the concept of “rich language - poor”?
- No, such a thing does not exist. All languages ultimately describe the same universe in which we are all. In different parts of the universe, there may be different things that are not very repeated from place to place to place. But in an extensive sense, all languages about the same thing. And since they describe one world, they are equally rich or equally poor.
Death and life of languages
- Biologists are very appreciated by biodiversity: the more diverse the system, the more stable it is. Does the linguists have a cult of language diversity?
- Language diversity provides us with a salary, so we love it very much. But of course, it is good and in the metaphysical sense, how good any variety is. I don’t know, by the way, whether the language diversity is needed to survive us as a biological appearance. A species, individual parts of which cannot understand each other, probably arranged less advantageous than the species that speaks the same language. It has already happened that there are many languages. And we love when there are a lot of them. Another question: can this be preserved? Here, linguists are very helpless. If the vital activity of the language organism is disturbed, sooner or later we state the lack of breathing and heartbeat, and nothing can be done about it.
- What languages in Russia are dying now?
- Unfortunately, there are a lot of them. In different parts of our country, the situation is different. But anxious everywhere. The languages of the northern peoples are in serious condition. They are still alive, but the trend is disappointing. Very alarming for many Turkic languages of Siberia. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, and, unfortunately, if the process of dying has gone far, it is irreversible. And if he did not go far, no one pays attention. I was in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug of the Arkhangelsk Region, was engaged in the Nenets language. You can be sure that in the area where I was, the tongue will not become in 20-30 years.
There is such a resource "Ethnologist". It has existed since the 1990s, and now, probably, this is the most complete collection of data about the situation with the languages of the world. According to the experts of the Ethnologist, more than half of Russia's languages are in danger (see certificate). And at the same time, all the languages that I saw were in the worst state, which the “ethnologist” thinks. They evaluate the degree of threat on a ten -point scale. I would give Nenetsky two points more than an “ethnologist”.
The main resource accumulating data on the languages of the world is “ethnologist” ( www.ethologue.com ). He evaluates the threats to the tongue on the ten -point scale of Egids (Ethnologue Expanded Graded International Disruption Scale). The minimum rating of “0” is assigned to the languages of international communication, such as English, the maximum “10” - dead languages. Assessment from 6B to 9 means that the language is in a more or less serious danger.
According to the "ethnologist", in Russia there are 105 living languages. Of these, 58, or 55%are in dangers.
Grade What does it mean The number of languages 6b The number of carriers is reduced 20 7 Language ceases to be transmitted to children 7 8a-b There are two generations that are not native speakers 28 9 There are no active carriers, fragmentary and residual knowledge 3
- Let's try to compare the linguist with the doctor ... Here you come on an expedition and should make a diagnosis of language. On what signs do you understand that the patient is more likely alive than dead, or vice versa?
- There is one critical parameter: do children learn this language as the first? Do they begin to speak on it, do they pronounce their first words on it? If so, everything is fine. If there are no such children, this means that in a few generations there will be no language at all.
- And what does it depend on?
- It's hard to say. The languages of the northern peoples received a severe blow to collectivization. When the Soviet government decided that they needed to live on collective farms, this meant that it was necessary to stop the traditional nomadic lifestyle, settle in villages, have reindeer herders, and exist in a new way. For children, boarding schools began to open, where they were taught Russian. They went there at a very early age. Accordingly, the native language was unlikely. Continuity that is critical to preserve the language,
Disrupted.
- On the other hand, there is a North Caucasus, there is a huge variety of languages.
- Undoubtedly. There, the language situation is the most healthy. Dagestan is an amazing territory. Imagine that all Indo-European languages focused on the territory the size of the Moscow region, and we would have, for example, several villages that speak English, several villages that speak Russian, some seducts where the Baltic languages live, a town with adjacent villages, where they speak Hindi. About such Dagestan.
The number of languages that they speak:
More than 1 million inhabitants of Russia 5 from 10 thousand to 1 million inhabitants of Russia 36 less than 10 thousand inhabitants of Russia more than 70 According to the All -Russian Census of the Population of 2002; The knowledge of foreign languages (English, German, etc.) and the languages of Diaspin, including the former republics of the USSR, are not taken into account.
Megeb, 1990: linguist expedition to Dagestan
- Remember your first expedition?
- Walked 1990. I was then a third -year student. We arrived in the Dagestan village of Megeb. Dargin village surrounded by Avar and Lak villages. The next morning, a local girl appeared and said: “The Komsomol organization of the village invites Komsomol members of Moscow State University in the evening to the club to talk about the activities of the Komsomol at the present stage.” We came to a luxurious rural club: oak panels, chandeliers and huge portraits of Lenin and Stalin along the edges of the stage. For several years, perestroika raged, the first congress of people's deputies of the USSR has passed and ended. I have not been in the Komsomol organization for a year. Everything is about to collapse, and then Lenin, Stalin and Komsomol. It was incredibly touching.
- And how did the Dargins communicate with the neighbors? Are there Laktsa around?
- More Avars.
- Avars and Dargins - they do not understand each other at all?
- Not in the slightest way. These languages are far as Hindi and English.
- How did they communicate with each other?
-Mainly in Russian. But many know Avar. The language situation in Dagestan is complicated. Officially there, as far as I remember, 26 languages are recognized. But there, as it is difficult to determine where the tongue ends and the dialect begins. And then various political considerations come into effect. The Dargin language, for example, is considered one, although in fact, it may be more correct to analyze it as a conglomerate of individual languages, closely related, but already dispersed enough to recognize them in separate languages. The differences between the fact that in Dargin is called dialects is no less than between Russian and Ukrainian, and certainly more than between Russian and Belarusian. But if we recognize the status of individual languages for dialects, the number of Dargins will decrease significantly. And this will entail great political risks.
-Somewhere else this happened?
- Something similar was with the Tatar language. In my opinion, at some point they were going to recognize the language of baptized Tatars in a separate language. And this gave rise to exactly the same friction. Immediately sparkled, there were immediately people who became anxious from this.
- Linguists can act as experts in such cases? When they want to make a political decision, they turn to you?
- Not that I heard about such cases recently. It seems that in Soviet times the situation was different, but there was also a state policy: everyone who then surrendered social science, remember that the tickets were the question of “language policy and language construction”. When you have construction, you need builders, masons, slingers. We need those who bring the material. So the opinion of experts then, it seems, still somehow sounded and took into account when making decisions.
Linguistics and politics
- Are you a supporter of the state language in a multinational state?
- I do not see anything dangerous in him. What is the state language? This is the language in which the state communicates with its citizens. It should be a language that citizens at least understand. This is the language in which the state writes its documents. It is difficult to imagine that the Office of the internal affairs of Chukotka, for example, sent a report on the prevention of offenses among minors in the Chukchi language to the head department. The state language is a language in which different parts of the state communicate with each other. There is nothing wrong with the fact that he is there, it seems to me, until someone has the feeling “this is not my language-it means that this is not my state.” The state should look closely so that such sensations do not appear. When you are Avar, and you show the series in Russian on your TV, you most likely do not even notice this. But when the unpleasant words spoken in Russian come to your hearing, maybe you begin to realize that they are in Russian. The Russian language should not carry dangerous, painful, insulting meanings.
- This feeling develops: every time this or that country (we saw this on the example of Ukraine) changes political guidelines, the authorities immediately grab the language as the main tool for struggle. The tongue becomes weapons, they begin to wave them like a club ...
- First, they wave their tongue like a flag, it seems to me. At first, the language is what unites us and makes us ourselves. This is later he separates us from others.
- When a surge of patriotism occurs in the state, a huge number of hysterical official documents come out about the status of the native language, forums, conferences are collected, and recall the lessons of native speech in schools ...
- By the way, not always. A few years ago I was in Altai and was engaged there one of the dialects of Altai. It is called a tube, or Tubalars. The tongue is in terrible condition, just in monstrous. That is, there are practically no carriers. The elderly ladies, who were hard to find. According to sociological studies, the carriers should have been approximately, as far as I remember, 1,500 people. But upon closer examination, they turned out to be much less. In general, a rather large village of Kebzen. And there is a lot of what you now designated as hysterical patriotism. There are many people who remember that Genghis Khan conquered Russia, overcome and dominated it. Feeling themselves with the direct descendants of Genghis Khan, they have the need to immediately do the same.
But there is no language. In the language they are Russian. They speak Russian. And fairy tales about Genghis Khan are told in Russian, because the language died.
“Are you a supporter of the authorities to keep enduring languages?”
- Of course, I, like everyone else, for. It is difficult only to understand what can really be done at the moment when the language is already coming to naught. Again, in Altai, when we tried to find people who speak the language, we went to different places. And there, you know, always the same thing: “We have few people here, but go to a neighboring village - everyone is free there, all the carriers there.” We drove into such a village. And there they can’t speak any language, neither in their own nor in Russian, they cannot even go there. The whole village at 9 o’clock in the morning, including children, lies drunk. Beautiful places, Taurus Lake nearby, mountains, taiga. Everything that is needed for happiness is. But colossal social depression, and against its background, this very nationalist ecstasy.
- And what should the government do in order to help them?
- The most beautiful government will not help here. The language is already in such a state that even if you introduce it as an obligatory subject at school, the children will teach it as a foreign. If you say: "Citizens, write a mountain of beautiful books, poems - we will publish everything!" - It turns out that there is no one to write. If you open the national radio and television, there will be no one to work as a announcer.
P.S
- Do you remember the most strange custom that you had to face when you went on expeditions when describing languages?
- Last year I took part in the Shaman rite. I now know well what perfumes eat, whose favor must be won. This is tea brewing, sweets, milk and vodka.
- The expedition of your dreams?
- I would like to return to Dagestan. There are languages that are not described almost at all. Maybe someday it will be possible.
-Did you have to deal with such a language where there are no basic concepts from our system of values-love, good, evil, death?
- I think not. At least I don't know. Here we return to what we started: languages speak about the same world. And it seems, despite all the differences, they say almost the same thing about the world.