Sociolinguistic View of Tuva Language - Essay Example

Insert name Insert supervisor name Insert course name Insert date A Sociolinguistic view of Tuva language Introduction Tuvan is a language spoken by the people of the Republic of Tuva situated in south-central Siberia in Russia. It is also variously known as Tuvin, Tyvan or Tuvinian. The language forms part of the wider Turkic languages that constitute at least thirty five languages spoken from Western China, Siberia, the Mediterranean and through to Eastern Europe (Anderson and Harrison 15)The language has borrowed heavily from Mongolian language and from the Russian language in recent times. In addition to the native speakers in Tuvan, there exist small groups of people that speak Tuvan in Mongolia and in the Republic of Chin. It is classified linguistically as Siberian or Northeastern Turkic language that is closely associated some Siberian Turkic languages. As spoken in Tuva, Tuvan can be divided into four major distinct dialects groups: Central, Western, Northeastern and Southeastern (Grenoble 47) the central includes the Ovyur and Bii-Khem sub-dialects and forms the backbone of the literary dialects. The western dialect is found around the upper part of the Khemchik River while the Northeastern is mainly spoken near the upper course of the Bii-Khem River and is also known as the Todzhi dialect, it comprises a fairly large vocabulary associated with reindeer breeding and hunting which is not common in the other dialects. The southeastern dialect is more heavily influenced by the Mongolian dialect. The Dukha, Tsengel and Dzungar are other dialects but they are uncommon and literature on them is scanty. (Anderson and Harrison 34)The aim of this essay is to discuss some aspects of the Tuvan language from a sociolinguistic point of view with relation to its contact with Russian language as the mother language in this region. Statistic data of language distribution The republic of Tuva (Tyva Republic) is a federal subject of Russia and it is situated in southern Siberia with Kyzyl as its capital. The total population of Tuva according to the 2010 census is about 308 000 with Tuva speaking people making up 77 % of this figure. Other groups such Russians account for 20.1%, Khakas 0.4% while other smaller groups make up less than 0.5% of the population. The population trend over the years is summarised in the table below. Source: Forsyth, James. A History of the Peoples of Siberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Print The data above shows that the population of Tuvans has more than doubled from 1959 up to 2002 while the Russian population appears to be going down. The official languages of the republic are Tuvan and Russian. Russians are mostly to be found in the capital city with very few being found in the rural areas. There exists however a small group of Russian inhabitants, the so-called old believers spread out remote areas. Old believer villages were abundant prior to soviet rule but atheist ideology pushed them further into the interior (Anderson and Harrison 62) Tuvans are culturally similar to the Mongolians to the south and to the Buryats due east where they share the Buddhist religion. They share ethnic and linguistic aspects with the Altai to the west and the Khakas to the north. Brief history of Tuvan The earliest proof of the written linguistic or language of people indigenous to the Altai-Sayan region is in the form of stone inscriptions dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries. These give proof that Tuvan language evolved as a result of interaction between indigenous people inhabiting the Yeisei valley and the incoming Turkic communities who settled there. By the thirteenth century Mongolian tribes had settled here and Mongolian became the mode of written communication for the religious elite until the Russian revolution (Grenoble 47) the first alphabet for Tuva was developed at the start of the 1930’s based on Latin characters and during the year of 1941 a new alphabet or letters based on Cyrillic emerged. Thus the Tuvan literary language was born. In 1932 the first radio broadcast was done with 75 % of broadcasts done in Tuvan, at the same time written language began to be used in local government administration. It was later introduced into secondary schools in the 1940s and in 1945 a language press was formed to publish books and periodicals. As from 1944 Tuva was officially incorporated into the USSR and bilingualism began spread at a high rate. (Grenoble 58) Sociolinguistic study Data collected from census between 1989 to 1994 shows that in Turkic native areas the percentage of people considering their indigenous republic language to be their native language is diminishing with time. On the other hand the percentage of Tuvans who regard Tuva as their native language remains constant. This implies that the situation in Tyva is of stable bilingualism as opposed to wholesale assimilation of the language into Russian. (Kreindler 109). In this essay, discussion on the sociolinguistic aspect will mainly centre on the broad headlines of language proficiency and language shift, domains of language use, language and cultural identity and to some extent link the discussion to key demographic factors such as education level, age and income. Language Proficiency and Language Shift. According to a research survey by Chevalier few Russians were found to possess more than minimum level of proficiency in Tuvan. Many Russians do not know Tuvan at all or that they could comprehend a little Tuvan but could not speak it. 6% of Russians in the Russian Federation are proficient in a minority language with only 2.5 % being proficient in Turkic languages. 21% of Tuvan people are not fully proficient in Russian. In the capital city only 17% of Tuvans are not fully proficient in Russian while 37% of Tuvans in the born in rural areas are not proficient. This shows that Tuvans educated in rural areas have lower proficiency levels in Russian compared to Tuvan.29% of Tuvan born in the urban area rate their Tuvan as being less than full fluency while 15% who took part in the survey rated their skills as being less than fluent. This shows that Tuvans of the urban area more likely to lose complete proficiency in their native language or even never acquire it at all. This shows that there is a correlation between birthplace and language proficiency (103). The general perception among Tuvans is that urban youth are less proficient in Tuvan than their parents. Tuvans born and brought up in urban areas perceive themselves as lacking skills in Tuvan language. This has been attributed to changing policies in schools and predominance of Russian in the media (120). Decline in proficiency of Tuvan has been attributed to three main causes. These are; (1) The education system, (2) the media and (3) importance of proficiency of Russian for socioeconomic growth. The reasons given under the factor of education talk of pre-school education where the majority of daycare workers know only the Russian language i.e. they are monolingual. Others attribute it to predominance of Russian in secondary school while others cite the educational policies undertaken from 2004 which reduced the number of hours of instruction in the Tuvan language. It has also been announced that college-age youth prefer to pursue their education outside Tuva where Russian literary skills are required. On the media front it has been realised that there is a drop in media availability in print and television when compared to the early nineties. (Chevalier 125) Uses of the Language The idea of domains or functional spheres of use was introduced by Fishman as a measure of the vitality of a language in situations of contact. According to this model there are several stages of language shift. In stages 1-5 the minority language declines in usage in the public domain such as in government, media, and education and in work environments. In stages 6-8 the language is mainly used in home situations and eventually it is not passed to succeeding generations within the societies. Tuva is not an endangered language species yet but there is evidence of pressure on the literary language. (Fishman 87) Tuvan rarely use Tuva language in writing notes with only 3% indicating that they write notes in Tuvan 57% use of a mixture of Tuvan and Russian while 38% use Russian when taking notes. Secondly, 17% of Tuvans have difficulties in responding to questions raised in the survey questionnaire in Tuvan (Grenoble 47) many had to read questions in Russian before answering in Tuvan. These findings give at least a hint that although people of Tuvan benefit from a high rating in its spoken form, the written form are slowly losing ground. It had been predicted that the role of Tuvan literacy language would shrink as a consequence of the high esteem of Russian as the mode of communication in higher education and in Russia as a whole. This prediction has been generally realised since many Tuvans feel that Tuvan is less widely since used since the acquisition of limited sovereignty by the Republic of Tuva. Once again current policies in mass media and education have been singled out as the factors that have brought about the decay Language and Cultural Identity. According to Chevalier, a majority Tuvans (50%) when asked where they come from indicate that they would respond that they come from Tuva which indicates in the continued use and vitality of Tuvan literary language (Chevalier 158) and also potrays a high level of ethnolinguistic identification. 42% of Tuvans consider themselves as coming from Russia, 5% from Siberia and 3% from Kyzyl the capital city. The large percentage of Tuvans who would say that they come from Russia cannot be ignored (183).It implies that although people of Tuva are very proud of their culture and heritage they are conscious of being a part of Russia on the larger scale geopolitically. In regards to Chevalier 87% of Tuvans feel that it is easier to secure employment with proficiency in Russian which is not a surprising finding since Russian language is the lingua franca in the public domain (Fishman, Joshua 1991) Many Tuvans (91%) feel that it is useful for their children to learn Russian since it is the lingua franca of higher learning according to some while the reason given by others still is that Russian is required at places of work (193). Another finding of research conducted by Chevalier is that many 76% of Tuvans would like their children to be multilingual in three languages namely: Tuvan, Russian and English. Tuvans express high standards of ethno linguistic identification as ethnic Tuvans in overall but many still view Russian as a vital skill. Russian has been acknowledged as a prestige language in official spheres in Tuva (Grenoble 47) the importance of English in the globalizing world is recognised by Tuvans and this is evidenced by the desire of many Tuvans of having their children learn English language (198). Conclusion From the foregoing it is clear that Tuvans still value their native language and research shows that it is not an endangered language species as yet since bilingualism is more active than assimilation. There is evidence though that written Tuvan is slowly set to decline but how soon this will happen cannot be conclusively determined. Russian language has emerged as a language of prestige and is viewed as a necessity at least for the purposes of socioeconomic advancement through the pursuit of education and job opportunities (Kreindler, I. 1982), Tuvans have also realised that globalisation is here to stay and so the preference of having their children be multilingual. It is evident that what happens in the future will continue to be the basis of future research. Works cited list Anderson, Gregory D. S., and Harrison, David K. Tyvan, Languages of the world. Materials; 257. Munchen: LINCOM Europa. 1999. Print. Chevalier, J.Bilingualism and language shift in the Russian Federation.Oxford:Blackwell.2009.Print. Fishman, Joshua A. Reversing Language Shift. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. 1991. Print. Forsyth, James. A History of the Peoples of Siberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Print. Gorenburg, Dmitry P. Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation. Cambridge, UK: New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Print. Grenoble, Lenore A. Language Policy in the Soviet Union. Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2003. Print. Kreindler, I. 1982. “The Changing Status of Russian in the Soviet Union.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 33:7-39.Print. Read More

The total population of Tuva according to the 2010 census is about 308 000 with Tuva speaking people making up 77 % of this figure. Other groups such Russians account for 20.1%, Khakas 0.4% while other smaller groups make up less than 0.5% of the population. The population trend over the years is summarised in the table below. Source: Forsyth, James. A History of the Peoples of Siberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. Print The data above shows that the population of Tuvans has more than doubled from 1959 up to 2002 while the Russian population appears to be going down.

The official languages of the republic are Tuvan and Russian. Russians are mostly to be found in the capital city with very few being found in the rural areas. There exists however a small group of Russian inhabitants, the so-called old believers spread out remote areas. Old believer villages were abundant prior to soviet rule but atheist ideology pushed them further into the interior (Anderson and Harrison 62) Tuvans are culturally similar to the Mongolians to the south and to the Buryats due east where they share the Buddhist religion.

They share ethnic and linguistic aspects with the Altai to the west and the Khakas to the north. Brief history of Tuvan The earliest proof of the written linguistic or language of people indigenous to the Altai-Sayan region is in the form of stone inscriptions dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries. These give proof that Tuvan language evolved as a result of interaction between indigenous people inhabiting the Yeisei valley and the incoming Turkic communities who settled there. By the thirteenth century Mongolian tribes had settled here and Mongolian became the mode of written communication for the religious elite until the Russian revolution (Grenoble 47) the first alphabet for Tuva was developed at the start of the 1930’s based on Latin characters and during the year of 1941 a new alphabet or letters based on Cyrillic emerged.

Thus the Tuvan literary language was born. In 1932 the first radio broadcast was done with 75 % of broadcasts done in Tuvan, at the same time written language began to be used in local government administration. It was later introduced into secondary schools in the 1940s and in 1945 a language press was formed to publish books and periodicals. As from 1944 Tuva was officially incorporated into the USSR and bilingualism began spread at a high rate. (Grenoble 58) Sociolinguistic study Data collected from census between 1989 to 1994 shows that in Turkic native areas the percentage of people considering their indigenous republic language to be their native language is diminishing with time.

On the other hand the percentage of Tuvans who regard Tuva as their native language remains constant. This implies that the situation in Tyva is of stable bilingualism as opposed to wholesale assimilation of the language into Russian. (Kreindler 109). In this essay, discussion on the sociolinguistic aspect will mainly centre on the broad headlines of language proficiency and language shift, domains of language use, language and cultural identity and to some extent link the discussion to key demographic factors such as education level, age and income.

Language Proficiency and Language Shift. According to a research survey by Chevalier few Russians were found to possess more than minimum level of proficiency in Tuvan. Many Russians do not know Tuvan at all or that they could comprehend a little Tuvan but could not speak it. 6% of Russians in the Russian Federation are proficient in a minority language with only 2.5 % being proficient in Turkic languages. 21% of Tuvan people are not fully proficient in Russian. In the capital city only 17% of Tuvans are not fully proficient in Russian while 37% of Tuvans in the born in rural areas are not proficient.

This shows that Tuvans educated in rural areas have lower proficiency levels in Russian compared to Tuvan.29% of Tuvan born in the urban area rate their Tuvan as being less than full fluency while 15% who took part in the survey rated their skills as being less than fluent.

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