Language

Sorry all for the long break, but I've had intermittent internet problems and have been very busy anyway. As a general update I can say that things are going quite well...I've been especially concentrating on learning Sakha language and have been making a bit of progress finally, after a total of 5 months studying (three months last summer and 2 this winter/spring). I am beginning to be comfortable holding short conversations even. In honor of that, I thought I'd write this blog post about Sakha language--first a few words about the language itself and then some about the language situation in the region.

For those of you who don't know Sakha language is the indigenous language of people who live here. It has Turkic roots, so is more closely related to the languages of Central Asia (Kazakh, Kirghiz, etc.) and to Turkish. As an example, one Turkish friend of mine here who has never studied Sakha language can typically understand quite a bit of what is going on when people are speaking Sakha. Sakha is also incredibly complicated, grammatically speaking and the logic of the language is quite different from English which makes it super complicated to actually speak despite knowing a lot of words. The verbs, for example, always come at the end of a sentence--which, for an English speaker creates a logical problem since we're used to thinking about verbs first and then objects and direct objects later. On top of that, they have about a hundred different affixes that they add to nouns and verbs in order give meaning. For instance, instead of using an extra word, e.g. "yet" in "I have not yet eaten." The verb is conjugated differently--the incomplete present tense. Furthermore, instead of using a word like "not" to show negation, they conjugate the verb differently. So, instead of saying "I do not eat vegetables", they would conjugate the verb "to eat" in the negative form. It makes it super complicated that they do not have a simply translated "yes" and "no"--when someone asks you, "do you like Yakutia", for instance, instead of saying "yes" you have to repeat the verb in the positive form, "I like." "Instead of saying "no" you have to repeat the verb in the negative form: "I don't like." And there are a million other complicated things about the language that I won't bore you any further with :)

As far as usage of the language goes, it is varied. Despite the fact that during the Soviet period official language policy actually promoted the use of the language, to some degree, in schools, especially those in the villages, most people I talk with seemed to feel a lot of pressure to use more Russian and to give up their native language. They talk about being embarrassed to be Sakha speakers and feeling like using the language in public in the central cities of the Republic was even taboo. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union speaking Sakha has become much more popular and you can hear people speaking it everywhere. There is quite a bit of pride, in fact, in being able to speak "their native language" and Russian-speaking Sakha now are more likely to feel ashamed of their inability to speak Sakha. Nevertheless, most kids growing up in Yakutsk, at least, don't end up speaking Sakha at home and therefore end up as Russian speaking. Even some that speak the language at home, but go to school only in Russian, feel more comfortable speaking Russian.

One example of this is the family of my Sakha language teacher. He is a Sakha teacher and his wife is a "culturologist", studying mostly Sakha culture. They have 3 children, 26, 17, and 12. With each other, my teacher and his wife almost exclusively speak Sakha and before their 3 children started school, they all spoke almost no Russian at all. When they started school, however, their teachers reported to the parents that the children had to be held back because of their bad Russian and therefore, they had to be made to learn Russian as quickly and completely as possible. So, they switched to using Russian at home, not imagining that their children would lose the language entirely. The oldest son was lucky because he spent every summer with relatives in the countryside, so continued to speak Sakha. The younger two daughters, however, stopped speaking entirely. The 17-year old now has absolutely no interest in the language and, while she understands some when people speak to her, she makes no attempts to speak herself. The 12-year old I think has picked up more of her parents' sense of shame that she can't speak and wants to really badly. But its really difficult for her and, being 12, doesn't really have the self-discipline to make herself learn.

And so, you have this sharp distinction between city Sakha and village Sakha--city Sakha, being largely Russian-speaking, and village Sakha being Sakha speaking. For this reason, people continue to emphasize to me that if I want to really learn Sakha, I have to go live in the villages (or at least in one of the smaller cities). Indeed, this is what I intend to do, when I go to the city of Nyurba at the end of April.

This past weekend, my teacher took me to a village, Borogontsi, where many of his relatives live. Indeed there, they really do speak Sakha. Everyone could speak Russian, but predominantly, even with me, spoke Sakha. We visited the school there, which was exclusively a Sakha language school (with the exception, of course, of Russian language and literature). To help facilitate my use of the language, my teacher would tell people that I didn't speak Russian, forcing them to have to speak with me in Sakha. I was a little embarrassed by this at times, especially since I have worked so long and hard to learn Russian, it was difficult to sit there and say, yes, yes, I don't know any Russian. But, surprisingly people responded astonishingly well. One woman even bowed before me upon being told I speak Sakha but not Russian. Of course, I think she was joking, but it's still indicative of the feeling that some have that their language is being smothered by Russian. For a foreigner to come here and speak Sakha and not Russian, for a lot of people, is a huge compliment to their language and its usefulness in the world.