Tag: minority languages

This extract from a journal article is a statement by a Buryatic journalist, one of the remaining guardians of this old language. Buryat is spoken today by 368.807 self-reported speakers, mainly in the Republic of Buryatia and parts of Armenia and Turkey. The main problem that this language is struggling with is that Russian, the official language of the country increasingly takes up space in all different spheres in the Buryat republic. The shift in language also occurs in the media landscape. Television and radio stations are struggling to attract young journalists and the news paper ‘prose’ as Graber (2012) calls it reaches beyond the ability of the urban youth. As these stations see their staff ageing so is their audience that decreases in numbers.

Generally the Russian Federation states in its constitution in that it: “promotes the development of the national languages, bilingualism and multilingualism on the whole territory of the Russian Federation”. Therefore, minority languages are supported and protected in key functional areas like education and media. However, history has shown that a, maybe unintended, shift towards a more dominant use of Russian language in this region has occurred. Starting in the beginning of the 20^th century the Buryatian region was part of the Soviet Union. Media coverage was ought to be implemented through dual media production. This meant that for example newspaper articles were translated as precisely as possible, even trying to reach the same text length. Both languages were dealt with equally with no hierarchical preference. This suggests that Buryats and Russians belong to the same public, moreover, a Soviet public that hold identical needs as an audience.

In the 1960s however, processes of rapid industrialisation caused a shift, disturbing the balance of a parallel public. Language loss because of a more dominant becoming Russian language resulted in a lack of competent speakers to interview and an aging language community. Buryat therefore, became more of a subordinated language that was represented differently in the media. Due to urbanisation and an increasing younger generation, which ceased to speak their native language, Russian became the language of the hard news for politics and the economy. As the public started to access more and more Russian sources, Buryat media coverage specialised in soft news and came to represent a more culturally symbolic role.

On the one hand in the 1980s and 90s nationalistic movements supported a revitalization of the Buryat language as one form of a bottom-up approach. People should become more aware of their cultural heritage and common linguistic background to promote nation building. On the other hand, almost all journalists that Graber talked to think that the Russian state is responsible for funding Buryat language presence in the media – a top-down approach. However, such a support is not very likely as Buryat is mainly spoken in the villages of the region. Such an audience holds little profits to gain from advertisements that create the main revenue of media.

For me personally it was very interesting to learn about the circumstances of such a language in a federation state system where many languages are represented. As there are so many languages spoken in this large territory I do not think that a top-down approach is realisable. Multilingualism is promoted, however a shift towards the majority language in times of globalisation cannot be halted. Therefore, I suggest that local communities must implement policies for the preservation of their own language.