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Russian in ex USSR republics and allies. | ||
Tags: Language Map/Atlas | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 6992 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 25 31 July 2011 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
As I'm planning a trip to Uzbekistan and there is no handy Uzbek course, I started Pimsleur Russian, with Assimil to follow , hopefully.. After all, Russian seems an appropriate lingua franca for Asian republics formerly part of USSR, and maybe for some slavic countries. But maybe the Soviet Union left bad memories and Russian is not taught as the first foreign language in those countries. Maybe English is now the first foreign language. Do you know the status of Russian fluency in xxxxx-stan ex USSR republics ? ANd what about The Baltic republics ? Poland ? the Czeck republic ? Former Yugoslavia ? Thank you. Z 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Butterworth Diglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 4878 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Czech*, EnglishC1 Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 25 31 July 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Czechs are not usually happy to hear Russian. Young generation - no fluency and interest at all, those born
before 1970 might understand :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dragomanno Triglot Groupie Zimbabwe Joined 4995 days ago 80 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Lithuanian, Albanian, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 25 01 August 2011 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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In all the Baltic countries you'd better not use it - unless you meet ethnic Russians, which is very likely in Latvia and, to a lesser extent, in Estonia.
Russian is still widely understood in the post-Soviet area, but it's usage recalls very bad memories almost everywhere... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5456 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 4 of 25 01 August 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||
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In Georgia Russian is used widely, seemingly with no negative connotations, despite the
fact that Georgia probably has the worst relations with Russia from all of the ex-Soviet republics. As soon as people realize you are a foreigner they will switch to Russian, and Georgians mix lots of Russian words into their everyday speech. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5043 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 5 of 25 01 August 2011 at 2:40am | IP Logged | ||
Have you actually been to any Baltic state? In tourist areas they will speak to you in any language as long as you have money. It's not the 70s anymore, when my grandmother would take my elementary school-age mother to vacation in Latvia, and the landlady there would not allow her daughter to play with my mother because "Mom says I shouldn't play with Russians." Edited by espejismo on 01 August 2011 at 3:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7148 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 25 01 August 2011 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian still does evoke bad memories there in varying degrees but as time passes, the memories fade a bit. I would say that the negative association is most noticeable on average in Poland and the Baltic States but you still shouldn't expect to get punched in the face or given the evil eye in any of those places if you were speaking Russian. What espejismo describes as his mother's experience would indeed be quite rare nowadays.
The most important thing to remember is that unless you're in a very touristy part of anywhere in Eastern Europe or see signs in Russian (i.e. they're trying to attract Russian-speaking tourists), you shouldn't expect the local people to know much Russian anyway. However there is a latent benefit in knowing Russian when travelling in Slavonic parts of Eastern Europe because of the sometimes noticeable similarities between Slavonic languages. Naturally this could apply when knowing any Slavonic language and the benefit is not restricted to being fluent in Russian only. I've noted in an earlier post that if you really want it and look hard enough, you can find local people now in those former Russian satellites who have learned Russian and would be happy to talk to you in Russian. A few of my friends who grew up after the fall of Communism can speak Russian but learned it voluntarily rather than as a compulsory subject as their parents or grandparents. In this case learning the language as a matter of choice rather than of compulsion tends to make a big difference in the attitude toward it. See also the following threads: The usefulness of Russian... Popularity of German in East Europe? (despite the title, the discussion also touches on Russian's place in Russia's former satellites) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| arturs Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 5263 days ago 278 posts - 408 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English | Message 7 of 25 01 August 2011 at 7:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Everyone who's wondering about the Baltic situation - there is practically no such thing as negative associations with Russian, because younger people try to stay more away of these dirty political games. The main factor is that Russians should show that they know and speak good Latvian - then everybody is OK with that person, even to a degree that sometimes Latvians want to speak Russian in order to practice it, but Russians prefer Latvian so that they can practice it.
If you are a tourist, I would recommend using English, not because everyone's afraid of Russian language, but just because people will think that you haven't taken some lessons that Latvia (Lithuania, Estonia) is not a part of Russia anymore but a more pro-Western European Union country. If you're a tourist from ex-Soviet countries then everybody is OK to use Russian (even more nationalistic people), but if you're a tourist from Europe or other country, then speaking Russian is viewed, as we say, "a spit in the face" for our efforts to be a better EU country by using English more and more and learning other EU official languages like German (very popular in Latvia now) and French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rutabaga Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Romania Joined 4919 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, Slovenian*, French, German, Russian Studies: Portuguese, Uzbek | Message 8 of 25 01 August 2011 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Having just arrived in Uzbekistan, it appears that Russian is alive and well here. At least, I have seen it written all over and that is what all the shop keepers have spoken to me.
As for the former Yugoslavia - Russians was never widely spoken to start with there. So it wouldn't help you much. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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