MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. Russian took fifth place among 12 leading languages in the world in terms of the combination of such parameters as its role in both daily and scientific communication, according to the Pushkin Institute's study "The Index of the Position of the Russian Language in the World" of 2021, which is available to TASS.
Based on The Index-2021 study, the Russian language lags behind English, Spanish, Chinese and French, but overtook Arabic, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Hindi, Bengali and Urdu. Regarding a language, the survey factored in the number of speakers and Internet users, the amount of Internet resources and scientific information in this language, the language’s status in international organizations and the number of media sources in this language.
"Certainly, Russian is not the most widespread language as far as the number of native speakers goes, that said, Hindi is spoken by a larger amount of people, but if we evaluate the language by the frequency of use in cross-country, scientific communications, then Hindi lags behind many other languages that belong to the category of international," said Margarita Rusetskaya, rector of the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute.
According to the researchers, Russian occupies middle positions along most parameters, ranging anywhere between 4 and 7, but it has been holding on to second place in terms of the number of resources in the language for several years. "In the modern world the role of languages is determined not only by the number of native speakers," said Rusetskaya. "The functionality of language, as its ability to satisfy a person's need for education, information, social and professional interaction, is a much more important factor in determining its competitive ability," she added.
Russian language in the CIS
The experts also analyzed the sustainability index of the Russian language for the 30-year period - from 1991 to 2021 - in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The research looked into the constitutional status of the language and its status in public communications, the share of students and teachers, the share of scientific publications and media sources in Russian. According to the study’s authors, the most serious problem is the dwindling number of Russian language specialists, the number of people studying in Russian has halved over 30 years at all educational levels.
Analyzing the share of scientific publications in Russian, experts found out that it plays an important role in the national science of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan, while it does not play a leading role in Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
In some post-Soviet countries, there has been a significant increase in the share of Russian-language publications for the past 30 years. Thus, in Belarus it has jumped from 51% in 1990 to 81% in 2021, in Azerbaijan, it saw an increase from 20% to 36%, and in Turkmenistan it leaped from 30% to 56%. At the same time, a decrease in the share of Russian-language media does not mean a drop in the amount. For example, in Latvia, the amount of media sources in Russian increased from 147 to 338, although the share in the national media market decreased by 47%, the Pushkin Institute source pointed out.