http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog Emphasis on the Indo-European, Finno-Ugrian/Uralic languages and Turkic languages with frequent asides into language rights and language protection. Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:02:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1781 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1752 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1729 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1688 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1655 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1665 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=234 an interview with Ruslan Aisin, the man behind some prominent campaigns for the Tatar language, such as making Tatar the second official language of Russia (see a video report at Youtube). I have translated the interview hastily into English. Aisin’s activism is inspiring, but I do not think it can serve as a model for Russia’s other minorities. Only in Kazan’ do you have young Tatars settling and forming this urban minority class. It’s a fairly decent city to live in. In Mari El, young people often go migrate from the villages straight to Moscow or St. Petersburg. The Mari that settle in Yoshkar-Ola don’t seem of sufficient numbers to implement more use of Mari in the city. The more I observe minorities in Russia, the more everything seems to be about demographics, with high birthrates a reason for optimism, but the collapsed economies of provincial Russia are pushing everyone to emigrate with disastrous consequences for language preservation.]]> http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1622 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1612 http://www.christopherculver.com/linguistweblog/?p=1595