Languages of Russia

Languages of Russia
Official	Russian official throughout nation; twenty-seven others co-official in various regions
Main	Russian
Foreign	15% have foreign language knowledge English (78% out of all foreign language speakers, i.e. 11.7% of the population) German (16%) French (4%) Polish (2%)
Signed	Russian Sign Language
Keyboard layout	Russian

Of all the languages of Russia, Russian is the only official language. 27 different languages are considered official languages in various regions of Russia, along with Russian. There are over 100 minority languages spoken in Russia today.

History

Russian was the sole official language of the Russian Empire which existed until 1917. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. The state helped develop alphabets and grammar for various languages across the country that had previously been lacking a written form. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian.

Russian lost its status in many of the new republics that arose following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Russia, however, the dominating status of the Russian language continued. Today, 97% of the public school students of Russia receive their education only or mostly in Russian, even though Russia is made up of approximately 80% ethnic Russians.

Official languages

Although Russian is the only federally official language of the Russian Federation, there are several other officially recognized languages within Russia's various constituencies – Constitution of Russia only allows the republics to establish official languages other than Russian. This is a list of languages that are official only in certain parts of Russia (the language family in which the language belongs is given in parentheses).

1. Abaza (Northwest Caucasian; in the Karachay–Cherkess Republic)
2. Adyghe (Northwest Caucasian; in the Republic of Adygea)
3. Altay (Turkic; in the Altai Republic)
4. Lezgi (Northeast Caucasian); and Azerbaijani (Turkic in the Republic of Dagestan)
5. Avar (Northeast Caucasian); and Azerbaijani (Turkic in the Republic of Dagestan)
6. Bashkir (Turkic; in the Republic of Bashkortostan)
7. Buryat (Mongolic; in Agin-Buryat Okrug and the Buryat Republic)
8. Chechen (Northeast Caucasian; in the Chechen Republic)
9. Chuvash (Turkic; in the Chuvash Republic)
10. Erzya (Uralic; in the Republic of Mordovia)
11. Ingush (Northeast Caucasian; in the Republic of Ingushetia)
12. Kabardian (Northwest Caucasian; in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic and Karachay–Cherkess Republic)
13. Kalmyk (Mongolic; in the Republic of Kalmykia)
14. Karachay-Balkar (Turkic; in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic and Karachay–Cherkess Republic)
15. Khakas (Turkic; in the Republic of Khakassia)
16. Komi-Zyrian (Uralic; in the Komi Republic)
17. Mansi (Uralic; in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug)
18. Mari (Uralic; in the Mari El Republic)
19. Moksha (Uralic; in the Republic of Mordovia)
20. Nogai (Turkic; in the Karachay–Cherkess Republic)
21. Ossetic (Iranian; in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania)
22. Tatar (Turkic; in the Republic of Tatarstan)
23. Tuvаn (Turkic; in the Tuva Republic)
24. Udmurt (Uralic; in the Udmurt Republic)
25. Yakut (Turkic; in the Sakha Republic)

Unofficial languages

There are numerous migrant workers from former USSR republics and other countries living in Russia.

Armenian	Georgian	Tajik
Azerbaijani	Kazakh	Turkish
Belarusian	Korean	Turkmen
Mandarin Chinese	Kyrgyz	Ukrainian
Czech	Latvian	Uzbek
Estonian	Lithuanian	Yiddish
Finnish	Persian
German	Polish

Endangered languages in Russia

There are many endangered languages in Russia. Some are considered to be near extinction and put on the list of endangered languages in Russia, and some may have gone extinct since data was last reported. On the other hand, some languages may survive even with few speakers.

Some languages have doubtful data, like Serbian whose information in the Ethnologue is based on the 1959 census.

Languages near extinction

Most numbers are according to Michael Krauss, 1995. Given the time that has passed, languages with extremely few speakers might be extinct today. As of 1997, Kerek and Yugh have now become extinct.

• Ainu (15)
• Enets (70)
• Tofalar (25 – 30)
• Mednyy (10) (an Aleut-Russian creole language)
• Orok (30 – 82)
• Sami, Akkala (extinct since 2003)
• Sami, Ter (2)
• Udege (100)
• Vod (25)
• Yukaghir, Northern (30 – 150)
• Yukaghir, Southern (10 – 50)

Other endangered languages

• Chukchi
• Chulym
• Erzya
• Ingrian
• Ket
• Ludian
• Moksha
• Seto
• Udmurt
• Veps
• Votic

Languages

See list of languages of Russia.

See also

• Languages of the Caucasus
• Russification
• Russian Academy of Sciences, the language regulator in Russia
• Japanese language education in Russia

External references

• Languages of European Russia (Ethnologue)
• Languages of Asian Russia (Ethnologue)
• Minority languages of Russia on the Net project, which aims at presenting the languages of Russia to the Web and at facilitating their usage on the Web (most information is in Russian; it provides scientific references on each individual language as well as links to online language descriptions, educational and scientific institutions related to the language, resources on computer-processing of the language and some sites written in this language)
• Population by mother tongue and districts in 50 Governorates of the European Russia in 1897