10.1 Introduction

How does one communicate in a multilingual country such as India, whose linguistic diversity competes with that of Papua New Guinea, the most multilingual country in the world? Besides linguistic diversity, other factors, such as geographical, social, religious and caste diversity – make the task of studying communication in India a formidable one. The dynamics of communication in multilingual societies – their sociopolitical networks of communication, and their varied complex linguistic dimensions of individual, social and political bilingualism – calls for rethinking the traditional monolingual mindset, which equates multilingualism in general and multilingualism particularly in India with linguistic fragmentation and disarray (e.g., equating India with the “Tower of Babel” or with “linguistic Balkanism”). To best characterize the multifaceted dimensions of multilingual communication in India, this chapter will focus on the contemporary and historical study of Hindi–Urdu and Indian English and their spread in intranational diasporic contexts (e.g., from North to South India) and international diasporic contexts (particularly in South-East Asia). The chapter argues that multilingualism in India is shaped primarily by natural forces of networking and communication (e.g., media, literature, trade, multiple identities, etc.) rather than being the result of exclusive and externally imposed models based on government planning. Shaped by such natural forces, linguistic accommodation with multiple dimensions plays a key role in the formation of the linguistic and transactional characteristics of Hindi–Urdu in intranational and international contexts (as well as English).

10.2 India: a linguistic profile

India represents an astonishing array of linguistic diversity and vitality. According to the latest census (2001), there are a total of 122 languages and 234 mother tongues with at least 10,000 speakers. Approximately one in every four inhabitants of the world (that is, 1.4 billion people) speaks at least one of the Indian languages. The four major language families to which Indian languages belong are: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman (see Bhatia and Ritchie Reference Bhatia, Ritchie, Bhatia and Ritchie2013 for details). Additionally, more than 3,000 geographical, social, ethnic, religious and rural varieties or dialects exist (see Sachdev and Bhatia Reference Sachdev, Bhatia, Giles and Watson2013). Hindi and Bengali are ranked fourth and seventh in the world, respectively, in number of speakers, according to the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons and Fennig 2013).

From the viewpoint of communication dynamics and speaker density per language, the situation can best be captured by the pyramid model presented in Figure 10.1.

Figure 10.1. Linguistic situation in India

Interestingly, India does not have a national language. However, two languages, Hindi and English, are recognized as the official languages; these two languages make communication possible throughout the country. In addition, twenty-two state languages (“Scheduled Languages”) in contact with Hindi–Urdu and English further facilitate communication at the regional level. These facts might lead one to conclude that government language planning determines the core of communication dynamics in India. However, such a conclusion would be premature, as it overlooks the centrality of the centuries-long tradition of natural or invisible multilingualism in India, leading to the fusion of Hindi with Sanskrit, Persian and English in addition to the blending of Hindi with regional languages and their rural varieties. In other words, language labels such as “Hindi” and “English” do not designate varieties that are monolithic in nature.

Before we go into the ecology of multilingualism and the resultant language labels for varieties employed in India, some remarks are in order on the historical roles of Sanskrit, Persian and English, which have led to the convergence of the modern languages of India both in their native and in their diasporic contexts, and which constitutes the foundation of Hindi.

At the outset, we should mention that the terms “Hindi” and “Urdu” refer to what is essentially the same spoken language, now generally referred to as “Hindi–Urdu.” This single spoken language has two written forms still referred to with the terms “Hindi” and “Urdu.” Hindi is written in the Devanagari script in which Sanskrit and other North Indian languages are written. Besides being the descendent of Sanskrit, that language also constitutes the foundation for the lexicon of Hindi. Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script with a lexicon highly influenced by Persian and Arabic. The dichotomy between Hindi and Urdu is so leaky in linguistic respects that the distinction between the two is largely nonlinguistic in nature; Hindi is associated with Hinduism and Urdu is associated with Islam.

10.3 India as a linguistic area

Multilingualism in India is not a modern phenomenon. It has constituted a grass-roots phenomenon in India since the pre-Christian era. In fact, as Canagarajah (Reference Canagarajah2009: 6, Reference Canagarajah2013) convincingly argues, multilingualism is not just restricted to India but one can witness its existence in many other parts of the world, too (e.g., the Polynesian Islands, Africa and South America). However, what is notable is that multilingualism in India is well-attested and finds stability involving the classical as well as the colonial languages of India. It was initiated by the convergence of the two most dominant language families in India – Indo-Aryan and Dravidian – primarily with Sanskrit and Tamil, the two classical languages in the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian language families, respectively. In that sense, multilingualism turned out to be an indigenous phenomenon grounded in the two languages – Sanskrit and Tamil – which India reveres to the modern day.

10.4 Sanskrit

The Sanskrit language, a sister language of Greek and Latin, was the primary language of the Hindu scriptures, philosophy, aesthetics, science, mathematics and technology. Though Sanskrit enjoyed the patronage of the ruling and educated class (i.e. the Brahmin class; see Basham Reference Basham1954, for more details), it was never imposed on Indians. From the sixth century BC onwards, it continued to be greatly admired in the hearts and minds of Indians. Most importantly, it set the stage/foundation for a multilingual ethos and for multilingual practices in India, which resulted in the Sanskritization of Dravidian languages and the Dravidianization of Sanskrit – the processes which are uninterrupted in their succeeding Modern Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Thus, not only did the process of language accommodation and language change begin, but also to a varying degree the multilingual ethos of India and other South Asian and South-East Asian countries.

The Sanskritization of Dravidian languages exhibits the following two structured characteristics:

First, the borrowings from Sanskrit into classical and modern-day Dravidian languages were so extensive that evidence for the distinction between the two language families became blurred. Second, lexical borrowing, which usually does not affect the structural aspects of the borrower language, reached an extent that resulted in the structural amalgamation of the borrower and host languages. The effects of borrowings from Sanskrit on the lexical and grammatical systems of Dravidian languages has been so profound that it has led Emeneau and Borrow (Reference Emeneau and Borrow1962: 1) to note a tendency “for all four of the Dravidian literary languages in the South to make literary use of the total Sanskrit lexicon indiscriminately.” So massive has the influence been that it is hard to utter more than a few sentences in these languages without using a word borrowed from Sanskrit. Over a century ago, Western scholars like Pope, Colebrooke, Crey and Wilkins subscribed to the view that the Dravidian languages were descended from Sanskrit, though Caldwell (Reference Caldwell1903; 1956 reprint) in his classical work dispelled this misconception. According to Sjoberg and Sjoberg (Reference Sjoberg and Sjoberg1956), about 20 percent of the noncultural part of basic vocabulary in literary Dravidian languages is loaned from Indo-Aryan – mostly from Sanskrit. This proportion peaks to 50–60 per cent in some languages due to shared cultural and intellectual beliefs (e.g., Brahmanic intellectual values); see Sjoberg and Sjoberg (Reference Sjoberg and Sjoberg1956). This resulted not only in the replacement of content and function words but also had a substantive impact on the phonological, morphological and syntactic structures of the Dravidian languages (Sridhar Reference Sridhar1981, Reference Sridhar, Kachru, Kachru and Sridhar2008).¹

Unlike the case of imposed languages, the influence of Sanskrit was not unidirectional. Sanskrit and its succeeding Indo-Aryan languages could not resist the influence of Tamil and other Dravidian languages. The Dravidianization of Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Gumperz and Wilson Reference Gumperz, Wilson and Hymes1971; Pandit Reference Pandit1972) also took place, though the impact of Dravidian languages on Indo-Aryan languages was not nearly as extensive; nevertheless, this mutual influence (on lexicon as well as grammar) set the stage for leaky or fuzzy boundaries among the languages of India whether they were genetically related or not.

While classical languages in the West lost their affinity with succeeding generations, the transmission of Sanskrit and its influence did not die with the passage of time. Even to this day, the All India Radio relays news in Sanskrit and even newspapers are published in the language. Its teaching and learning still continues in some quarters (e.g., in the Gurukul tradition of education), leading to childhood bilingualism based on Sanskrit. Bhatia and Ritchie (Reference Bhatia, Ritchie, Bhaskararao and Karumuri2004, Reference Bhatia, Ritchie, Bhatia and Ritchie2013) show that just as terms for technological innovations are created from Latin and Greek for western languages (television = Greek tele– “far”, Latin –vision “seeing”), Sanskrit is the source of designative cultural and technical innovations in India and beyond. Consider, for example, the fact that the donor language for technical vocabulary is either Sanskrit or English. Consider, for example, the terms for prime minister (pradhān mantrī = pradhān “head, principal” + mantrī “minister”), for president (rāshṭrapati = rāshṭra “country” + pati “husband”), for radio (ākāshvāṇī = ākāsh “sky” + vāṇī “voice, speech”), and for TV (dūrdarshan = dūr (Hindi) “far” + darshan “sight”). The words given in the parentheses are drawn from Sanskrit. From the above discussion, it would be premature to conclude that natural bilingualism involving Sanskrit is free from linguistic rivalry, linguistic identity or linguistic prescriptivism. What is remarkable is the fact that the maintenance and transmission of Sanskrit was carried out for centuries primarily in the oral tradition. In order to preserve Sanskrit, which Indians have revered in the past as well as today and which is called “devavāṇī” (the speech of the gods), India developed one of the most scientific traditions in the history of phonetics (see Allen Reference Allen1953). Language preservation efforts necessitate some language planning and prescriptivism but that has been overshadowed in this case by the recognition and acceptance of language variation rather than variation eradication. The case in point is Pāṇiṇi’s Aṣṭādhyāyī, the fifth-century grammar of Sanskrit written in eight chapters. Pāṇiṇi’s work on language rules is called, by Bloomfield, “one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence” (Bloomfield Reference Bloomfield1933: 11). Astonishingly, Pāṇiṇi’s grammar did not turn out to be a prescriptivist but rather, a descriptivist and variationist (Kiparsky Reference Kiparsky1980) grammar. Consequently, the multilingual tradition of India did not restrict itself to language amalgamation, but even embodied various grammatical traditions in contact, which further admitted and welcomed variation and multilingual models of communication (see Bhatia Reference Bhatia and Kniffka2001).

10.5 Persian

The language contact with Persian started in the twelfth century. The Persian language added further momentum to the multilingual make-up of India and began to mirror the pattern set by Sanskrit. Language contact among Persian, Indo-Aryan (particularly Hindi–Urdu) and Dravidian languages (particularly Kannada and Telugu) formally began with the annexation of the Punjab by the Turkish ruler Mahmud of Ghazni in the twelfth century and underwent a polarization from linguistic isolationism to linguistic acculturation. In other words, first Persian was isolated and then it was integrated. The initial isolated stage lasted for more than two centuries during the period in which most of present-day India was ruled by the Mogul Empire. Bhatia and Ritchie (Reference Bhatia, Ritchie, Bhatia and Ritchie2013: 852) report a study of official documents, which included 230 royal decrees and inscriptions from Rajasthan during this period, showing interesting facts and borrowing patterns. Since Persian was imposed on the Indian masses, it is not surprising that, during this period, only two words borrowed from Persian (Muhammad and Islam) appear in the written documents of all Indian languages. After two centuries of linguistic imposition, Mogul India returned to its original roots of assimilation. This stage began at the start of the fifteenth century, at which point Persian borrowings are found and the two cultures began to be amalgamated. In the history of Islamic India, the fifteenth century marks largely the period of greatest harmony between the two cultures, and thus the process of linguistic borrowing and assimilation was stimulated. Similar to the Sanskrit era, lexical items from Persian related to administration and culture began to flow into Indian languages. Persian attained the administrative, social and educational domains. Like the effects of Sanskrit, the Persianization of most Indian languages was not restricted to the lexicon (content and function words); the impact of Persian borrowing on the morphology and syntax of Indian languages was also profound. Morphological processes such as reverse compounding (sher-e-panjāb “the tiger of Punjab” rather than the unmarked pattern –panjāb kā sher “Punjab’s tiger”), inflectional morphology (plural markers) and word compounding with Persian became a part of modern Indo-Aryan languages, as did the conjunct verb construction (pasand “choice” + karnā ‘‘to do’’= ‘‘to like’’), complementation (with ki “that”) and conjunction with noun phrases.

Consequently, the place of Sanskrit as a marker of elitism, intellectualization and power began to diminish gradually in favor of Persian, which had become the official court language of the mighty Mogul Empire. Although the influence of Persian extended deep into the Dravidian language areas, it peaked in the north, particularly in the Hindi–Urdu and Punjabi belt (Abidi and Gergesh Reference Abidi, Gargesh, Kachru, Kachru and Sridhar2008).

In qualitative and quantitative terms, the effect of naturally induced multilingualism was the formation of India as a (socio)linguistic area in which genetically and sociopolitically distinct languages show a remarkable pattern of similarity and diffusion at the level of morphology and syntax. This diffusion was extraordinary in promoting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication in India, best captured by Pattanayak (Reference Pattanayak1981: 44): “if one draws a straight line between Kashmir and Kanyakumari and marks, say every five or ten miles, [sic] then one will find that there is no break in communication between any two consecutive points”; in other words, the natural multilingualism reached the highest level of lexical, grammatical, interactional and attitudinal accommodation.²

10.6 Present-day India

Present-day India continues to emulate and strengthen the pattern of natural multilingualism. Two notable linguistic agents of multilingualism are now Hindi–Urdu and English.

10.7 Verbal repertoire and interaction

Language-mixing (or language-switching) is a natural phenomenon in multilingual societies. Language-mixing became an integral part of the Indian linguistic repertoire and verbal interaction since contact between Sanskrit and other languages in Ancient India took place.

Language-mixing has reached such a level that today, multiple language-mixing is an absolute norm whereas talking “pure” languages (without mixing) has become an object of ridicule.

A case in point is Hindi–English–Persian–Sanskrit mixing in the following examples from social network/media sites:

1. 1.   Hindi–English

       Dillī se dinesh kā pahlā post

       “The first posting of Dinesh from Delhi.”

2. 2.   Hindi–English

       mai ne is site par log in kiyā and apnā profile banāyā

       “I logged in on this (web) site and made my profile.”

3. 3.   Hindi– English–Persian–Sanskrit

       is site ke zariye ham-umra vivāh-sūtra men bandh sakte hain

       “Through this (web) site, the (people of) the same age can tie a knot.”

While in (1) the English noun post is used in an otherwise Hindi sentence, in the second sentence English obeys the rule of the Hindi conjunct verb construction with the Hindi dummy verb providing an anchor for Hindi tense-aspect marking. In the second conjunct, the English noun profile is subjected to gender assignment rules of the Hindi language. In (3), the Urdu/Persian-based pronominal system generates (ham “we”-umra “age”) and the Persian postposition (zariye “by means of”) coexists with a Sanskrit compound (vivāh-sūtra “the marriage thread”). Bhatia and Ritchie (Reference Bhatia, Ritchie, Bhatia and Ritchie2013: 861–2) show how the mixed system of Hindi and English has triggered semantic and structural changes triggered by the creative needs of the multilingual mind. In that process, the mixed system came to perform the function of an “optimization” of the use of linguistic resources. An analogy from the beverage industry will underscore the optimizing function of language-mixing. The mixing of two juices creates a totally new product in appearance, composition and taste. Similarly, a mixed linguistic system produces a new variety that cannot be matched by a “pure” linguistic system in terms of obtaining new structural and sociopsychological effects.

10.8 Global diasporic context

The Indian language diaspora can be broadly divided into four stages:

1. 1. The Ancient Indian Diaspora (330 BC–AD 800);

2. 2. The Roma Diaspora in Europe;

3. 3. The Nineteenth-Century Indentured Era Diaspora; and

4. 4. The Modern Diaspora in the Age of Globalization.

During the Ancient Indian Diaspora, Hindu sages and Buddhist monks traveled to foreign lands in search of knowledge. Indian traders also traveled in search of new trade, wealth and skills. Since ancient times, Sanskrit and Tamil have played (and continue to play to this day) a major role in promoting multilingualism and more recently language modernization inside and outside of India, particularly in South-East Asia. The influence of Sanskrit in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore is still very pronounced in various facets of language ecology. For instance, “Singapore” is reminiscent of Sanskrit: singha “lion” and pura “city, walled city, towered city, or palace.” Sanskrit loan words are quite pronounced in Balinese, Thai and Lao languages. Austronesian languages such as Javanese, Malay and Indonesian still have a significant number of Sanskrit loans. The word bahasa “language” (as in “Bahasa Indonesia” or “Phasā Thai”) is actually a Sanskrit word, bhāṣā “language.” The Sanskrit epic, Rāmāyaṇa, has many South-East Asian renditions, including the Muslim Rāmāyaṇa of Malaysia. The Indian language diaspora among Indians in South-East Asia has undergone and is undergoing the process of dialect leveling and language convergence. The third stage (in the nineteenth century plantations) and the fourth stage of the diaspora (particularly since the 1990s), together with Bollywood films, have added a new Hindi–Urdu–Punjabi axis to the Indic diaspora worldwide, and especially in South-East Asia. Through the institution of mother tongue education in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, Hindi is becoming a language of ethnic Indian identity and vitality. The dilemma of Tamil vitality – for example in Malaysia (Azirah Hashim Reference Hashim2009; Schiffman Reference Schiffman2002) – is being resolved by the use of Hindi, which represents new linguistic and economic vitality for the Indic language diaspora. In Singapore, Indians are opting for Hindi over Tamil in schools.

10.9 Conclusion

Ancient India not only provided the linguistic resources – particularly in cases of multilingualism involving the Sanskrit language – but also the mechanism of multilingual communication, as the foundation for communication to this day. Multilingualism is a centuries-old phenomenon in India, leading to coexistence, cooperation and creativity among diverse Indian languages and their varieties. The twenty-first century is affirmed as the “Asian Century.” Clearly commercial, educational and social development models in emerging markets, particularly in India (e.g., Non-Government Organizations) favor such multilingual, multiethnic and multireligious models to bring prosperity and development to those strata of the society which are at the bottom of the economic ladder. If such an economic vision is to be achieved, it has to be grounded in the multilingual, multireligious and multiethnic reality of Asia. Multiple language and variety mixing and fusion exhibited by the two official languages of India, namely, Hindi and English, represents a new model of communication in multilingual Asia.

11.1 Introduction

We begin this chapter with a brief summary of the early history of the Malay language and its original speakers, detailing the initial location of its speakers and early influences on the language, its organic growth, as well as the late colonial impact leading to diversification amongst its speakers. Postcolonial factors and language planning in modern day Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore tended to amplify these differences.

11.2 Early history and classical Malay

According to Sneddon (Reference Sneddon2003: 7), “The Malay-speaking people originated on the coastal plains of east and Southeast Sumatra and off-shore islands, later spreading to the Malay Peninsula and coastal areas of Borneo.” A map on p. 4 of Sneddon’s book shows the location of these original and early subsequent areas where the language and its speakers were found, areas which Sneddon labels on the map as “traditional Malay language areas.” As a language along the main coastal areas of a far flung archipelago, its role as a trading language was a natural development and this role continues today. This role as a trading language predisposes Malay to incorporate influences from other languages as a contact language.

11.3 Srivijaya

Amongst the earliest written evidence of Malay are stone inscriptions and the writings of Buddhist monks. These also constitute the earliest proof of an Indianized state of Srivijaya in Sumatera from the late seventh century. Omar (Reference Asmah2004) considers them to be amongst the oldest known Malay texts written in the Indian Pallava script. There are a few brief fourth century fragments from the Cham languages but otherwise the Srivijaya inscriptions are the earliest known writings in any Austronesian language, and, unfortunately, no later inscriptions from Srivijaya have been found. This scarcity contrasts with Old Javanese inscriptions, which number in the hundreds and cover a period of more than six centuries, beginning in AD 804 (Sneddon Reference Sneddon2003: 36).

While the language of the Srivijaya inscriptions is referred to as “Old Malay,” there is a debate as to whether the language of these inscriptions is the direct ancestor of modern Malay. There are at present a number of varieties of Malay spoken and so, even if the Srivijaya inscriptions represent a direct ancestor, it would be very difficult to prove which of the modern varieties they are an ancestor of. Geographically, the term “Melayu” (Malay) goes back to present-day southern Sumatra within the locality of Sungai Melayu (Milner Reference Milner2003).

A striking feature of early Malay inscriptions is the large number of Sanskrit borrowings. As the inscriptions were composed by Buddhist monks and as Sanskrit was the language used for Buddhist religious concepts, the presence of such words is not too surprising. However, many of the Sanskrit words do not appear in later Malay writings and probably will not have been intelligible to people of that time other than Buddhist monks and scholars, so one suspects them to be associated with that bilingual group of (early) monks (Omar Reference Asmah2013). For this reason, and because most of them do not appear in later Malay writings, it is arguable if they can be considered as borrowings into Malay (Sneddon Reference Sneddon2003: 36).

As Sumatera became a meeting point for pilgrims headed toward India and Indian merchants looking for markets in Southeast Asia, Malay became the lingua franca in this region. While this is true in general, one should note that there were three varieties of Malay: the lingua franca and the vernaculars of the traditional Malay communities on the Malay Peninsula and coastal regions of Borneo, as well as literary Malay. The only variety we have records of dating from before European colonization is the literary variety (including inscriptions).

At the end of the tenth century, the East Javanese king Dharmawangsa attacked Srivijaya but was defeated. So Srivijaya extended its domination eastward, covering all of Java and probably much of Borneo, all of Sumatra, as well as the Malay Peninsula. Evidence of influence from Srivijaya in Java is found in the form of a number of inscriptions in Old Malay. One inscription in Central Java dates from AD 832. Its language is similar to that of the Sumatran inscriptions and both contain many Sanskrit words. (It should be noted, though, that borrowing of Sanskrit words by the Javanese into their own language had actually begun much earlier, and is evident in inscriptions from the oldest Javanese kingdoms.)

The power of Srivijaya began to decline in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and by 1225 many other ports in the Straits of Malacca had recovered their independence. By the fourteenth century, the Javanese had taken control of much of Srivijaya’s former areas of power. By this time, Muslim merchants had begun to spread their religion to northern Sumatera. Marco Polo reported finding the tomb of a sultan, dated 1297. With the fall of Srivijaya and the coming of Islam, Indian influence began to decline, though it lived on in Java for several centuries and is still alive in Bali even today and to some extent in Java. One lasting effect of the Srivijaya kingdom was the spread of the Malay language. Many other ethnic groups in Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia adopted Malay during their period of supremacy.

The next inscriptions in Malay following the Srivijayan ones are from the fourteenth century. Two are Islamic and one of them, the Terengganu inscription, is written in Arabic script. The other one, though Islamic, is written in Pallava script and contains Sanskrit words. A third inscription, found in the Minangkabau language area, also contains many Sanskrit words.

Many borrowings from Sanskrit still present in Malay express ideas related initially to the Hindu religion. Some examples are:

Other borrowings from Sanskrit are titles or names or describe relationships:

Words having to do with scholarship and ceremonies also often come from Sanskrit:

According to Tham (Reference Tham1990: 29–31), the existence of these Sanskritic words and semantic fields in Malay testifies to the rather extensive influence of a Hindu-Buddhist tradition in the Malay language of the past, not just in terms of religion and cosmology but also in political structure. Even after the advent of Islam, the feudal court in the Malay states retained a structure where at the apex the Sultan/Raja reigns and he is advised by a body of high officials consisting of menteri, laksamana and bendahari. A significant number of these words are still in use today.

Words having to do with geography and places also often come from Sanskrit:

Words having to do with anatomy, bodily conditions:

Words which refer to botanical names, foodstuffs, animals:

There are also a number of abstract terms:

Finally, there are grammatical function words

11.4 Malay becomes a trade language

Sneddon (Reference Sneddon2003) describes the rise of the Malay-speaking people as first-rate traders and travelers and the subsequent spread of the use of Malay for trade in that region – by the Malays themselves and by others, including Indians and Chinese, who came there to trade. Omar (Reference Asmah2004) supports this view of the development of Malay as a language for trade and also of diplomacy. When trade routes spread eastward to the “Spice Islands” or Moluccas, the Malay language was used as a lingua franca. However, simplified forms, influenced by local languages, began to develop, especially in the eastern regions of the archipelago. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were now two forms of Malay, that is, the “indigenous” or traditional varieties of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and nearby islands, as well as some coastal areas of Borneo, and the “post creole” varieties, spoken by people who had been exposed to it originally as a contact language, which later replaced their indigenous languages. In the areas where indigenous varieties were found, a literary language – “Classical Malay” – began to evolve in the royal courts, especially in the Riau-Johor Sultanate. This literary language had its roots in the earlier literary language of the royal court of Malacca.

11.5 European colonialism and the beginning of divergence

11.6 Standardization, political movements and eventual independence of Indonesia

11.7 World War II, Japanese occupation and eventual independence

Whatever plans the Indonesian youth or the Dutch colonialists might have had were cut off suddenly when the Japanese captured Java in March 1942. The Dutch educational system was abolished and a new educational system was set up, which had the sole intention of spreading the Japanese language and culture.

However, Indonesian replaced Dutch for government administration and even the Japanese had to learn it as there was no other commonly used language. The importance and usefulness of Indonesian quickly mushroomed. With the prohibition of Dutch, Indonesian language newspapers expanded. New vocabulary needed to be coined to replace former Dutch terms. Some examples are pajak for “tax” and senam for “exercise, gymnastics.”

With military defeat obvious by March 1945, the Japanese agreed to the establishment of a committee to plan Indonesian independence. It was during this meeting that Sukarno put forward the concept of Pancasila – the five principles (namely, belief in the Almighty, just and civilized humanity, unity of Indonesia, democracy and social justice) on which the Indonesian State was based. At the same time, Bahasa Indonesia was selected officially as the national language.

11.8 Postwar developments: language planning and other factors

A Komisi Istilah or Terminology Commission was set up after Independence to coin any new terms that were needed. This commission became very active after 1950 and continued to be active until 1966, when it ceased to exist. Language planning was initiated and carried out at various phases of the history of Indonesia and the Indonesian language; certain types of innovations “just happened.” Indonesians in general are very fond of acronyms and so acronyms and other types of abbreviations for everything from politics to sports play a central role in vocabulary development. In addition to ABRI (pronounced as a word) as an abbreviation for the armed forces, and PKI (pronounced as letters) as the abbreviation for the Communist Party, Sneddon (Reference Sneddon2003: 146–7) mentions the following:

11.9 Borrowing from other languages

Indonesians have never felt any hesitation about borrowing words and expressions from other languages. When new terms are needed, borrowing remains an option. Of sources within Indonesia, Javanese remains a common choice. Even where Malay words exist, Javanese terms are often borrowed and are used as synonyms. These are cited in Sneddon (Reference Sneddon2003: 157–8):

Lexical items specifically borrowed from the domain of food (along with the foods) include:

11.10 The Malay language in Brunei

The second half of this chapter will consider recent efforts by the countries that use Malay to standardize the formal version in line with usage in all Malay-speaking countries. But before doing this, as Brunei has also been involved in the efforts to standardize formal Malay, we shall look at the role and features of the Malay language in that country.

There are several dialects of Malay used in Brunei as well as several other distinct languages: Tutong, Dusun/Bisaya, Belait, Murut, Iban and Penan. In addition to speakers of Austronesian languages, there is a sizeable Chinese population, which includes speakers of several Chinese “dialects.” Before 1985, there were separate English and Malay schools. Since 1985, however, all children are given a bilingual education. Malay is the medium of instruction in the lower primary school. From upper primary school, English is the medium of instruction for all subjects except Malay, art, religion, civics and physical education.

Apart from Brunei Malay, Kampong Ayer, Kadayan and Standard Malay, there is also a pidginized variety used for some interethnic communication. In addition to all of these, there is a special palace language or Bahasa Diraja used within the palaces of the royal family for internal communication (see below). Kadayan is the dialect of land-dwelling farmers, while Kampong Ayer is the dialect of the community that lives in the Water Village, traditionally fishermen and craftsmen. Brunei Malay is the dialect of the capital – Bandar Seri Begawan – and surroundings, as well as the lingua franca used between speakers of differing dialects.

Standard Malay is used in Brunei only for formal situations, such as in institutions of learning, for public speeches and media broadcasts. The three local dialects – Brunei Malay, Kampong Ayer and Kadayan, are used for informal communication. The Standard Malay of government officials and the Royal Family “differs phonetically from indigenous varieties in (1) having the staccato, syllable-timed rhythm of Standard Bahasa Indonesia rather than a stress-timed rhythm resulting from syllables containing nonphonemic geminate consonants, and (2) in having /r/ as the reflex of Proto-Austronesian /R/, rather than /y/, as in Kampong Ayer, or loss of the phoneme, as in Kedayan” (Martin, Ozog and Poedjosoedarmo Reference Martin, Ozog and Poedjosoedarmo1996: 38).

There are differences between the various Malay dialects of Brunei not only in phonology but also in vocabulary and grammar. The specifics, though, cannot be described in detail here. Variation in all linguistic features is discussed in Martin, Ozog and Poedjosoedarmo (Reference Martin, Ozog and Poedjosoedarmo1996).

11.11 The Malay language in Malaysia: variation and previous internal attempts at standardization

The rise of standard Malay did not take place until after the advent of the British Colonial administration with the development of printing in the country. As Omar (Reference Asmah2004) explains, the period of Late Modern Malay was typified by the incorporation of numerous loan words from Dutch and English as well as subject verb object (SVO) word order. This stage in Malay language development marks its departure from Early Modern Malay with a sentence word order of either verb initial or noun initial (Omar Reference Asmah2004: 22). The active sentence construction was preferred over the passive preferred in Early Modern Malay(Mohamed Pitchay Gani 2009). The rise of standard Malay at the height of the colonial period was to a large extent fuelled by the rise of printing and mass education in Malay. The colonial government in the Straits Settlement started the first government Malay School in Penang by the mid-1800s and the rise of newspapers edited by the Jawi Peranakans (Indian Muslims). In fact, the role of translations of western literature into modern Malay further supported the entrenchment of Malay and the SVO order in Modern Malay. The spread of the Malay language press and publications by the Jawi Peranakans as well as the Peranakan Cina (local-born Chinese) added to the spread of Late Modern Malay. Secular Malay education spread like wildfire throughout the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, with foremost expatriate British Malay scholars at the Malay College Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) as well as the Sultan Idris Teachers Training College (SITC) in Perak. Key proponents of Malay language education include R. J. Wilkinson, who published his Malay-English Dictionary in 1903, R. O. Winstedt, and O. T. Dussek.

The use of Malay in British Malaya was mainly restricted to the intra-ethnic communication amongst the Malays. The country was plurilingual with English, Chinese “dialects,” Malay and Tamil. The study of the Malay language gained pace in scholarly publications like the Journal of the Straits Branch (SBRAS) and later the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (MBRAS), then established in Singapore. Our review of the paper contributions on the Malay language in both the SBRAS and MBRAS revealed active contributions by local Malay scholars like Zainul Abidin Bin Ahmad (famously known as Za’ba) as early as in 1927. The issue of selecting a standard high variety of Malay did not emerge until the early days of independence, when Malay was enshrined in the constitution of Malaya as the National Language in article 152 of the federal constitution. The constitution is silent on the variety of Malay chosen as the national language. However, it did state that the Malay language is to be rendered in the Roman script instead of the Jawi (Arabic script). By then the educated Malay upper class who led the newly independent country was deeply influenced by modern western thought, ideals and the English language. As observed by Winstedt (Reference Winstedt1961: 188), “there is evidence that “standard” Malay, namely the Malay used in schools, universities, government ministries and the mass media reflects some of the structural characteristics of English in both morphology and syntax.” In fact, the pursuit to modernize and upgrade the Malay language for its role as the national language in a newly independent Malaya started a year before independence with the establishment of the National Language Agency (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka) in 1956. The feverish activities of the DBP in language planning and language development, including large scale projects at writing hitherto the most comprehensive Malay dictionary (Kamus Dewan), was to have a major impact on the Malay language. In the words of Winstedt (Reference Winstedt1961: 188), “the Malay language has been subjected to a great deal of influence from the English language. This is due not only to the continuing influence of the English language in the institutional structure of Malaysian life, in particular in higher education, but also to the fact that those who deal with the problem of terminology and its development happen to be competent in both languages.”

11.12 The Malay language in Singapore

The Malay language in Singapore enjoyed two important impetuses in its development. Singapore was the hub for the Malay press and a focal point for British colonial initiatives into Malay language education; secular Malay language schools in Singapore proliferated in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. In fact, by 1878, the first Malay Teachers Training College was established at Teluk Blangah, Singapore (Abdullah Reference Abdullah2010: 228). The publication of Malay books gained speed in Singapore from the 1850s. The role of printing and mass publication of Malay books spread the use of Malay in writing far and wide in both Jawi (Arabic script) as well as in Rumi (Roman script), although the former was mainly read by the Peranakan Chinese in Singapore, Malacca and Penang. It was only after independence that the Rumi script superseded the Jawi script as a medium in schools and literature (Warnk Reference Warnk2007: 95). The status of the Malay language in Singapore is that of national and official language. In practice, the city state’s main language for government, education, commerce and intra-ethnic communication is English.

The Malay language in its spoken form corresponds closely to the Johor-Riau variety of Malay in the informal domain. However, standard spoken and written Malay in formal domains has been in Baku (standard pronunciation) since the 1990s. The difference between the Johor-Riau variety to that of Baku encompasses the realms of spelling, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. The Singapore education policy is that each student should be bilingual in English and his/her mother tongue. In the case of an ethnic Malay student, this is the Malay language (Abdullah Reference Abdullah2010), and since 1990, the Malay population in Singapore has consistently surpassed the national average in terms of literacy and bilingual ability (Abdullah Reference Abdullah2010: 144–5).

11.13 Cross-national attempts to standardize Malay in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore

On December 29, 1972, language experts in Indonesia and Malaysia got together with the objective of eventually attempting to standardize at least the formal written language as used in the two countries. Originally, the group of experts taking part in the discussions referred to themselves as MBIM, which stood for Majlis Bahasa Indonesia-Malaysia. Later, Brunei joined the organization and its name was changed to MABBIM: Majlis Bahasa Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. On November 4, 1985, Singapore, where one of the official languages is Malay, also joined MABBIM as an observer. However, as not all Singaporeans are even able to speak Malay and as English is the official language in that country, there has been no change in the name of MABBIM to reflect Singapore’s involvement.

The purpose of the organization is to monitor the development of the language, especially for education and formal government use, to try to ensure that new terminology is agreed on by all the countries involved and to see that the grammatical structure of the written language is consistent.

MABBIM has now been in existence for forty years. What has the organization achieved? The most obvious achievement is revisions of the spelling systems to make them as similar as possible. Where previously Malaysia used “ch” and Indonesia used “tj”, now both use “c” in contoh (“example”) or cuaca (“climate, weather”). Previously, Indonesian used “dj” for the sound at the beginning of Jakarta but now uses “j,” and Indonesians previously used “sj” and Malaysians used “sh,” now replaced with “sy” in words such as syarat. Diacritics were removed, as was the “2” to indicate that a word or part of it was doubled. Such words are now written with the relevant letters repeated, a hyphen being inserted between the parts, as in bermain-main (“in jest”).

But the work of MABBIM has not been limited to standardization of existing differences. Perhaps their most important recent work has been in coining new terms, especially for the sciences. Many specialized dictionaries have been published for each of the above categories, as well as one main dictionary, Kamus Nusantara.

11.14 Conclusion

This chapter has described the development, the differences and the convergence of Malay as the original language of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and parts of Indonesia. In a nutshell, the colonial history of the region has shaped the development of modern Malay to such an extent that Malay from its original coastal locations has enveloped the entire insular and peninsula South-East Asia (excluding the Philippines), an area encompassing the modern day states of Indonesia, a former Dutch colony, and Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, former British colonies. Since late colonial times the development of Malay has experienced divergent influences based on the different colonial powers, modern-day language policies and modern-day innovations. Nevertheless, Malay essentially remains mutually intelligible to the speakers of its different varieties in the region and, to quote the Indonesian national motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (“Unity in Diversity”), Malay has been adopted as the national language of a diverse group of people as a language of their own.

12.1 Development of a national common language

12.2 The current situation

With more than half a century’s effort, it is a fact that more and more people in China are able to speak Putonghua, but the success or otherwise of Putonghua promotion is subject to argument. Initiated by the State Council, a nationwide comprehensive survey on language usage was conducted in 1999. The survey covered thirty-one provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. According to the survey results published by the Office of Leading Team of Chinese Language Usage Survey (2006: Figures 1–9), by 1999, the percentage of people able to communicate in Putonghua amounted to 53.06 percent of the total population, whereas 86.38 percent of the population was able to communicate in dialects, and speakers of ethnic minority languages accounted for 5.46 percent. There were more speakers of Putonghua in cities and towns (66.02 percent) than in villages and rural areas (45.06 percent). The younger the age, and the higher the education level, the more people were able to communicate in Putonghua, probably as a result of the nine year compulsory education implemented from 1986 onward, in which Putonghua was the medium of instruction in schools. The statistics show gradually diminishing figures of proficient Putonghua communicators with increasing age, from 70.12 percent (aged 15–29), to 52.74 percent (aged 30–44), 40.59 percent (aged 45–59), to only 30.97 percent for the 60–69 age group. Similarly, 86.77 percent of the people having received education at tertiary level or above were able to communicate in Putonghua, whereas only 50.08 percent with junior secondary education and 25.49 percent with primary education possessed the same ability.

There were differences in the number of Putonghua speakers among different dialectal areas. The Min dialect area had the highest number of Putonghua communicators (80.28 percent), while the Jin dialect area had the lowest (43.61 percent). The heterogeneous language situation in the Fujian province where the Min dialect is spoken was identified as the main reason for such a phenomenon. There are a number of mutually unintelligible sub-dialects spoken within relatively small areas in Fujian, making the use of Putonghua as a lingua franca a necessary choice among the different sub-dialect speakers (Chen Reference Chen1999: 29).

Besides, it was found that Putonghua was mostly used in office settings (28.8 percent for handling affairs at government departments, and 41.97 percent for communicating with colleagues at work), and less used in the family domain (17.85 percent). Within the 53.06 percent of people who could communicate with others in Putonghua, 20.42 percent of them could use it fluently and accurately, about one third of them spoke Putonghua with certain mispronunciations and close to 30 percent of them possessed only basic competence. The major reason accounting for their difficulty in using Putonghua was the lack of a positive language environment, indicating that the use of Putonghua was still uncommon in quite a number of occasions.

In a vast country containing a total population of 1.24 billion, for half of the population to be able to communicate in the national common language is perhaps quite an achievement already, although it is still far from the original stipulated target of having a general spread of the common language all over the country before 2010 (State Language Commission 2000). Zhou and Sun (Reference Zhou and Sun2004: 5–6) consider that the development of an oral language is less likely to be “tamed” by political power alone. Social, cultural, economic and political factors may all come into play when the choice of language is in question. As a matter of fact, the speed of Putonghua popularization in the past three decades has been greatly affected, both positively and negatively, by the rapid economic development in China.

When China introduced its opening-up policy in 1978, the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone took the lead and became the most economically dynamic region in the country. Hong Kong as an international financial center also played a pivotal role in China’s economic reform during that period. The booming economy in the pan-Pearl River Delta region had resulted in boosting the popularity of Cantonese, or the Yue Dialect, which was widely spoken in that region, including in Hong Kong and Macao. While Putonghua was attracting more and more learners in Hong Kong and Macao, there was also a mass fervor for learning Cantonese in many northern areas. Although the upsurge of Cantonese learning started to fade when the economic growth of other northern cities gradually caught up with that of the Guangdong province, the promotion of Putonghua is no longer a straightforward matter. The language situation in China has become more complex as the country experiences more interaction with the outside world. For example, the attention of students at all levels has been substantially diverted to the learning of English in the past three decades, to the extent that some political leaders consider it a threat to the well-being of the Chinese language and the quality of education throughout China (Zhang Reference Zhang2014). As a result, there have been moves by the MoE in the past few years to bring down the English fever.

While the debate concerning the advantages and disadvantages of learning English is still going on, there has been a call from certain scholars to view the entire situation from a language planning perspective. As the former Director of the Department of Language Information Management of the MoE, Li (Reference Li2011a) suggests that languages, be they native or foreign, should be treated as a country’s precious resources. China, being a big country, should be able to support the existence and operation of a large number of languages. There is a need for foreign language experts to handle the increasing number of businesses closely related to the development and the lifeline of the country. Currently, China is only able to offer courses on around fifty languages, and often encounters difficulty in communicating with counterparts in various foreign affairs and in international trade. Li considers the foreign language ability of the civilians as a representation of an aspect of the country’s “hard power,” and urges the government to examine language planning issues from an economic perspective so that the economic contribution of language to the welfare of the country can be properly evaluated. He also proposes (Li Reference Li2011b) that the mastery of different kinds of foreign languages by Chinese people should be encouraged. Special attention should be paid to the cultivation of multilingual talents now that China is a member state of a number of international organizations. Internally, language unification within China is still considered as a formidable mission, since Putonghua is yet to be popularized in rural areas and ethnic minority regions. In view of the fact that human society has entered an era of information, people who do not speak Putonghua will have limited access to a huge amount of information transmitted through Putonghua. Therefore, Li argues that for Chinese civilians, mastering Putonghua is no longer an issue of fostering communication only, it is also an issue of social equality and human rights. Having said that, he appeals for a balanced treatment of Putonghua, other Chinese dialects and ethnic minority languages since many domestic affairs cannot be handled without using the latter two. Language planning should therefore include the planning of functions to be carried out by different language varieties, including foreign languages (Li Reference Li2008).

Li’s suggestion demonstrates a change in ideology among language planners regarding the relationship between Putonghua, Chinese dialects and ethnic minority languages. This relationship is redefined “in terms of a mainstream principle and a diversity principle,” in which Putonghua is identified for formal and public use and Chinese dialects/ethnic minority languages for complementary private use. This redefinition was also legislated in The Language Law (Zhou and Sun Reference Zhou and Sun2004: 3–4).

12.3 Putonghua and Cantonese in Hong Kong and Macao

12.4 Macao

The language situation of Macao is considered even more complicated than that of Hong Kong. Macao is described as a multilingual society in which pluralism in cultural, sociopolitical, linguistic and legal domains is juxtaposed(Santos Reference Santos1991). The Min dialect was a major dialect used in Macao before the Portuguese arrived. Starting from the sixteenth century, Cantonese became the lingua franca subsequent to the increase in immigrants from the Guangdong area. Linguistic life became more complex after Macao was leased to Portugal in 1557. It was recorded that communication between the Chinese and the Portuguese in trade transactions in those early years relied heavily on interpreters recruited from Malacca. Bilinguals who understood both languages were extremely rare, even though mutual influence in terms of lexical borrowing could be found in both languages (Liu Reference Liu and Ching1992).

By the nineteenth century, Portuguese became the sole official language of Macao. Chinese was only used as a supplement until 1991 when it gained official status. With the zealous promotion of the government, Portuguese had attracted certain numbers of learners since it was a compulsory subject in government schools and a required qualification for civil servant recruitment. However, Portuguese had not been successful in gaining popularity among Chinese citizens in other communication domains, neither was Chinese known by many Portuguese (Sheng Reference Sheng1997: 25). The above situation continued for centuries where language issues were identified as a critical issue when Macao was at the juncture of changing its sovereignty and thence its official language.

By the early 1990s, with ethnic Chinese constituting the largest portion of the population, Cantonese maintained its dominant position in Macao. But unlike Hong Kong, Macao had taken in many more new immigrants from China. According to the 2011 census, 47.7 percent of the Macao population had resided in this city for less than fourteen years. Many of them spoke their native dialects at home, instead of readily switching to Cantonese like what happened in Hong Kong. On the other hand, Portuguese as the official language, was still minimally used by most Macao Chinese. It was nowhere in comparison to English, which prevailed in finance, trade, tourism and tertiary education even though it had never enjoyed any official status in Macao. In a number of circumstances, English even became an intermediate language between Chinese and Portuguese speakers who had difficulty understanding each other (Leung Reference Leung and Ching1992). This complicated language situation was partly reported in the 2011 population census.

With Cantonese, English and Portuguese each assuming different roles in the society, school systems followed pluralistic practices as well in determining their own medium of instruction and curriculum structure, depending on the schools’ affiliation, student orientation and resources. This pluralistic practice was intensified by the fact that 93.5 percent of Macao students studied in various private schools that were not obliged to follow government instructions (Rosa Reference Rosa and Hon Keung1989). Although many of these schools required their students to study some or all of the three languages, language teaching was conducted in different modes, at the discretion of the teachers who were mostly uninformedof any serious multilingual or language education research in the context of Macao simply because such research studies were scarce (Lau and Wong Reference Lau, Wong and Ching1992). Furthermore, since English had not been given any official status, it was not specifically promoted by the Macao government. This situation was considered as a linguistic shortfall (Sheng Reference Sheng1997: 37), even an aphasia (Lau and Wong Reference Lau, Wong and Ching1992), since both internal and external communication were being hindered by the lack of bilingual talents to support the development of the society.

During the transitional period before the sovereignty handover, three major issues requiring immediate attention were identified, namely, the localization of the civil service, the localization of the legal system and the legalization of Chinese. During the colonial era, the legal system of Macao strictly followed that of Portugal, and personnel at all levels working under the system were primarily Portuguese. With limited participation from ethnic Chinese, Portuguese was extensively used in almost all legal procedures. The situation remained more or less the same some years after the handover², owing to the lack of bilingual talents who could readily switch between Portuguese and Chinese, especially in handling legal procedures that require a high level of precision and accuracy. Localization of the legal system had been deterred by technical reasons. For instance, in 2005, the request of a litigant to obtain a Chinese version of the court verdict on a divorce case was declined by the Portuguese judge owing to resource constraints (Zhu Reference Zhu2007). It was pointed out by Zhu, the Advisor of the Legal Affairs Office of Macao, that the equal official status given to Chinese and Portuguese had not been actualized, and the right of Macao citizens in choosing the most proficient language when engaging in legal procedures was not well protected, leaving a loophole in the constitution.

As for the spoken language, there were also similar queries raised by Macao citizens about the definition of “Chinese” put under the Basic Law when the spoken form was in question. By the early years of the 1990s, the spoken form of Chinese was once taken to mean Cantonese, since it was spoken by the majority of Macao Chinese, and many of them could only speak poor Putonghua. With the advocacy of some heavy-weight scholars who considered it natural to follow the mother nation’s language policy, and with increasingly closer links built up between Macao and the mainland, Putonghua was readily accepted by Macao people as the official spoken form, although its use was restricted to domains such as commerce and tourism (Huang Reference Huang2007). The situation was also “moulded” by the fact that Macao residents entrusted the Chinese departments of two tertiary institutes, both headed by mainland scholars, with the important duty of training civil servants and the language teachers to cope with the three key issues listed above (Yeung Reference Yeung1992). Adoption of Putonghua as the official spoken form seemed to be a natural outcome. However, this again is just a policy on paper. Similar to situations in Hong Kong, most civil servants in Macau are not able to speak fluent Putonghua, neither are they proficient in Portuguese or English. Cantonese has become the only possible working language in many government departments, and to date is used extensively in LegCo Meetings as well.

Macao has been returned to China for fifteen years, and even though the general direction of Macao’s language use seems clear to most people, there are still practical problems that hinder the realization of the constituted “policy,” such as the difficulties in establishing the norm and form of Chinese when it is used as an official language in different kinds of real-life settings. Schools will also need to reconsider their position and plan their curriculum accordingly. Unlike the Hong Kong government which has had long-term plans since the early colonial era in terms of curriculum development and teacher training, the loose situation in Macao hands the government huge challenges in working out practical policies and plans to bring things into order (Leung Reference Leung and Ching1992).

12.5 Conclusion

The evolution of Putonghua as the national common language of China took a whole century to complete. During the process, the relationship between this national common language and other Chinese dialects has been a controversial topic attracting endless debate even in contemporary China and Hong Kong. During the 1980s and early 1990s, it was once believed that Putonghua would become more and more popular and powerful, to the extent that most Chinese dialects would gradually diminish. As the situation changes, China now has much more contact with the outside world, hence there are urgent needs for the civilians to master other foreign languages, not only for personal benefit, but also for building up the “soft power” of the nation. The government has come to realize that varieties of language constitute precious resources so that all languages and dialects used in the country need to be given proper space for their operation and development. Language planning with a focus on the functional planning of language varieties is therefore proposed. An adjusted policy allowing more flexibility has been adopted, so that issues such as the “dialect fever” which swept through China around 2005–2006 was tackled much more gently (Taskforce 2006: 261). It is anticipated that China will probably adopt a more open-minded policy toward the use of language, although Putonghua shall continue to enjoy higher status and prestige.

The language situations in Hong Kong and Macao appear to be affected by other factors. Triggered by a series of social and political issues, and driven by a strong sense of Hong Kong identity, Cantonese is enjoying high prestige in Hong Kong in terms of ideology and in real practice. Even though Putonghua is spoken by an increasing number of people, its use is likely to be restricted to the service and business sectors. Given the political climate in Hong Kong in recent years, it is anticipated that Hong Kong people are not yet ready to accept Putonghua as the spoken form of the official language in the near future. In comparison, although Macau citizens are more prepared to recognize the official status of Putonghua, its general spread is obstructed by the lack of proficient speakers. Similarly, the Sinicization of the Macao legal system is another daunting task that will take substantial time and effort to accomplish.

13.1 Introduction

Malaysia is a multiethnic and multilingual country where Chinese constitutes 24.6 percent of the total population (Department of Statistics Malaysia 2012). The Chinese started their settlement in Malaysia as early as the fifteenth century. Concurrent with this large-scale immigration, Chinese language varieties which included Chinese dialects and Mandarin were brought to the country. Due to the extensive contact with local Malays, these Chinese dialects show different characteristics from their counterparts in China. Moreover, with the introduction of modern education in the twentieth century, Mandarin has increased in importance among the Chinese community. This development has led to different degrees of language shift among various dialect groups. As a result, some minor dialects have declined while some major dialects are still dominant in certain regions. Thus, these dialects show different degrees of vitality, assessed by their usage in different domains. Changes in the linguistic ecology of the Chinese community have resulted largely from political changes in Malaysia in the past few decades. In this chapter, I am particularly concerned with the following aspects: (1) the demography and distribution in different regions of Chinese language varieties, (2) the spread and standardization of modern Chinese since the twentieth century, (3) the role of the Chinese language in education, (4) language contact due to the frequent interaction with ethnic Malays, and (5) the vitality of the Chinese language in Malaysia. Predictions of the future development of the Chinese language in Malaysia are made in the conclusion section.

13.2 Demographic and regional distribution of Chinese language varieties

The ancestors of most Chinese Malaysians came from various southern provinces in China, such as Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Therefore, the language varieties they brought to Malaysia were Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, Hainanese, and other southern dialects (Tan Reference Tan, Lee and Tan2000). Census data have recorded the distribution of these dialect groups in the Chinese population (see Table 13.1).

Demographically, Hokkien is the largest dialect group in Malaysia, which represents more than one third of the Chinese population. Hakka is the second largest group, followed by Cantonese and Teochew. At the early stage of settlement, Chinese immigrants tended to settle down with people from the same dialect group and formed their clans to safeguard their common welfare. However, the barriers between dialect groups have been broken down as more and more intermarriages have occurred and as the mode of settlement has changed with rapid urbanization and industrialization.

As the Chinese population is distributed all over Malaysia, there is no certain association between language and region. However, as will be pointed out in this chapter, some Chinese dialects have gained a prestigious status in certain areas due to their numerical and economic advantage. Therefore, these dialects are used as the lingua franca in these areas, such as Cantonese in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh, and Hokkien in Penang and Kuching (Tan Reference Tan, Lee and Tan2000). A Chinese linguistic map in the state of Perak is depicted in the Encyclopedia of Malaysia: Languages and Literature (Asmah Reference Asmah2004: 53). However, no further explanation is provided to this map. Further studies are needed to draw a detailed and accurate map for the distribution of Chinese dialects in Malaysia. Based on the literature available, the distribution of Chinese dialects in Malaysia is identified (see Table 13.2).

The association between dialects and regions is dynamic as Mandarin has gained more domains of usage in recent years. As reported by Wang (Reference Wang2012), Mandarin was used in 90.9 percent of the business transactions in markets in Johor Baru, where Teochew was the dominant dialect before. This implies that a high extent of language shift has taken place in Johor Baru. The spread of Mandarin is one of the factors leading to such drastic changes in the linguistic ecology.

13.3 Spread and standardization of modern Chinese since the twentieth century

Modern Chinese was introduced through education in Malaya in the 1920s, a response to the promotion of Guoyu, the national language, in China. Education was the first domain in which Mandarin was used to replace various other Chinese dialects as the medium of instruction in Chinese schools. According to Hou (Reference Hou1919: 32), Mandarin was the medium of instruction for Grade 3 and 4 and Hokkien for Grade 1 and 2 in Yu Cai School in Penang in 1919. Gradually, Mandarin expanded its usage into other domains such as mass media, business, and even family. Wang (Reference Wang2005, 2009, Reference Wang2012) carried out a survey on the spread of Mandarin in the State of Johor in 2004 and 2005. The results indicate that Mandarin is being extensively used in public settings and at home in Johor Baru, Batu Pahat, Muar, and Kluang. Among the 585 respondents from the above four cities, 84.8 percent claim that Mandarin is their most frequently used home language (Wang Reference Wang2012: 71). Hokkien and other Chinese dialects have drastically declined in Johor. The significant factors leading to the spread of Mandarin include the influence of Singaporean mass media in Mandarin and the popularization of Chinese education in Johor (Wang Reference Wang2012: 53–8). Singaporean TV programs which are in Mandarin and English only are not accessible beyond the border of Johor (Wang Reference Wang2005). Therefore, the impact of mass media from Singapore is restricted to Johor only, the closest state to Singapore. The dominance of Mandarin is also observed in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, although to a lesser extent and with Cantonese as the prestige dialect (Wang Reference Wang2010). A recent development of Mandarin in Malaysia is that more and more non-Chinese Malaysians have shown interest in learning Mandarin due to the rapid economic growth in China. In view of the popularity of Mandarin, the Ministry of Education started to offer Chinese as an elective course in national primary schools in 1996 (Zheng Reference Zheng2010).

Chinese is also visible in the Malaysian linguistic landscape as an important avenue to present Chinese identity, especially in Chinatowns. According to a linguistic landscape study in Kuala Lumpur Chinatown (Wang et al. Reference Wang, Riget, Shoniah, Yi Chern and Omar2015), Chinese scripts appear on 70.9 percent of the signs (N = 388), out of which 42.5 percent use Chinese as the dominant language given that Malay is compulsory for all commercial signs and must be in a bigger size than other languages according to the municipal regulation in Kuala Lumpur. The high prominence of the Chinese language in public spaces is because of the fact that language is the most important marker for the Chinese identity, and Chinese Malaysians share the common belief that maintaining the Chinese language is crucial to their Chineseness.

As Chinese is not an official language in Malaysia, there is no official agency in charge of its planning and standardization. However, Chinese is the medium of instruction in national-type Chinese primary schools which were integrated into the national education system in the 1960s. Therefore, the standardization of the Chinese language has been implemented through education since independence. Generally, it follows the standards in China but at a slower pace. For instance, the simplified Chinese characters and Hanyu pinyin were adopted in Malaysia in 1982 with the introduction of KBSR (New Curriculum for Primary School) while these two reforms were launched in China in 1956 and 1958, respectively. After the adoption of simplified characters and Hanyu pinyin, the traditional characters and Zhuyin fuhao were abandoned in education. However, traditional characters are still in use in Chinese newspapers, advertisements, and even personal names. They are still popular in shop signs. Wang et al. (Reference Wang, Riget, Shoniah, Yi Chern and Omar2015) report that 64.4 percent of Chinese signs in Kuala Lumpur Chinatown use traditional characters as they are strongly associated with Chinese roots and culture.

Despite the lack of support from the government, the Chinese community founded a Chinese Standardization Committee which was composed of representatives from various organizations such as newspapers, schools, publishers, and linguists in 1997, and restructured and renamed as the Chinese Language Standardization Council of Malaysia in 2004. The main objective of this council is to promote standard Mandarin in Malaysia. The standardization of the lexicon is one of its achievements by standardizing the Chinese translation of place names and personal names of non-Chinese origin. Recently, they introduced the Putonghua Proficiency Test from China which aims to promote standard Putonghua in Malaysia. What has been neglected is that there are some differences between Malaysian Mandarin (Huayu) and Chinese Putonghua in terms of pronunciation and lexicon (Wang Reference Wang2013). For instance, the neutral tone and retroflexed final –r are seldom pronounced in Malaysian Huayu while they are common in Chinese Putonghua. Therefore, it is negotiable whether Malaysia should fully follow the standard of China or not. Variation in the Chinese standard language does exist across different Chinese regions, a fact which should be acknowledged locally and internationally. The publication of The Dictionary of Global Huayu (Li Reference Li2010) is a good start toward the maintenance of linguistic diversity, which records the differences in Chinese standard language(s) in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and other regions. Guo (Reference Guo2002) compares the lexicon in Putonghua, Singaporean Mandarin, and Malaysian Mandarin, and makes a harmonization proposal to deal with the differences among the three varieties.

13.4 The role of the Chinese language in education

The history of Chinese education in Malaysia can be dated back to 1819 when Wufu shuyuan, the first Chinese school, was founded in Penang (Tan Reference Tan1997). Since then, Chinese education has undergone great changes over the years. It has developed from old-style Sishu which was set up by various clans or dialect associations and taught Chinese classic texts in a traditional way, to new-style schools which adopted a new curriculum teaching geography, physics, and other modern subjects. These new-style schools were more Malaya-oriented rather than China-oriented and started to use Mandarin as the medium of instruction to replace various dialects. No matter how complex the external environment has been, the Chinese language has never been abandoned by Chinese schools until today. This can be regarded as one of the characteristics of Malaysian Chinese education. The sustaining of the Chinese language in education is due to the belief that language is the essential component of Chinese culture and identity (see above). As far as the role of the Chinese language in education is concerned, there are three different situations in Malaysia: (1) Chinese language as the medium of instruction, (2) Chinese language as a subject, and (3) Chinese language as a second language.

Presently, Mandarin is the medium of instruction in all national-type Chinese primary schools in Malaysia. All subjects except Malay and English are taught in Mandarin in these schools, which are an integral part of the national education system. Currently, there are 1,294 Chinese primary schools in Malaysia with a total student population of 591,121 (cf. Dongzong website 1). It is estimated that over 90 percent of Chinese students enrol in these Chinese schools. At the secondary education level, Mandarin is used as the main medium of instruction in Chinese independent schools (Duzhong), which are private schools financed by the Chinese community. There are sixty such schools with a total of 70,266 students, some of which are open to international students such as the Han Chiang High School in Penang (cf. Dongzong website 2). At the tertiary education level, Mandarin is the main medium of instruction in three Chinese colleges, which were founded by the Chinese community. Therefore, it is possible that a student can go through his/her entire education in Mandarin in Malaysia. Malaysia is the only country outside mainland China and Taiwan where this can be found.

The second role of the Chinese language in Malaysian education is that it is offered as a subject in schools. Due to historical reasons, there are two types of national secondary schools in Malaysia. The first type is the national-type Chinese secondary schools which were converted from Chinese secondary schools by the government in the 1960s (Tay Reference Tay2003). One of the conditions for their conversion was that the Chinese language must be taught in these schools. There are seventy-eight such schools all over Malaysia. The second type is the national schools whose medium of instruction is Malay. In these schools, Chinese is offered as a subject if at least fifteen parents make a request. However, the offer of Chinese classes will depend on the availability of teaching staff, which is under the control of the Ministry of Education. Table 13.3 presents a comparison of the Chinese subject between these two types of schools.

The third role of the Chinese language is that it is offered as a second language in national primary schools. This program started in 1996 and expanded in 2003 with Malays and Indians as target students (Zheng Reference Zheng2010). According to Nanyang Siang Pau, there were 350 Chinese classes offered in national schools in 2009 (www.nanyang.com/node/221298).

13.5 Language contact due to frequent interactions with ethnic Malays

The interaction between Chinese and Malays could be traced back to the fifteenth century, when the majority of Chinese immigrants were male, a situation which resulted in intermarriage with local Malay women. Their offspring formed a unique group of Chinese, Baba (men) and Nyonya (women). As most Babas were of Hokkien origin, they spoke a variety of Hokkien, which was heavily influenced by Malay, especially at the level of lexicon (Tan Reference Tan, Lee and Tan2000). Loan words are borrowed bi-directionally, that is, from Malay to Hokkien and from Hokkien to Malay. The direct output of this deep and frequent language contact is the formation of Baba Malay, a creole with Malay as its superstrate and Hokkien as its substrate. Many scholars have analyzed its grammatical structure and phonological and lexical characteristics (Shellabear Reference Shellabear1913; Tan Reference Tan1980; Pakir Reference Pakir1986; Thurgood Reference Thurgood1998 among others). Most scholars claim that the grammar of Baba Malay is influenced by the Chinese language. For instance, the possessive marker punya, which is frequently used in Baba Malay, is influenced by the possessive structure in Hokkien (Shellabear Reference Shellabear1913). With the decline of the Baba community, Baba Malay is seldom heard in Malaysia. However, Bahasa Pasar or Bazaar Malay, a pidgin Malay, is extensively spoken by all ethnic groups. It is a mixture of Malay, Chinese, and Tamil.

The influence of Malay on the Chinese language is mainly manifested at the lexical level. Most loan words from Malay are nouns which are associated with food, religion, and other cultural concepts or activities. Table 13.4 shows some examples of these loanwords.

Most loanwords are adapted phonetically and contain changes that fit in with Chinese syllabic rules. For instance, when Datuk is borrowed into Chinese, the –k final stop is dropped because there is no final stop in Mandarin. There are also hybrid loanwords which combine both phonetic and semantic adaptation such as 巴冷刀 (parang). 刀 is attached to 巴冷 to indicate its semantic meaning. These words reflect the lifestyle in Malaysia, which is not shared with other Chinese-speaking regions.

These Malay words are also borrowed into various Chinese dialects such as Cantonese (Chen Reference Chen2003; Wang Reference Wang, Zhang, Zhang and Chen2007). Wang (Reference Wang, Zhang, Zhang and Chen2007) collected 293 loan words from Malay and English in Malaysian Cantonese and categorized them according to their type and part of speech. The main findings are that over 90 percent of these loan words are phonological loan words which undergo phonetic adaptation and almost 80 percent of them are nouns. Besides, level tones are attached to the borrowed syllables, which differ from their tones in Cantonese. Consonant replacement is also found in loan words such as the replacement of [r] with [l].

In a similar vein, Chinese language varieties are also influenced by English and Tamil, the major Indian language in Malaysia, but to a lesser extent. Besides, there are still many pidgin languages which have not yet been studied, such as the Hokkien dialect spoken by Kelantan Chinese, which is heavily influenced by the Kelantan Malay dialect.

13.6 The vitality of the Chinese language in Malaysia

Fishman (Reference Fishman1972) predicts that immigrants will undergo language shift within three generations. Chinese Malaysians, however, seem to be an exception, as the Chinese language varieties are still extensively spoken at home and in public spaces. To a great extent, most Chinese Malaysians still maintain their heritage language in addition to having proficiency in Malay, the national language, and English, the second most important language. According to a survey on language choice and language attitudes among Chinese secondary school students in Kuala Lumpur (Chong and Wang Reference Chong, Wang, Siew Ling and Xiaomei2009), Mandarin and Cantonese are the absolutely dominant home Chinese dialects (see Table 13.5).

Although Chinese language varieties are maintained in the family domain, intergenerational differences are observed in their language choices. The general trend is that Mandarin is gaining importance and Chinese dialects are losing ground to Mandarin, the result of sociolinguistic realignment (Wang Reference Wang2010). Minor dialects are undergoing shift toward either Mandarin or Cantonese, the prestige dialect in Kuala Lumpur. It is worth noting that older sibling patterns are very much like their parents, while younger ones reflect more strongly recent changes, with the exception of changes in English.

The use of the Chinese language is also found in public domains such as markets, food centers, and shopping centers. According to a study conducted in the State of Johor (Wang Reference Wang2009), Mandarin is used in 71.5 percent of business transactions between salespeople and customers while Hokkien is utilized in 22.1 percent of these interactions (N = 201). The conclusions are as follows: (1) Mandarin is dominant in public settings. (2) The more formal the setting is, the more Mandarin is used. (3) Age is a significant factor for language choice. The younger the interlocutors are, the more Mandarin is spoken. (4) More female customers tend to utilize Mandarin in public settings than males (Wang Reference Wang2009: 220).

The vitality of the Chinese language is also observed in the linguistic landscape. Wang and her research team (Reference Wang2013) carried out a linguistic landscape study in Kuala Lumpur Chinatown and found out that Chinese is used extensively in monolingual (54 percent), bilingual (76 percent), and trilingual (97 percent) signs (Table 13.6). Although it is regulated that the size of Malay text must be bigger than that of any other languages on public signs by the Kuala Lumpur Municipality, the Chinese language is dominant in 42 percent of the total signs (N = 388) in the main street of Kuala Lumpur Chinatown. The dominant usage of Chinese scripts on public signs is an indicator not only of linguistic vitality but also of Chinese identity.

Several factors contribute to the high degree of vitality of Chinese languages: (1) demographic factor, (2) status factor, and (3) institutional support factor (Mohan and Wang Reference Mohan and Wang2012). There is a large Chinese population in Malaysia which constitutes almost one fourth of the total population. Population size is definitely a positive factor for language maintenance. Although the Chinese language has no official status in Malaysia, it has a high economic value, as the Chinese population plays a significant role in the Malaysian economy. The salient economic status does have a great impact on the vitality of the Chinese language. Moreover, the Chinese language has received strong institutional support from education and mass media. Chinese schools use Mandarin as the medium of instruction. Chinese newspapers have a large readership in Malaysia. Chinese radio and TV programs are also popular in the Chinese community. All these factors in combination have led to the maintenance of the Chinese language and culture.

13.7 Future development of the Chinese language in Malaysia and concluding remarks

The evolution of the Chinese language in Malaysia has undergone several stages in the past centuries. It started with the monodialectal stage when Chinese immigrants were only able to speak their own dialect from their hometown in China. Once they began socializing with other dialect groups, they learned the prestige dialect in their region and became bidialectal. For instance, if this process happened in Malacca, Hokkien was the local lingua franca. If this occurred in Ipoh, Cantonese was the regional lingua franca. Among the early Chinese immigrants, the Baba formed a special group of Chinese, who spoke Baba Malay, Hokkien, or English (Tan Reference Tan, Lee and Tan2000). They are the so-called Peranakan Chinese (Tan Reference Tan1997). The pure Chinese or the mainstream Chinese, who are in contrast to Peranakan Chinese (Tan Reference Tan1997), also learned Malay when they socialized with ethnic Malays. After Mandarin was introduced through education in the 1920s, Mandarin gradually became part of the linguistic repertoire. Therefore, a multilingual capacity is commonly observed among Chinese Malaysians. They could speak their ancestral dialect, regional prestige dialect, Mandarin, Malay, and some English. After the 1980s, Mandarin became more prominent due to the economic development in China and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and China. Singapore, the neighboring country, launched the Speak Mandarin Campaignin 1979. Similar movements were also found in Malaysia, which promoted Mandarin in public domains. One of the consequences of the promotion of Mandarin was that the younger generation started to speak Mandarin at home and gave up their ancestral dialect. Consequently, language shift took place and minor dialects such as Hainanese and Foochow went into decline (Wang and Chong Reference Wang and Chong2011). Today, it is not uncommon to find that some young Chinese Malaysians are not able to speak any Chinese dialect. What is expected from them is to be trilingual and triliterary in Mandarin, Malay, and English.

If there is no strong language planning imposed on the Chinese language in the future, Malaysian Mandarin will retain its regional characteristics which differ from other varieties such as Putonghua in mainland China, Guoyu in Taiwan, and even Huayu in Singapore. It will be used in more domains within the Chinese community and replace other dialects as the lingua franca among Chinese Malaysians. A diglossic situation will come into being after other dialects further decline. Mandarin is for formal usage and regional prestige dialects for informal occasions. What underlies these changes is the subtle shift of identity among Chinese Malaysians. The strong identification with respective dialect groups has been substituted by the pan-Chinese identity (Tan Reference Tan1997), which is associated with the use of Mandarin.

As long as Chinese education is retained in the national education system, Mandarin will maintain its vitality in Malaysia. During our recent fieldwork in Penang, many interviewees commented on the future of Mandarin in Malaysia, which they believe depends on the economic growth in China. In their perception, the Chinese language has already become one of the international languages, which they are proud of. Most interviewees hold a positive attitude toward Mandarin. They contend that speaking Mandarin is essential to the Chinese identity and culture. This positive attitude will facilitate the intergenerational transmission of the Chinese language and the maintenance of the Chinese language at large.

14.1 Introduction

While the general aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the current role of Russia as a lingua franca in the Far East, a more specific aim is to ground this in a historical and cultural context that can shed light on the present situation. To speak of Russian as a lingua franca in the Far East is anything but simple. First, because of the geopolitical implications of the term Far East: east of what? Emerging in the twelfth century and gaining worldwide prevalence in the nineteenth century, the term is now associated with the period of European colonial expansion. The countries and regions covered by it are understood as being located at the far east of the Empire (in this context, Asia), thus placing them in an inferior position to the centre. The centre-periphery divide contained in the term is further deepened by the adjective ‘far’, suggesting that the area in question is not only east (a concept historically and culturally related to the mystical and exotic), but far east, and thus both the positive and the negative connotations of such a location are exalted.

On the other hand, the Far East includes both territories that are under Russian administration (the Russian Far East, known as the Far Eastern Federal District) and territories that belong to other countries (China, Japan, North and South Korea), which had or still have trading or other relations with Russia. The situation of the Russian language is different in each of these territories, and for clarity and precision I will use the terms Russian Far East and East Asia to refer to the heterogeneous association of lands where Russian was or is still used as a lingua franca. In the Russian Far East it continues to play a major role as a lingua franca due to sociopolitical and economic factors. On the contrary, in Far East Asia its role as a lingua franca is restricted to certain border areas with increased trading and migration fluxes. Its role as a lingua franca is further inhibited by the spread of English as the dominant language of international communication in East Asia.

14.2 Russian as a lingua franca

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a lingua franca is a language ‘used as a means of communication between populations speaking vernaculars that are not mutually intelligible’.¹ Historically, the evolution of some languages into lingua francas is linked to the formation of empires, a fact duly noted by the encyclopaedia as well: ‘Because they bring together very diverse groups of people, many empires and major economic entrepots have had lingua francas’. The networks of power that determine the choice of lingua francas are complex and long-lasting. Let us take the following example: In the Kamchatka region, two Koryaks will speak their native language only if they are middle or old-aged; the same holds true for Itelmens. A Russian and a Koryak will hold their conversation in Russian. Two young Koryaks or Itelmens will speak Russian at work, Russian on the street, will watch Russian TV channels and listen to Russian radio. Russian is the official language of the region whose inhabitants cover a wide ethnic spectrum: Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Koryaks, Itelmens and others. As such, Russian is the lingua franca of the region, although its speakers do not freely choose it as a means of communication. They are forced to use it if they want a good education, a job, entertainment, a place in society and prestige. Searching for the reasons that determine language shift, Bobaljik (Reference Bobaljik and Kasten1998: 20) notes that the ‘free choice’ of Russian over Itelmen or another native language is determined by a mixture of social and political factors. Among these are: 1) the threat of punishment on the part of authorities for the natives that fail to assimilate, 2) greater opportunities associated with Russian, the ‘enter the mainstream’ imperative, or 3) the great effort required to preserve traditional ways of life, which makes choosing Russian the path of least resistance. The choice of a lingua franca cannot be free: there are powerful factors at play in today’s world that determine the use of either English or Russian as a lingua franca. As Russia has been one of the major actors in Central and Far East Asia, it is no wonder that Russian is used as a lingua franca in the area.

14.3 Russian in East Asia

Although Russian is sporadically used as a lingua franca in business and trade in East Asia, it cannot compete with English, which is the preferred lingua franca in the area. As Proshina (Reference Proshina2008: 125) remarks, ‘Chinese-Russian or Japanese-Russian negotiations are not infrequently conducted in English’. The reasons are various, but they mainly include the political history of Russia–China and Russia–Japan relationships as well as the changing economic situation, with China’s dramatic rise in the last decade and Russia’s declining economic power.

Russia’s relationships with China and Japan have had their ups and downs, and both countries have been regarded with suspicion by Russia. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the interest in learning Russian fell considerably, as the political relations between the two countries were strained. Russian authorities fear China’s demographic expansion, which has led to a rising number of Chinese immigrants in the Russian Far Eastern cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok (depopulated due to economic hardship). Many regional leaders have used the nationalist scare of a Chinese invasion to get reelected. Relationships with Japan have been even more strained, not by migration, but because of the enmity during World War II, the disputes over Sakhalin Island and the Russian annexation of the Southern Kurils.

Razumovskaya and Sokolovsky (Reference Razumovskaya and Sokolovsy2012: 929) note that, due to the altered geopolitical situation and the boost of the new Asian economies during the last two decades, the traditional set of foreign languages has changed. It now includes some East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and West Asian Turkish. In the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), young ethnic Yakuts prefer learning oriental languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) to learning Russian (Ivanova Reference Ivanova2008: 135), as they offer better chances for finding employment by migration. This development also reflects the new set of economic relations that Russia has forged with its historical neighbours, which have also been its traditional rivals. On the other hand, the interest in Russian has been revived in many schools and universities in north-east China, with Beijing, Shanghai and Harbin as the most popular centres for teaching and studying Russian (Razumovskaya and Sokolovsky Reference Razumovskaya and Sokolovsy2012: 930). In the border territories, where work-related migration is frequent, Russian authorities have taken measures to encourage the use of Russian. Thus, the Federation has recently launched a programme called ‘Russian language’ for foreigners to be implemented between 2011 and 2015. It is subsidizing the production of textbooks and the training of teachers for the migrants and their children. For the Chinese and other migrants willing to work in the field of administration, the taking of a state exam in the Russian language is mandatory (Laletina Reference Laletina2013: 161).

Because of the unresolved border issues between Russia and Japan and a lingering mutual suspicion between the Russians and Chinese, English is preferred for reasons of it being more neutral. An interesting fact outlined by Proshina (Reference Proshina2008: 126) is that the need for the linguistic concept of World Englishes had initially arisen in the Russian Far East because of the necessity of Russians to communicate with ‘neighboring nonnative English speakers by means of English’. In the context of globalization, English has gained considerable ground as the main foreign language taught both in the Russian Far East and East Asia, since it will play a major part in the future development of these regions. Ethnic minorities from the Russian Far East, while under pressure to give up their native languages and become Russian speakers, are equally eager to learn English as the language of educational opportunities.² English is perceived as the language of international communication and education, and as such it enjoys an unparalleled prestige (Laletina Reference Laletina2013: 162).

14.4 The Russian Far East

A part of Siberia and the largest of the federal districts, the Russian Far East is simultaneously the least densely populated area, with an average of one person per square kilometre. Geographically, it is bounded by the East Siberian Sea in the north, the Bering Sea and the Sea of Japan in the east, the Chinese province of Manchuria in the south and the Lena River in the west. Administratively, the Russian Far East is made up of nine units, republics, regions and territories (respublik, oblast, krai): Yakutia (the Sakha republic), the Amur Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Chukotka Autonomous Oblast, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Primorye, the Sakhalin Oblast and Kamchatka Oblast. The rivers that cross the Russian Far East serve as trading routes between the Far East and other parts of Asia (that is why it is sometimes called ‘the gateway to Asia’), and via the railway system (the Trans-Siberian) their connection extends to European Russia.

Linguistically as well as geographically, the Russian Far East has always been an area of rich diversity, although linguistic policies, both during the tsarist Russian Empire and the communist USSR, have had a negative effect on the indigenous languages, leading effectively to the death of some of them and affecting the status and social prestige of all the indigenous languages in general. The current situation cannot be explained without a brief reference to the language policies implemented in the former USSR.

14.5 An overview of linguistic policies in the USSR

During tsarist rule, Russian functioned as the only official language of the empire. The attitude to minority languages varied across the empire, being mainly influenced by political and strategic considerations. While the regime gave a relatively free hand to the study of local languages in areas where ethnic conflict was not a problem, it was mostly neglectful of areas like Siberia and the Far East. Here, most of the local population was illiterate and most native languages had no written form.

The language policy of the Soviet Union was designed to counteract what the Bolsheviks saw as the capitalist imperialist policy of tsarist Russia. Lenin put forward a proposal of promoting equality for all the languages spoken in the Soviet Union, regardless of the number of native speakers. Russian was deprived of its official status and it was stipulated that the new Soviet State would have no official language. Everyone was to have the right to speak and to study in their native language. In 1919 a new decree About the liquidation of illiteracy among the population of the USSR guaranteed that every citizen would learn to read and write either in his native language or in Russian. In March 1921, the Tenth Party Congress clearly stated the goals of the Soviet language policy, which was called korenizatsiia (indigenization): the consolidation of administrative, judicial and governmental bodies as well as the development of education, media and cultural institutions in the languages of the non-Russian populations. Yet the reality disproved the utopian dream of minorities being educated in their native language. Finding local teachers and providing textbooks was very difficult. Further, the question of which alphabet to choose for the newly created written forms took very long to be settled.³ All this changed after Lenin’s death and Stalin’s accession to power.

If early Soviet language policy was dictated by Lenin’s thinking on the importance of the national question, Stalin argued for a centralized multinational state and carried out a deliberate policy of russification. Nationalism was disparaged as it led to conflict and the possible disintegration of the USSR. An immediate result of Stalin’s policy was to declare Russian a compulsory subject in 1938 and to switch from the Latin to the Cyrillic alphabet. An argument in favour of the russification of local languages was the need for modernization and industrialization: as early as 1913, in his essay ‘Marxism and the national question’, Stalin had attacked the communist project of national–cultural autonomy on the grounds that it froze the identities of backward people.

From the 1930s onward, the korenizatsiia campaign went into a steady decline, being ended by Stalin in 1934. Russian gained even more ground under the presidency of both the reformist Nikhita Khrushchev and the traditionalist Leonid Brezhnev. An important landmark was the 1958 Educational Reform during the Khrushchev era. Khrushchev put forward the idea of ‘a new Soviet people, united not only politically, but through the use of one language’. According to Kreindler (Reference Kreindler and Kirkwood1989: 219–31), Russian was seen as a lingua franca with a very special role in creating rapprochement (sblizhenie) of the many nationalities and ethnicities in the USSR.

Following Lenin’s language policy, non-Russian nations and ethnic minorities in the USSR had chosen to receive primary and secondary education in their national or native languages. Afterwards it was left to parental choice to determine what their children’s language of instruction should be (either their native language or Russian) and even to ‘decide whether they be taught their native language at all’ (Kreindler Reference Kreindler and Kirkwood1989: 49). This development resulted in an increase of instruction in Russian at the expense of the native languages and led to the diminished use as well as the diminished social prestige of those languages. As Zamyatin (Reference Zamyatin2012: 19) explains, ‘parents were forced to choose Russian for their children rather than their native language as a language of opportunity’. Dyachkov and Abramova (Reference Dyachkov and Abramova2010: 55) note that by being forced to acquire Russian, the native peoples were gradually led to acculturation and de-ethnicization, and to situations where many individuals from the minority nations did not master properly either Russian or their native language.

At the end of the Soviet rule a hierarchy of languages was in place, regulated by an educational and language policy that allotted funds in a discriminatory way. Grenoble (Reference Grenoble2003: 3–4) provides a detailed description of this system, which favoured Russian at the expense of minority languages and which led to the disappearance of many tribal and local languages in the Far East:

The implementation of such a language policy was to have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. Not all the republics and the regions of the former USSR responded in a similar manner: some languages resisted and gained autonomy later, after the break-up of the USSR, while others dwindled and are currently in danger of extinction. The policy of the four tiers privileged languages enjoying an official status and those spoken by a greater majority, to the disadvantage of smaller ethnic languages. The huge difference in the language vitality of Azerbaijani and Kazakh (Turkic languages in Central Asia), on the one hand, and Koryak and Itelmen (from the Paleosiberian family in the Far East) on the other is a result of their belonging to different tiers and being allocated resources differently. Identity issues and nationalism also played an important part in the survival of some languages and the disappearance of others. Republics in Central Asia which identified with a pan-Islamic identity were more able to hold onto their national languages than the dispersed populations of Siberia and the Far East, which were characterized more by clan affiliation than a stable sense of national identity.

14.6 Linguistic policies in the Russian Far East

At the beginning of the twentieth century, after the Civil War, the Russian Far East did not officially become a part of the Soviet Union until 1922. Due to its remote location and poor connections to Russia’s European core, the Far East had been from the beginning of Russian colonization a place of relative freedom, which managed to escape the control of the centre. This meant on the one hand an increased foreign presence (mainly Japanese and American, but also Chinese and Korean) and on the other a distancing of local authorities and governors from the strict commands emanating from Moscow.

During the NEP (New Economic Policy) period, Siberia and the Far East managed to maintain this degree of autonomy due to the pragmatic management of a group of independent Party leaders, who gave a free hand to local officials. As a result of these policies, the Russian Far East improved transport and communication lines and on the basis of a functional infrastructure developed commercial links with China and Japan.

In 1924, an organization that was to pay more attention to the development of Siberia and the far north was created, the Committee of the North, which included scholars like B. M. Zhitkov, V. G. Bogoraz and L. Ya. Shternberg (the latter two had spent years as political exiles in the area). Consequently, a lot of resources and time were invested into cultural and educational policies designed to preserve the indigenous cultures and lifestyles of the Siberian people. The Committee of the North was responsible for the implementation of a wide range of medical, educational and sociocultural programs through the newly set-up ‘kultbazy’ (cultural bases). Because the native languages lacked a written form, the first schools used Russian as the language of instruction. The task of education in the native languages proved overwhelming: an appropriate alphabet and grammatical description were required for each language, together with the creation of dictionaries, textbooks and other pedagogical material. In 1930, the Institute of Northern People was established with the aim of providing higher education for people of Siberian and Far Eastern ethnicity, who were then sent back to the Far East as teachers or administrative personnel.

Economic prosperity was also brought about by an extensive investment in human resources: the ‘likbez’ campaign (likvidatsiia bezgramatnosti, the liquidation of illiteracy) set in motion by Lenin’s policy met with success, improving literacy rates both among the Russian and the indigenous population. However, Stalin’s accession to power put an end to the economic and cultural progress. He started the dekulakization⁴ and collectivization campaign (which tragically ended Siberia’s role as the granary of the USSR), and used the money from the exploitation of its natural wealth to finance his plans to transform it into an experimental laboratory of industrialization. He also returned this territory to its pre-Communist role as a prison for political outlaws. The industrialization of the Far East, which included the development of new towns like Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Sovetskaya Gavan, Magadan and Norilsk (the latter two turned into forced labour centres as well) went hand in hand with the purges of the ‘Great Terror’ (1934–1939). The victory in World War II prompted Stalin to go further eastward and invade Sakhalin Island, controlled by the Japanese. As the Far East was an important military outpost for Stalin’s regime, the latter carried out an intense policy of russification at the expense of the Korean and Japanese minorities, which he saw as the most threatening.

The official decree of 1938, which made Russian a compulsory subject, and the Educational Reform of 1958 made the local national schools dwindle: in the 1970s, according to Zamyatin (Reference Zamyatin2012: 19), ‘the native language of instruction almost disappeared in urban areas and continued functioning in reduced numbers, mostly in rural areas’. In the 1980s, only Yakut was used as the language of instruction in secondary education in the territory of the Far East.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Far East experienced a period of chaos. Neglected by the central authorities in Moscow, the Far East descended into deep economic crisis under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Driven by pragmatic geopolitical considerations, Vladimir Putin reconsidered Moscow’s strategy in connection with the development of the region. Therefore, a State Commission for the Far East was created in 2006, and in 2012, the Ministry for the Far East was established with the goal of administering development projects founded by the Federation. The revived interest in the Far East came as a response to fears that increased trading links between China and Russia’s border provinces would lead to the detachment of the eastern region from the centre. In addition, legal and illegal immigration in the border provinces threatened to unsettle the balance between the dwindling numbers of ethnic Russians and local populations on the one hand, and the rising numbers of Chinese and South Koreans on the other. Chinese immigrants provided the labour force in agriculture, mining, forestry and construction. While at first the reaction of the nationalist local elites was extremely negative, pressuring Moscow to abolish the no visa border crossing regime that allowed unrestricted Chinese immigration, in recent years the policy towards Chinese immigration has switched from an exclusionary to an assimilative one. Thus, the central government has decided to implement the programme ‘Russian language’ for foreigners (see Russian in East Asia).

14.7 Russian today: a lesson never learnt?

In the two decades after the collapse of the former USSR, the issue of the Russian language as a lingua franca for the new Russian Federation has followed a trajectory similar to that of the transitional period following the October Revolution. The diffusion of the Russian language was the result of complex historical events including the preference of Russian as the language of governance and instruction in the USSR, and the long-standing Soviet dislocation/relocation programme to move ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians to the periphery.

The legacy of the Soviet Union proved very difficult to ignore. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the course that the Russian Federation chose in regard to educational and language policies followed closely the path from liberalization to centralization that had been the developmental route of the Soviet Union.

The first decade of this new policy of decentralization and autonomy was a period of national, cultural and linguistic revival for many republics and regions from the Russian Federation. Linguistic policies had different results, however, for the autonomous republics (the ones that chose to separate from the Federation) and for those that chose to stay inside the Russian Federation for economic reasons. The need for ethnic self-identification and preservation of their cultural heritage drove many nations from the Russian Federation to pay increasing attention and allocate resources to the development of their native languages. Overall, the number of native languages used in the educational system rose: thirty-nine indigenous languages were used in national schools as media of instruction, while fifty were taught as a separate subject. This situation is better compared to the previous period before the demise of the USSR, yet, as Zamyatin (Reference Zamyatin2012: 21) remarks, the number of native languages taught today is smaller than the number of native languages that were used as a medium of instruction before Khrushchev’s Educational Reform. Furthermore, the number of languages used in education is no indicator of the increased spread and use of the native languages, as some of the indigenous languages constitute media of instruction only for a handful of children (one hundred or so) in some of the regions.

In contrast to the early period of the Soviet Union, when the equality of languages was formally acknowledged and the state sponsored and invested in the development of national and ethnic languages, the policy of the Russian Federation was to officially pronounce cultural and linguistic autonomy and equality, while preserving in actual fact the traditional hierarchization of nations, people and groups, which implies different statuses for native languages, dependent on whether they are the state (official) languages of the republics or just the native languages of people in the republic. The four-tiered legal regime of the languages in the Russian Federation comprises languages of the people of the Russian Federation; the state language of the Russian Federation; the state language of the republics and the native languages. Following the Soviet line of thinking, the term native language designates the language of the ethnic group one identifies with (and not one’s mother tongue). Because identification with a certain ethnic group is more a cultural-subjective matter, the importance of the native languages has dwindled during the changing fortunes of a difficult transition. In a study on the native/minority languages, Titova (Reference Titova2006: 204) concludes that their role is mostly a symbolic one, as a marker of ethnic identity and they function only as a principle of ethnic integration and consolidation. Spurned by more pragmatic considerations, and the economic incentives that are associated with the learning of Russian, millions of people in the non-Russian republics choose to study and speak Russian instead of their native language. The situation is not homogeneous of course, yet one thing is certain: the ‘small people’ of Siberia and the Far East, driven by poverty and torn between the endless conflicts between regional and federal authorities, have virtually no chance to hold onto their native languages.

However, the status of Russian is different. Designated by Article 3 of the Language Law of the Russian Federation⁵ as the state language of the Russian Federation, Russian continues to be the lingua franca of administration and communication without any important rivals. The teaching of Russian is compulsory at every stage of the educational process (except kindergarten). The other republics of the federation have a right to choose their own state language, and in multinational states where both Russian and another language are designated as official languages, bi- and multilingualism is a persistent feature. Nowadays, Russian represents the official language of education in 65 per cent of the schools in the Russian Federation – the rest are national schools, where a national language is used in education.⁶ The ratio of national schools has steadily increased since the break-up of the USSR. In 1990, only 13 per cent of the total number of schools had education in the national language (Laletina Reference Laletina2013: 161). At this point it must be noted that the overwhelming 80 per cent of national schools functioning in several republics (the Republic of Sakha included) should not be taken as a sign that the native languages are gaining ground, because most native (indigenous) languages do not enjoy the legal status of an official language. In order to use a native language as the language of education, it must be declared the official language of a republic, region or territory.

14.8 Russian versus the native/minority languages in today’s Russian Far East

The sociolinguistic reality of the Russian Far East is a complex one. In order to describe it, a wide range of terms are employed in the relevant literature, some of them overlapping. Thus, a difference is made among national, ethnic and tribal languages, on the basis of the organization and development of the social groups that use a language. National languages are spoken by nations (large ethnic communities) and they receive federal funds for development. In contrast, ethnic and tribal languages, which have only a limited number of speakers, are clearly discriminated against with respect to the allocation of funds. Native languages are those from a specific region or territory (oblast or krai), while ‘indigenous’ refers to the languages native to the whole of Siberia and the Far East. From a legal point of view, an official language is the language that is used as a means of interethnic communication in multinational regions and republics. Some republics and regions have two official state languages: Russian and the titular language. A titular language is the language used by the ethnic majority in one of the republics, regions and territories, other than Russian. The terms titular and national⁷ refer basically to the same thing (Felde Reference Felde2011).

The ethnic make-up of Siberia and the Russian Far East is highly heterogeneous. Most republics, regions and territories are multiethnic and multinational. Bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm among the indigenous population, and sometimes frequent among Russians living in the area. While the indigenous people are forced by law to display competence in Russian (as this is legally the official language of the Federation), Russians often remain monolingual. Only in the Republic of Sakha, where Yakut is declared the titular/official language of the republic, do Russians feel compelled to acquire some competence in Yakut – either because they are required to do so by institutional priorities or because they are of mixed Russian-Yakut ancestry (Ivanova Reference Ivanova2008: 136–8).

The most important indigenous languages of the Russian Far East are from the Altaic family: Yakut/Sakha (the Mongolian branch), Evenki, Even, Nanai, Oroch, Ulch and Udege (the Tungusic branch), and the Paleosiberian family: Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen, Yukagir, Nivkh and Eskimo/Siberian Yupik. On Sakhalin Island, Korean and Tatar are also spoken by important communities. These indigenous languages are traditionally grouped into ‘small’ and ‘large’ language groups, according to speaker population size (the dividing line is under or over 40,000 people who speak a language). Nowadays, with the exception of Yakut, all these ethnic languages are on the UNESCO list of ‘Endangered languages of indigenous peoples of Siberia’.

When the first attempts at mapping the native languages were made by the Soviet planners, the great diversity of the spoken languages, the multilingualism of Far Eastern speakers and the dearth of financial resources proved major obstacles to recording and describing the existing languages. The solution to this query was a bureaucratic one: some overlapping languages were classified together. As Grenoble (Reference Grenoble2003: 165) explains:

The utopian vein of Soviet planning and centralization, and the drive to rewrite history became thus visible even in what should have been a scientific enterprise of recording and describing the native languages. Some ‘small’ languages died out as a result of Soviet central planning, which commanded the dislocation and relocation of ethnic minorities and started a ‘renaming’ process by which different communities that spoke similar languages were ascribed artificially manufactured group identities.

What is the status of the native languages today? Some retain their vitality, some have barely survived, many are endangered, and several are on the point of dying out. In the Republic of Sakha, for instance, Yakut (renamed as Sakha) has the status of an official language, while all the other regions (including the Autonomous Jewish region) have only Russian as an official language. As stated before, the status of official language is very important for the allocation of state resources that allow the preservation of a language. Yakut was fortunate in this respect, as it was one of the ‘largest’ languages, with about 400,000 speakers and one of the few who had a written form before the Bolshevik Revolution. The Yakut linguist S. Novgorodov had created an alphabet for the Yakut language based on the Latin script, which was officially adopted by the new Soviet government in 1921. The important status of Yakut is also reflected in the fact that it is spoken by other ethnic communities in the area such as the Evenki, the Even, the Yukagir, and some Russians.

Evenki is a special case, as the Evenki communities are unequally dispersed through Siberia and the Far East. Grenoble (Reference Grenoble2003: 189) notes that ‘language retention rates are high in the Amur region and Khbarovsk territory, at 50 per cent; in Sakha it ranges from 12 to 15 per cent; this is due, of course, to competition from Russian and Yakut, which is preferred in mixed familes of Evenkis and Yakuts.

Other native languages have not been that fortunate. Eskimo/Siberian Yupik, one of the ‘small’ languages, is an endangered one today: Yupiks live in multinational communities and are sometimes assimilated to the larger group (such as Chuckhi or Russian)⁸, while their education is conducted entirely in Russian. In Kamchatka two native languages are spoken: Koryak and Itelmen. Koryak, being the language of the Koryak autonomous region, has more vitality than Itelmen. In a study on the linguistic situation in Kamchatka, Glushcenko (Reference Gluschenko2004: 100) acknowledges that there can be no comparison between the communicative efficiency in Russian on the one hand and in the native languages on the other, as ‘Russian is beyond competition’. Itelmen has only a hundred speakers, and has, as Gluschcenko (Reference Gluschenko2004: 100) remarks, no future since:

Chukchi (spoken in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug) and Even (spoken by scattered communities of reindeer herders across the Far East) retain some of their vitality, as the young generation can understand it and speak it, yet they rarely do so, preferring to conduct conversations in Russian. Nanai, Oroch and Ulch (spoken in Khabarovsk Krai) are used mostly by the older generation, with the young and the middle-aged using it occasionally. Udege (spoken in small areas from Khabarovsk Krai and Primorye), Nivkh (spoken in some villages from Sakhalin Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai) and Yukagir (spoken in scattered villages in Yakutia) have very low retention rates, as they are used only by the older generation, while the middle-aged can sometimes understand and use them (Vahtin Reference Vahtin and Kasten1998; Grenoble Reference Grenoble2003).

In contrast, Russian enjoys not only the status of state language in the Far East, but also the high prestige associated with a lingua franca. Even in remote towns and villages, where dissatisfaction with the Putin regime is very high, Russian retains its high cultural prestige. This may be due to pragmatic concerns: higher education and a well-paid job are dependent on one’s knowledge of Russian. What is really amazing is not that Russian has imposed its status as a lingua franca through a mixture of soft and strong politics, but that there is very little resistance to it among the ethnic minorities in the Far East. That the Russian language should be declared ‘a major unifying factor for people in the post-Soviet space’⁹ by a Russian State Duma Speaker is understandably in line with Putin’s politics of centralization. Yet the same statement was echoed with more than polite enthusiasm at a conference by participants from the post-Soviet space in 2013. Sytnik reported that:

All in all, it seems that globalization, allied with the pragmatic policy of presidents Putin and Medvedev, has managed to achieve more than Stalin’s repressive and violent policies: today, Russian’s status as the lingua franca of a multinational empire remains unchallenged.

14.9 Conclusion

Being the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, Russian seems to have maintained its status as a lingua franca mostly on account of its former status as the administrative lingua franca of the tsarist and then the Soviet Russian Empire. While early Soviet language policy led to a certain degree of cultural emancipation of the ethnic minorities in the Far East, the aggressive policy of russification carried on by Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev established Russian as the undisputed lingua franca of the Soviet multinational empire. Today, the efforts of the Putin regime to revive the mighty Soviet state have also made a significant contribution to the current enhanced prestige of Russian. The governments of both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation have supported Russian as a means of promoting unity among the many nationalities of the country.

In East Asia, Russian is only sporadically used as a lingua franca on the fringes of the Far Eastern Federal District and in the Russian–Chinese border regions, its main competitors being English and Chinese. This situation is due to the historical conflicts between Russia and its neighbours, which have prevented the development of trade and other relations. In contrast, in the Russian Far East, Russian retains an unchallenged supremacy as the language of public administration and of the scientific and academic communities. Because Russian is associated with higher social status and economic prosperity, language shift from the native languages to Russian is frequent, a process which may prove detrimental to the survival of the native languages of the Far East, many of which have only a few hundred speakers left.

15.1 Introduction

The region of Central or Middle Asia includes former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Most of the indigenous languages of these newly formed states belong to the Turkic family, that is, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Turkmen, while Tajik is in the Persian branch of the Indo-European language family (which makes us exclude it from this chapter as it does not fit the title. However, the major processes and trends described here can also be associated with Tajikistan). All these languages have always been in dynamic contact with other languages such as Arabic, Farsi, Mongol, Chinese, Korean, German and Russian. Before the downfall of the USSR, Russian was a co-official language in all these republics and obligatory in schools. Mass bilingualism was therefore a characteristic of all communities. But the situation was not equilingual. Pavlenko (Reference Pavlenko2006: 83) rightly said that ‘titular languages¹ of the USSR enjoyed the right to autonomy but not the right to equality’. In other words, they might have been widely used in everyday life, as family languages, but their official functioning was far inferior to Russian. In addition to Russian and the indigenous language, the education systems of these republics introduced a foreign language (at least at the basic level of command) such as English, German or French, with English prevailing at school.

The linguistic situation in the last two and a half decades has changed drastically. These former Soviet republics are now independent states and have gone on different paths. The role of Russian and ethnic languages has been recast dramatically. This chapter will discuss the relations between the languages in Central Asia in the twenty-first century, the main trends in the language policy of the newly established countries, the range and the depth of the indigenous languages, Russian and English as well as their coexistence and rivalry. I will treat the new states (except Tajikistan) individually and wind up the chapter by discussing the differences between them and what foreigners need to know in the conclusion.

15.2 Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is a transcontinental country located in northern Central Asia, with its smaller part west of the Ural River in Eastern Europe. Its population speaks 130 languages and has maintained Russian best of all states. According to the 2009 census, with 23.7 per cent of the population being Russian, the Russian language is claimed to be used by 84.8 per cent of the population, including 92.5 per cent of the urban and 74.9 per cent of the rural population (Report of the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2008). However, Arefyev (Reference Arefyev2012: 85), who analysed the linguistic situation in former Soviet republics in detail, argues that in 2009 the number of people speaking Russian fluently was no more than 76.3 per cent. He maintains that there was a methodological error in the poll, as many people who could only understand or read Russian and non-Russian children under fourteen, who were learning Russian at school, were counted as speakers of Russian. The Kazakh language was found to be used by 64.4 per cent of the population, including Russians, Uzbeks, Uigurs, Tatars and other minority groups.

Both Kazakh and Russian are now official languages of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as announced in the Constitution adopted in 1995. At the turn of the century, the linguistic situation became more favourable for Russian as compared with the situation in the period after declaring independence. The 1989 law ‘On languages’ led to the policy of kazakhization (synonymous with de-russification). Due to this law, the number of Russian-speaking people started to decrease dramatically as they felt enormous pressure to change their functional language, being unable to speak Russian in an administrative position and in public places, which was the outright discrimination against them. Discrimination became even worse when a great many of the originally Russian place names were substituted by Kazakh toponyms – for example, the city of Tselinograd (the former Cossack post of Akmolinsk) was announced as the country’s new capital Astana. The next law on languages, passed in 1997, was an attempt to repair the situation: it allowed people to choose any of the two official languages in the workplace, which somewhat reduced the rate of the Slavic emigration from Kazakhstan. The law also guaranteed a choice of language of education, Kazakh or Russian.

Stabilization of the linguistic situation is now facilitated by the mass media, a great many of which still use Russian. In 2010, 85.3 per cent of local and republican periodicals, both in the capital city and smaller cities, were published in Russian, which was much more than in the late 1980s. Bilingual newspapers and magazines contained about 70 per cent of materials in Russian (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 85). Of 200 TV and radio channels, five channels broadcast only in Kazakh, others have programmes both in Kazakh and Russian, though the tendency to reduce Russian-language broadcasting is evident. Even Russia-based channels, when broadcasting in Kazakhstan, are to have no less than 30 per cent of programmes in Kazakh starting from 2014 and no less than 50 per cent from 2015 onwards, according to the new law ‘On tele- and radio broadcasting’ (Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan Reference Tan2012).

In the Soviet period, Kazakhstan had its own poetry and fiction in Russian – the translingual creative works were contributed by the renowned Olzhas Suleimenov. After proclaiming its independence, Kazakhstan still has some authors writing in Russian; in 2007, for example, two novels were published by Kazakh writers – Krug pepla (‘The Ash Circle’) by D. Nakipov and Sny okayannye (‘Damned Dreams’) by A. Zhaksylykov. Though the novels received positive reviews, critics were sceptical about the cultural symbiosis expressed in them, for the novels are characterized neither by Russianness nor by Kazakhness; hybridity characterizes a new quality (Ivanov Reference Ivanov2008).

In education, the de facto status of Russian is lowering due to the rivalry with Kazakh as an official language and English as an international language. President Nursultan Nazarbayev set an objective to have the Kazakh language, as the ‘spiritual core’ (Isaeva and Sultaniarova Reference Isaeva and Sultaniarova2013: 13) of the nation, prevail in all spheres of life and become the language of universal communication. The State program for the development and functioning of languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2011–2020, adopted by the Decree of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 110, 29 June 2011, targets that by 2020, 95 per cent of people in the republic must be able to speak Kazakh. Today more than 60 per cent of secondary school students are learning in Kazakh and all schools teach it (Isaeva and Sultaniarova Reference Isaeva and Sultaniarova2013: 15). In tertiary education, the number of students who take Kazakh courses has been increasing, with 30 per cent of students in 2000 and about 50 per cent in 2009–2010 (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 90). Meanwhile, the Russian language is still of value as the language of great cultural heritage and broadening sociocultural and educational horizons. Moreover, for Slavic ethnic groups, as well as Germans living in Kazakhstan, it has become ‘a factor of ethnic self-expression’ (Isaeva and Sultaniarova Reference Isaeva and Sultaniarova2013). The replacement of Russian by the titular language or by English as a global language (see below) is slowed by the population’s need for the Russian language that, despite its rivalry with Kazakh, is still the major means for intercultural communication and acquiring information in the domains of politics, economics, science, technology and culture.

The Russian language in Kazakhstan, like in any other post-Soviet republic, adheres, in general, to the norms and standards of the literary variety of Russian. Nevertheless, it is only natural that Central Asian Russian has been influenced by the indigenous languages and cultures; therefore, the question of linguistic features of these varieties has been under discussion, with some linguists arguing that we are witnessing the emergence of a pluricentric language with a number of specific regional varieties (Zhuravleva Reference Zhuravleva2008; Sabitova Reference Sabitova2013), while some argue against this statement, saying that it is too early to speak about distinctive varieties of Russian (Suleimenova Reference Suleimenova2011; Dzhusupov Reference Dzhusupov2013; Bakhtikireyeva Reference Bakhtikireyeva2014). Be that as it may, lexical borrowings testifying to the Russian language’s acculturation to indigenous cultures, as well as its phonetic features are serious arguments to support the first point of view.

The government of the Kazakhstan Republic has adopted the Triunity of Languages Cultural Project, the implementation of which will make the population trilingual, with Kazakh, Russian and English as mandatory languages for every citizen of the country. Knowledge of English has been a weak point to date. According to the 2009 census, only 8.6 per cent of the population claimed proficient knowledge of English. 3.9 per cent could only understand English speech (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 85). The problem is rooted in the fact that those who know English well, as a rule, do not want to teach – they find better-paid jobs in various companies where English is a job requirement.

To enhance the country’s integration with the international community, Kazakh authorities have been working on a project to romanize the Kazakh language. Experts from the republic’s Ministry of Education and Science argue that the Cyrillic writing of Kazakh is a remnant of the past and interferes with the development of the nation.

Apart from schools with the two official languages, Kazakh and Russian, there are also fifty-eight Uzbek schools, fourteen Uigur schools, two Tadjik schools and seven schools with English as a language of education. There are also classes taught in Chechen, Turkish and German. This makes it possible to claim that Kazakhstan maintains a multilingual policy, with the Kazakh language domineering in almost all the fields. Russian, though still an official language and a lingua franca in the post-Soviet space, is gradually giving way to English as an international language. However, it will probably take a long time for English to supersede Russian, since personal contacts of Kazakhstan residents with relatives and friends in Russia are still strong and economic ties between the two countries, members of the Customs Union, are on the rise.

15.3 Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan has the largest number of residents in the region – about 50 per cent of the entire Middle Asian population. Uzbeks are in the majority (80 per cent); representatives of Central Asia’s other ethnicities amount to over 10 per cent. Russians make up the largest ethnic minority (5.5 per cent). Besides, the population includes Karakalpaks (2.5 per cent), Tatars (1.5 per cent), Kyrgyz (1 per cent) and other ethnicities (Uzbekistan legislation 2012).

Uzbek is the language of about 20 million Uzbeks living in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The language has a number of dialects. The issue of language and cultural identity in this multi-ethnic republic, like many others of the former Soviet Union, is complicated. Many Tajiks living here, for example, consider themselves Uzbek in culture and lifestyle, though they retain the Tajik language. Others, for instance, Qipchaqs and Khojas, have been more resistant to uzbekization, avoiding intermarriages. The Karakalpaks, who live in the desert south of the Aral Sea, have a separate language and traditions more akin to Kazakh than Uzbek (Erlich Reference Erlich2013).

The Soviet period generated widespread bilingualism in the titular and Russian languages. Bilingualism still remains in Uzbekistan (Hasanova Reference Hasanova2007: 277), with about 40 per cent of the country’s population knowing Uzbek and Russian to a certain degree, though only 14 per cent are active bilinguals (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 122). The percentage decrease in fluent speakers of Russian is due to the country’s policy of rapid nationalization and emigration of the Slavic population – in 1989, the Russian diaspora in Uzbekistan made up 8.3 per cent of the entire population (Demoskop Weekly 2013), decreasing to 2.8 per cent in two decades. Cities like Andijan and Ferghana, whose populations had been only half Uzbek, are now virtually entirely Uzbek (Erlich Reference Erlich2013). Many Russians still residing in Uzbekistan do not speak Uzbek, and for them the nationalization policy is a real threat.

In the 1989 law on languages, Russian was defined as a language of intercultural communication. In 1995, the law changed. Neither in its wording nor in the amendment passed in 2004 is Russian mentioned as an interethnic language. Nor are other ethnic languages – Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, etc. Their functioning is ensured only ‘at the places of compact residence of ethnic groups’ (Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan 1995: Article 5). In the last decade, the status of Russian, spoken mostly in cities, has shifted to become one of the foreign languages studied in Uzbekistan schools, colleges and universities.

According to the current constitution and the latest law on languages, Uzbek is the only official language of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The constitution claims that the state ensures respect for other languages in the country and creates conditions for their development. However, in reality, the law caused interethnic conflicts among Russians and Uzbeks, which resulted in a growing emigration of Russian professionals from the republic. According to unofficial sources, two thirds of the Slavic minorities have left Uzbekistan (Khalikov Reference Khalikov2006) due to racism and discrimination. At the turn of the century, cases of burning Russian books were reported. Russian names of streets, towns, and cities were changed into Uzbek ones. About 700 villages and districts were given new names that, in view of the regional toponymic commission, better suited the Uzbek lifestyle and reflected the country’s history. However, many worthy names of renowned Uzbeks were also substituted for no good reason – for example, the street named after Shoakhmed Shamakhmudov – an Uzbek blacksmith who adopted fifteen orphans of various nationalities during World War II – was restored to its historical name Toshkucha, which means ‘stone street’.

These days, as a former lingua franca, Russian is giving way to English in Uzbekistan. Sixty per cent of the country’s population have no command of Russian (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 122). Outdoor and product advertising is translated now into English, which accompanies information in Uzbek. English words are easily transplanted into Uzbek texts, since in 1993 the Uzbek alphabet was changed from Cyrillic to Roman. However, political zigzags that brought Uzbekistan closer to Russia again could not but influence the language situation in Uzbekistan. Two alphabets, Cyrillic and Roman, are still competing with one another. The Roman alphabet is preferred in official use (governmental portals, designation of transport routes and education). Cyrillic is found in everyday life (e.g., price tags in shops) and mass media.

Nationalization reduced the scope of Russian in the mass media. Just one third of periodicals are published in Russian or in Russian and Uzbek. Russian-language radio and television are restricted in broadcasting time. At the turn of the century, part of the airtime that used to be taken up by Russian-language programmes was given to Turkish TV (Alpatov Reference Alpatov2000: 189). Yet, feature films are usually shown in Russian. Uzbek programmes are now dubbed in Russian instead of being aired in Russian. Apart from Uzbek and Russian, national mass media also use Karakalpak, Tajik, Kazakh, Korean and English. As for computer communication, Russian, used by 79.6 per cent of Uzbekistan users (Gelbmann Reference Gelbmann2013), is a dominant language on the Uznet, the national web provider. Web resources in English and Uzbek are about equal in number (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 122). Official sites are mostly trilingual – in Uzbek, Russian and English. This is further evidence of the role of Russian as a lingua franca in the post-Soviet space and the global significance of English.

In education, in accord with the policy of nationalization the dominant language is Uzbek. It is a tool of education for 90 per cent of secondary school children. Other languages of education are Karakalpak (2 per cent), Kazakh (1.7 per cent), Tajik (1.6 per cent), Turkmen (0.2 per cent) and others. The number of Russian language schools decreased from 700 to 119 in the 2010–2011 academic year. Other Russian schools have become bilingual in Uzbek and Russian. Russian is prescribed as a compulsory discipline (a foreign language) in all schools with Uzbek or other ethnic languages and is taught from Grade 1. However, in many rural schools (they make up 78.7 per cent of all Uzbekistan schools) Russian is not taught because there are no qualified teachers, or sometimes classes are given by nonprofessionals. Secondary school curricula usually provide for two foreign languages. This is a paradox for bilingual Russian residents in the republic: their native language is regarded as a foreign language nowadays. Since Russian has got the status not of a second but foreign language, its class hours are reduced as much as 50 per cent to the benefit of English and other foreign languages (Hasanova Reference Hasanova2007: 282). Classes in a second foreign language begin in Grade 5. The majority of schools choose English, a smaller number of schools offer German or French classes. There are schools with intensive English programmes where children begin to learn English from Grade 1.

Competition of English and Russian, however, is not a real rivalry, for their statuses are different. Russian is required first and foremost for the so-called ‘pending migrants’, unskilled labourers who see Russia as the primary destination and who go to work there for some part of the year. Many of these migrants come from rural areas and in fact speak very poor Russian. Learners of English are different. Hasanova (Reference Hasanova2007) divides them into three major groups: (1) professionals, (2) ambitious youth and (3) pop music fans. For the first two groups English is a language of prestige, good prospects of career opportunities, personal growth and advanced education; pop music fans enjoy English as an additional creative tool. This distribution of roles – Russian as a lingua franca in the post-Soviet space and English as a global language – constitutes complementary relations between the two languages, which are in educational demand. Now that Russia-Uzbekistan bilateral political ties have been restored, there is a revival of interest in the Russian culture and language. Informal estimates show that there is a rough parity in the number of applicants to English and Russian programmes at Uzbek universities (Khalikov Reference Khalikov2006). At the university level, Russian is a means of acquiring education in medicinal and engineering schools. Yet, the number of hours for Russian classes has been reduced, especially in Uzbek-language programmes. Students not majoring in Russian study Russian only in their first year (sixty-eight academic hours now), whereas before 2005 the curricula included two-year Russian courses (240 class hours). This is much less time than the time assigned to studying English, German, or French (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 127).

The need for Russian is somewhat satisfied by Russia’s institutions and foundations giving a helpful hand. In 2007, Lomonosov Moscow State University opened its branch in Tashkent, the capital city. Today there are branches, representative offices and study centres of seven more Russian universities. They do teaching in Russian. The Russian World Foundation also contributes to supporting Russian teaching and learning.

The major Uzbek institution for language training is the Uzbek State World Language University, established in 1992 on the basis of the Tashkent State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages and the Republican Institute of the Russian Language and Literature. The university has eight languages of instruction: Uzbek, Russian, Turkish, English, German, French, Spanish and Chinese (interest in which is growing thanks to boosting the cooperation between Uzbekistan and China, the activities of the Confucian Institute and student exchange programmes). The growing prestige of English can be observed in the establishment of two departments of English as compared with one in other languages.

To sum it up, after gaining independence Uzbekistan, like other Central Asian republics, set about the policy of nationalization, promoting Uzbek as the single official language. Other Turkic languages, functional for minorities, are not in wide use. Russian-Uzbek bilingualism is still a necessity, especially for maintaining relations with relatives and friends in Russia and for obtaining jobs in Russia. English-Uzbek bilingualism is mostly geared towards raising the national elite. Thus, English and Russian began to be a social dividing line.

15.4 Kyrgyzstan

The Kyrgyz Republic is a multilingual society, with over one hundred ethnicities. According to 2013 data, the Kyrgyz make up 72 per cent of the entire population. The second largest ethnic group is Uzbek (14 per cent) and the third largest group is Russian (about 7 per cent) (Demographic Yearbook of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan 2013: 7). Besides this, there are Dungans, Tajiks, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Germans and other minorities. Article 10 of the Kyrgyzstan Constitution ensures that all ethnicities of the country have the right to maintain their native language, as well as to learn and develop it.

The first law on language was adopted in 1989, when Kyrgyz was announced as the state official language. In 2009, a new law came into force that proclaimed Russian as a co-official language. Actually, in the current situation Kyrgyz is a de jure and Russian is a de facto means of interethnic communication. According to the Eurasian Monitor Consortium, in 2007, 27 per cent of the country’s residents spoke only Russian, 29 per cent spoke both Russian and Kyrgyz and 33 per cent of the residents were Kyrgyz monolinguals (Russian in new independent states 2007). Specific to Kyrgyzstan is that the majority of Russian speakers are not ethnic Russians, who in 2013 made up 6.63 per cent of the republic’s population (Ethnic structure of the population 2013). The majority of Russian speakers are urban, well-educated citizens. The rural residents, as a rule, rarely speak Russian. Another feature is that most of the speakers of Russian are of senior and middle age. Knowledge of Russian is necessary for labour migration to Russia, for professional development and for getting to know the Russian cultural heritage. Russian is also required for tourism. Thus, it keeps serving as an intercultural means of communication.

As a co-official language, Russian should be employed on a par with Kyrgyz. However, time and again, parliamentarians require that all documents be issued only in the Kyrgyz language, Russian being the legacy of colonialism, they claim. For example, early in 2013, the Kyrgyz parliament prepared three bills according to which all official paperwork should be done in Kyrgyz and all civil servants should pass a Kyrgyz-language exam. Fines are to be imposed on those who slip into Russian at official meetings. Simultaneous interpretation is going to be abandoned during parliament sessions. Unexpectedly for the lawmakers, President Almazbek Atambayev, known as a supporter of the titular language, vetoed the bills, as they contradicted the constitution and could be used as a tool to get rid of unwanted people. Still, the debate is going on while the nationalist sentiments are growing. Experts argue that to promote the Kyrgyz language, it is necessary to provide conditions for learning it instead of trying to impose it artificially. In the nationalistic wave, there have been propositions to shift the Kyrgyz writing from Cyrillic to Roman but they have not been put into effect yet.

Despite raging debates, there are spheres where the Russian language dominates. It has a leading role in education, medicine, engineering and other fields. All the academic, medical and reference textbooks are in Russian but fiction is mainly in Kyrgyz. Professionals are trained in Russian, which continues to carry out the instrumental and informational functions in the country. Mass media is predominantly in Russian – 50 journals out of 57 and 85 newspapers out of 212. The urban population has a chance to watch Russian TV channels. The Pyramid, a local television and radio company, broadcasting in Russian, is also popular. Russian radio stations provide for mostly entertaining programmes. The majority of .kg websites (75.9 per cent) (Gelbmann Reference Gelbmann2013) use the Russian language. Some of them have Kyrgyz and sometimes English or Turkish pages. In advertising, Russian is competing with Kyrgyz, English and Chinese, which is a language of a neighbouring economy.

The statistical data prove that the Kyrgyz Republic is the only post-Soviet country where the number of schoolchildren in Russian-language schools has increased in the last twenty years. The yearly increase of students in these schools is approximately 5,000–6,000 (Galyamov Reference Galyamov2013). As compared with Kyrgyz-language schools and classes, which are sometimes short of students and which are mostly rural, Russian-language schools are packed to the maximum capacity, being much more popular among schoolchildren and their parents as they provide for a better quality of education despite the shortage of teachers.

Programmes at tertiary educational institutions are generally implemented in Russian except for the faculties of Kyrgyz philology. Over 90 per cent of university students use Russian as a tool of education. Three centres of the Russian World, a nongovernmental foundation, have opened in the country to support Russian-language teaching and learning. In 1993, the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University was established. Almost all PhD dissertations are completed in Russian (except for those on Kyrgyz language and literature). However, the situation has been gradually changing in the last decade. A tendency towards teaching and learning in Kyrgyz is evident. Most instructors are Kyrgyz and their level of Russian is not very high. This situation is similar to that in other Central Asian republics.

Other languages can also be found in the Kyrgyz education system. Kyrgyz-Turkish University offers programmes in Kyrgyz and Turkish. There are several Kyrgyz-Turkish-language schools that have admitted about 7,000 students. The main language of the International Ataturk-Alatoo University is English, but some courses are delivered in Russian and Turkish. Uzbek, despite being the language of the second largest ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan, is restricted mainly to its interpersonal function used at home. Only in the southern part of the country, with a greater density of Uzbek population, does some part of the non-Uzbek population employ it in everyday use. There is a small number of Uzbek-language preschools and secondary schools in this area. After the 2010 violent clashes in the city of Osh, the Uzbek population emigration increased considerably, which led to the closure of Uzbek-language schools. Even Kyrgyz-Uzbek University was transformed into Osh State Social University, where courses are delivered in Kyrgyz and Russian. The notorious events of 2010 also resulted in closing down Uzbek radio and TV in Kyrgyzstan. Only four Uzbek-language newspapers continue and radio Yntymak has been broadcasting in Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Russian since 2011.

English has started to compete with Russian in Kyrgyzstan. Since 1993, American Peace Corps volunteers have been working in the country, with most of them employed in education. The London School in Bishkek, established in 1998, provides for language education to business people, bank employees, embassy employees, university students and others. There are three languages in the school curricula – English, Russian and Kyrgyz. English is very popular, as it proves to be a gateway to a well-paid job.

To conclude, the situation in Kyrgyzstan is close to that in Kazakhstan, with two co-official languages and two post-Soviet periods and trends – nativization and language coexistence. However, the situation is more favourable for Russian in Kyrgyzstan than in Kazakhstan.

15.5 Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is the first of the former Soviet republics that took the course towards distancing itself from Russia. It has always been a multi-ethnic state but with the adoption of the turkmenization policy, a great number of people of other ethnicities left the country, and this development has increased ethnic homogenization. It is difficult to find real data concerning the ethnic composition of Turkmenistan’s population – figures are discrepant in different sources, for, on the one hand, the results of the latest census of 2012 have not been published yet and, on the other hand, with strict governmental control of all spheres of public life, it is plausible to expect Turkmenistan officials to adapt the census figures to the ideology of nativization, so the figures revealed might not be valid. Nevertheless, the information that is available now shows the absolute dominance of Turkmens – spoken by 85 per cent of the entire population, according to the CIA data of 2003 (The world factbook 2013) or 61 per cent according to the Asianhistory.about.com source (Szczepanski Reference Szczepanski2013). Other ethnicities include Uzbeks – 5 per cent (The world factbook 2013) or 16 per cent (Szczepanski Reference Szczepanski2013); Russians – 4 per cent, and others – 6 per cent (The world factbook 2013).

The Constitution of Turkmenistan, adopted in 2008, defines Turkmen as the ‘state’, that is, official language. The previous post-Soviet Constitution of 1998 recognized the status of Russian as an interethnic language; this statement is lost in the new version of the Constitution, which only proclaims that each citizen is guaranteed the right to use their own language. However, reality contradicts this statement. Following racist slogans by the late President Niyazov, who demanded to apply a ‘third-generation Turkmen test’ for access to public employment or higher education, non-Turkmen employees were removed from state and governmental positions. That was outright discrimination. The Turkmen Academy of Sciences was closed, as its staff was mostly Russian. Placenames, names of enterprises and institutions were replaced by those of Turkmen origin. Business correspondence is currently conducted in the official language, which is not functionally developed to serve all necessary domains. When receiving reports, various state agencies request copies in Russian and one of the reasons is that not all employees can read Roman letters that have substituted the Cyrillic alphabet since 1993.

The situation has changed a little with the new president’s election. Mass media (especially journals in specific fields like oil development, economics and finance, which used to be issued only in Turkmen) are now also published in Russian and English. Radio and television that during Niyazov’s reign broadcast only in Turkmen now have channels geared toward an international audience – the TV4 channel is aired in seven languages: Turkmen, Russian, English, French, Arab, Farsi and Chinese (Arefyev Reference Arefyev2012: 151). There is one newspaper published in Russian, Neitralny Turkmenistan (‘Neutral Turkmenistan’). Since 2011, citizens of Turkmenistan have again acquired the right to subscribe to Russian-language newspapers and magazines. There is also a newspaper regularly published in Turkish – the Zaman. Internet users, whose number in Turkmenistan is the smallest of all Central Asian countries, visit mostly Russian-language sites.

The Turkmenistan law on education of 2009 stipulates that Turkmen as the official language should be the language of education in all types of school. However, the establishment of international schools is not prohibited now (as it was during Niyazov’s dictatorship), with a foreign language being viewed as a tool of education, but these schools should also include classes on Turkmen.

Russian-language schools, which had been numerous, were closed at the turn of the century or turned into Turkmen-language schools. Later on, Russian-medium classes were opened in some schools with mixed languages of instruction and nowadays the capital city of Ashgabad and several other cities have twenty classes with Russian as a tool of education. The only Russian-language school functioning now is the Joint Russian-Turkmen secondary school named after Alexandre Pushkin. It was established in 2002 and was designed for 350 students. However, its student population is now 1,000. Most of the students are from Turkmen elite families. Children from Russian families do not account for more than one third of the entire school. The school is based on the Russian curriculum and school leavers can participate in the enrolment to Russia’s universities. The school is regarded as a centre of Russian culture in Turkmenistan.

All Turkmen-medium schools have classes of Russian as a foreign language that is taught one or three hours a week from Grade 1 through Grade 10. However, the country suffers from a shortage of textbooks and qualified teachers of Russian. For non-Turkmen speakers, Turkmen is also hard to acquire in schools because of limited study hours and poorly designed language programmes and textbooks (Aminov et al. Reference Aminov, Jensen, Juraev, Overland, Tyan and Uulu2010: 6). Meanwhile, the demand for the Russian language increases. It is the language that ensures enrolment to a university in Russia (which has again become possible since 2009 when Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation signed agreements on the mutual recognition of educational qualifications). The Branch of Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas was opened in 2008 in Ashgabad; it offers all its courses in Russian.

English is another popular foreign language. It is taught not only by local teachers but also by Peace Corps volunteers, who have been working in Turkmenistan since 1993. English is required for the connection with European Union universities through the Tempus programme, which has been operational in Turkmenistan since 1997. Interestingly, the former Turkmenistan dictator Niyazov, despite his policy of turkmenization, was fully aware of the role of English in the world, and once he even ordered all his ministers to learn English in six months to be able to talk freely with their international counterparts.

In the 1990s, when Turkmenistan began to cherish ties with Turkey in support of the ‘pan-Turkic idea’, several Turkish schools were opened in every province in Turkmenistan. These schools, noted for their strict discipline, had high prestige in the community as institutions providing a better education than native Turkmen schools. They offered classes in Turkish and English as well as hard sciences and computer literacy and these subjects accounted for their popularity. However, in 2011 the schools were closed for fear of the influence of Nurchilar, a Turkish extremist Islamic movement. Only one school remains in Ashgabat. In 1994, the International Turkmen-Turkey University was founded. It specializes in subjects that include history, applied mathematics, computer science, English language and literature, Turkish language and literature and international relations. Three languages, English, Turkish and Turkmen, serve as media of instruction. Russian is taught just as a subject.

Thus, the linguistic situation in Turkmenistan is characterized by official monolingualism, with Russian, English and Turkish competing as foreign languages and as potential lingua francas demanded by the country’s economic ties with neighbouring countries and the world.

15.6 Conclusion

The brief description of the sociolinguistic situation in Central Asia has revealed that in the past two and a half decades all the post-Soviet republics, including Tajikistan, pursued the policy of nativization, which was radical in the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century but later on was softened. Nativization has inevitably led to an increase in the functions of the indigenous languages in the domains of administration, mass media discourse and education. However, nativization brought about discrimination of ethnic minorities and their languages. This development is most vividly exemplified by the Russian language, which used to be the language of everyday use of almost half of speakers and turned into the language of a minor part of the population. Still, it is too early to label Russian as ‘a dying regional lingua franca’ (Tyson Reference Tyson2009: 7). Schlyter (Reference Schlyter, Bhatia and Ritchie2013: 893), who has reviewed the linguistic situation in Central Asia, rightly argues that ‘Russian will certainly continue to hold a strong position’ in the future. The demand for the language keeps increasing due to several reasons: the revival of economic relations with Russia; labour emigration to Russia, introduction of the Russian language test for immigrants in Russia, more active language promotion by the Russian governmental and nongovernmental agencies, and the titular populations’ need to develop professionally. Russian-language schools are very popular as they provide a good quality of education.

Although in general the position of Russian has been impaired in the post-Soviet republics, the situation with other minority languages is even more aggravating. Interethnic clashes (like those in Kyrgyzstan) and the policy towards establishing the dominance of the titular nation led to the decrease in minority language speakers and to the decline of their language role in the region.

Nevertheless, language contact continues. English, as the medium of intercultural communication and a gateway to prestigious careers, has started to expand at the expense of Russian. Nowadays social disproportion between English and Russian has become clearer, with English required more by the well-to-do elite, who are able to send their children to study abroad, and Russian more in demand by the lower class looking for better-paid jobs in Russia.

Turkish is also gradually gaining weight, though the idea of establishing pan-Turkic unity has been proven to have failed. With the intensification of ties with China, an economy that is getting evermore powerful in the world, interest in the Chinese language, which is introduced in the curricula of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyz universities, is growing.

Multilingualism is more typical of urban populations. Rural people, living a more stable way of life, reside in more homogeneous communities and communicate in their indigenous language. Bilingualism imposed on them by the educational system stays on a very elementary level of knowing a foreign language, which might never be of any use to villagers. Active rural bilingualism is related only to juxtapositioned language communities (Schlyter Reference Schlyter, Bhatia and Ritchie2013: 875).

We can see many similarities in the language policy trends in Central Asia. The major similarities are as follows: nativization, displacement of Russian, then a gradual softening of this trend and embracing English as a global language. Differences concern the degree of Russian losing its status. It is still a co-official language in two republics, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, though its positions have weakened as compared with its status in the Soviet period. The weakest position of Russian is observed in Turkmenistan where the former President’s dictatorship almost banned its use. Another difference is the relation with Turkish, which is mostly cherished in Turkmenistan.