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Russian in Central Asia | ||
Tags: Language Importance | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 20 13 March 2014 at 11:38am | IP Logged | ||
No, just in Kazakhstan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5406 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 18 of 20 13 March 2014 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I remember reading Sylvain Tesson's account of his journey on horseback throughout Central Asia at the end of the 1990's. At one point he commented (based on what people told him) that the young generation generally has very little Russian. I don't remember which country was concerned by this comment.
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| Mikael84 Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Peru Joined 5298 days ago 76 posts - 116 votes Speaks: French*, Finnish*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Russian | Message 19 of 20 14 March 2014 at 10:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Since starting this thread I have traveled in Azerbaijan. Not exactly Central Asia, but close...
What I found there: - the Russian language seems closely related to wealth/status. In Baku, I found Russian to be widely spoken in the wealthier neighborhoods and all wealthy Azeris I met reported traveling regularly to Russia. To my astonishment, I even saw several ethnic Azeris speaking Russian to their kids. Outside of that microcosm, it is almost guaranteed that the person does not even understand Russian (tried it in several kebab shops...) - an exception to that is the age factor. Some older people, even in poor neighborhoods and in the countryside, speak Russian. - the young generation seems divided, I guess it boils down to personal choice. On the train ride from Baku to Tbilisi I met two young Azeri entrepreneurs, about 25-30y old. One spoke Russian - not very well, but OK - the other one could only say "molodets" and said he planned to start learning Russian soon. - train staff on international routes such as Baku-Tbilisi use Russian by default. Forget about English, most don't understand it at all... Overall I get the impression that the situation is very different from one country to another (northern Kazakhstan vs Turkmenistan!) but that Russian is still widely spoken in cosmopolitan/touristic contexts. Probably not that different from Soviet times... Edited by Mikael84 on 14 March 2014 at 10:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 20 of 20 31 July 2014 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a roommate who comes from Kyrgyzstan and she is fluent in Russian. When she talks to her friends over the phone, she always uses a mixture of Kyrgyz and Russian. When I asked her about why she mixed the languages, she said it was quite natural in Kyrgyzstan to do so and it would seem strange to her to use only one language.
In fact, she said she needed an all-Kyrgyz environment to become fluent in Kyrgyz, which means that she prefers Russian over Kyrgyz. Also, when her boyfriend came to visit they would always speak in Russian. I noticed though that their pronunciation and intonation diverged somewhat from the Moscow Russian that I'm used to. They seem to reduce the vowels more and they have a more monotonous intonation while talking very rapidly, so I had some problems understanding their Russian. From what I gather, Kyrgyzstan seems to be a bilingual country. Probably, this is more true in the capital (my roommate comes from Bishkek) than in the countryside, but I suppose Russian is still a very useful language in that part of the world. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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