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Yakutia to roll out web platform to study indigenous languages

It will include training programs, games and interactive resources for teachers

YAKUTSK, February 25. /TASS/. In 2021, the Federal Institute of Native Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation will develop an educational web platform and materials to study languages of the North’s low-numbered indigenous peoples, the institute’s representative Natalia Sitnikova told TASS.

"Our institute studies the language environment for the purpose of preserving languages," she said. "[We] identify best practices and offer measures to improve the situation. For example, we have been working on an educational web resource to study languages of the North’s low-numbered indigenous peoples. We plan to launch this project within the current year. Those will be training programs, games and interactive resources for teachers."

Practically every second child in Yakutia is bilingual. "We have been looking into this phenomenon, offering recommendations regarding organization of education in the bilingual environment," she continued. "We can see that a child, speaking two languages, studies another language much easier."

Experts say, children should study the native language without leaving their ethnic groups' natural habitat. "They should learn native languages being next to parents, in the nomadic environment. This, probably, is a key condition. According to the concept of nomadic education, children of the indigenous peoples, who live with families, learn the mother tongue before they go to school or during first years at school. Unfortunately, in some regions, children from nomadic families are sent away to boarding schools, where they do not receive education in the native language," she said.

Linguistic situation

Language situations differ from region to region, the expert said. For example, in the Yamalo-Nenets Region, children talk with parents in the native language, and they do not speak Russian by the time they go to school. "The problem is - we do not have training programs for teachers and tutors to learn to speak those languages. And this problem has been highlighted only recently. There is a shortage of primary school teachers who speak the languages of the North. Our goal is to have teachers and tutors speak and teach native languages," she said.

Only 40 out of 70 schools in areas with high concentrations of indigenous peoples in Yakutia’s North support native languages. "This situation evolved in the Soviet times and has not changed so far," she added. "We see a generation of parents, who do not speak native languages and who say they want the situation to be changed."

"The aspect has been ignored, and we still can see only Russian and Yakut languages as teaching media in many schools. Schools, where most students study in native languages, are very rare. Most often, [native languages] at schools are studied as foreign ones," she said.

The region offers many books in the Yakut language, she continued. "But you cannot see a similarly big choice in languages of the North’s peoples. Our institute hopes that under the Children of the Arctic federal program, we shall see manuals published in languages of the low-numbered indigenous peoples," she told TASS. "For example, I run a team of experts working on a school textbook dedicated to the disappearing Tundra Yukaghir language. An ABC book in this language was developed in the 1980s, although there have not been learning packs in that language."

The current situation requires attention of regional authorities, she said. "One of the solutions is to train teachers and tutors. Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Education recommended the Arctic regions to begin training teachers for nomadic schools and kindergartens out of representatives of the low-numbered indigenous ethnic groups. The regions can settle this problem by setting a target for the number of teachers and mentors to be provided in the areas with high concentrations of indigenous peoples."

Technologies to preserve languages

To preserve languages of the people of the North, learning should feature a digital format, says an initiator and head of the project to include the Yakut language and languages of the North’s low-numbered indigenous peoples in online translation resources, a research associate at Yakutia’s National Library Alexei Ivanov said.

"In the context of language digitalization, text data should be equated with written language. Text data are a set of symbols in the written language’s system. Besides, text data, like a written language, allow not only handing down a language from generation to generation but also studying it by means of new technologies," he said.

For example, text data are used to create hardware, translation engines and a statistics dictionary. "Verbal communications, unlike text communications, constitute a daily and, consequently, more available means of communication. Anyway, sounds of Russia’s minority languages have been disappearing from every-day use. Thus it is most important to consider voice interfaces, voice data and other technologies as an instrument to keep the cultural heritage," he added.

In spring 2020, Yakutia’s National Library and Yandex launched a translation engine in the Yakut language. "From 2020, we see that this service in the Yakut language has been active, offering a few hundred thousand translations into Yakut and from it every day. This is a very good rate, which proves the importance of language technologies in preserving and promoting a language," the expert said.

In 1999, UNESCO announced February 21 the International Mother Language Day to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.