Sociolinguistic situation in Chuvashia - Essay Example

Chuvashia or the Chuvashia Republic is a federal subject of the Russian Federation and is part of the Volga Federal District. It is considered to be the native lands of the Chuvash people and is found in the European Russia centre It is also considered to be one of the most populous regions of Russia. It is an area which is rich in culture and history. This paper shall specifically discuss the sociolinguistic situation of the region; this would include its past, present, and projected future in terms of sociolinguistics.

Discussion The Chuvashian region is pervaded basically by the Russian language as its business language and by the Chuvash language as its native language. The Chuvash language is a Turkic language heard in the west of the Urals in the central Russian region (Chuvash’s People Website, 2009). This language is native to the Chuvashian people and is spoken by about two million Chuvashians. Its alphabet uses Cyrillic script which includes letters in the Russian alphabet, with additional four letters.

There are two dialects among the Chuvash: the Virjal and the Anatri; the literary language covers both dialects (Chuvash People’s Website, 2009). The Chuvashian people living outside the Republic have their own dialects and these dialects are similar to the Virjal and the Anatri dialects. Since, the Chuvash are mostly Turkic people, the Chuvashia language is the language more often used. Russians make up about 30% of their population, hence, the Russian language is less popular (Orrtung, 2000, p. 103). .

In the modern literary context of Chuvash, some words have already been borrowed from the Russian, Tatar, Mari, Mongolic, and Persian influence. Since it is the only language of the Bulgaric groups which has been preserved, it is said to have transmitted its words in Russian, Mari, Tatar, as well (Chuvashian People’s Website, 2009). Various dictionaries, religious texts, and folktales were translated and published in the 18th and 19th centuries (Ager, 2011). This language has been written in the Runic script, in the Arabic script, as well as the Cyrillic and Latin scripts, with the Cyrillic alphabet having been introduced by Yakovlev.

From then, it has undergone various transformations. It is often also written in the Latin alphabet; but there is no standard version for this language (Ager, 2011). The earliest conceptions of the Chuvash language was seen in the work of Philip Johan Stahlenberg published in 1730. Smaller wordlists were published by Miller in 1758; and Fischer collected in 1747 featured similar materials from Miller, but since 1995 been published by Gulya (Rona-Tas, 2007, p. 13). All the above lists published were under the Latin alphabet.

At the later part of the 18th century, the work of the Orthodox missionaries expanded and in order to assist in the translation of Christian texts into Chuvash, sketches were conceptualized. These were done in Russian and the Chuvash script was written in the Cyrillic script (Rona-Tas, 2007, p. 13). The priests of Chuvash then started writing in their own language through the Cyrillic script. Then from the 18th century onwards, we were witness to the poems written for various occasions in Chuvash.

With the growth in the Episcopal seminars of Kazan and Novgorod, Catherine II mandated the collection of all languages