Population census in Russia reveals five extinct languages – Kommersant
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The latest All-Russian Population Census (RPC) showed that there are 155 living languages in Russia. At the same time, census respondents, when participating in the survey, indicated knowledge of six languages, which linguists consider to have disappeared and fallen asleep. According to experts at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, these six languages should still be considered as such, since the respondents are not their active speakers.
The last census was carried out in autumn 2021. When analyzing it, employees of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences compiled an analytical note “List of languages of Russia in the results of the All-Russian Population Census” (dated December 28, 2023). Journalists got acquainted with the contents of the note RBC.
The analytical note states that population census respondents, when answering the question of what languages they speak, indicated Aleut, Kerek, Ainu, Sireniki and Yugk, as well as the Oroch language. Linguists consider the first five languages to have disappeared, the last one to have fallen asleep.
An extinct language is a language that no one speaks anymore. A language is said to have fallen asleep if it has native speakers who partially remember the language (at least some words).
The authors of the analytical note note that no one is fully fluent in the listed languages. In their opinion, census respondents report these languages as their mother tongue or language of proficiency because it is the language of their nationality.
Thus, 43 people indicated that they speak the Oroch language (belongs to the southern group of Tungus-Manchu languages). In 2008, the Association of Indigenous Minorities of the Khabarovsk Territory announced the death of the last active speaker of this language. The authors of the note believe that the respondents may be people who passively understand the language.
According to the census, 170 people speak the Ainu language, four people speak Kerek, two speak Sireniki, and seven speak Yug. According to RAS specialists, the Ainu language disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, and Kerek (previously widespread in Chukotka) disappeared between 1991 and 2005.
According to the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the last century, 15 languages have become extinct or fallen asleep in Russia. The last of them was Aleutian – its last active speaker died in 2021. According to the director of the institute, Andrei Kibrik, about 10% of languages are on the verge of extinction, more than 60% are approaching this border, only 7% of languages can be considered prosperous.
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