Re: Russian out, English in

Blast Google's eyes! It ate my last response. Here goes again, in
abbreviated form.

Despite the nonsense spoken by certain persons on SCB in the past
(their informants being Anglos from Toronto who think that all is
well), the fact is that the average Anglo in Québec resolutely refuse
to speak French unless the conditions of his job contract force him
to, and even then he seaks it poor, reluctantly and with obvious
displeasure and is just hoping the Québécois client will get fed up
and consent to doing the transaction in English.  

That is not an observation about bilingualism in general, but rather one
about Quebec. Admittedly, English is a difficult language to compete with
and in many (but not all, e.g. Hong Kong, New Zealand, and South Africa),
English-speaking societies the anglocentric linguistic arrogance that you
speak of is not so strongly present.


New Zealand! Are you serious? An Anglo-Kiwi that speaks anything
other than English is an extremely rare beast, just as rare as an
Anglo-American that speaks anything other than English.

That is exactly how
Russians in the Baltics used to behave in the past and still do in
those parts of Latvia and Estonia where their numbers/concentration is
still pretty high.  

No Narva, Estonia, with Russian speakers making up 95% of the population,
this is not arrogance but simply a response to current reality. Estonian
is hardly ever heard there, and for many people who used old-fashioned
Soviet-style teaching materials, studying Estonian seems like studying
Sanskrit. Luckily, the Estonians have succeeded in creating innovative
mehtods of teaching Estonian to children, and there are summer family
exchanges, where Russian-speaking children spend a month living with an
Estonian-speaking family in a different part of the country, and vice
versa.

That's a good idea.

In Lithuania, where there were always fewer
Russians to begin with, most of them have just had to come to grips
with learning Lithuanian because as each Soviet-era employee drops out
and retires, it is getting harder and harder to find someone to serve
you in Russian.

Russian tourists here cannot and do not expect
that they can address locals in Russian here and I (whose linguistic
antennae are always twitching perceptively) have seen dozens of
Russians (their accent is a give-away, usually confirming what one
suspected just from their general appearance) not even bother trying
Russian (in petrol stations, etc.) but just launching straight into
English.

That is a positive development. A new generation has grown up since I was
last in Lithuania. Then, of course, the collapse of the USSR had taken
place only five years previously. When you see these English-favoring
Russians, do you observe their age and gender? I would not expect too many
50+ male Russian tourists to be using English as their default language in
Lithuania, particularly when talking to other +50s.

Regards,
Eugene Holman

Well that's the point I was making. Except for among ethnic Russians,
the Russian language in the former Warsaw Pact countries is going the
way of French in Indo-China.
.

Relevant Pages