Russian language: Russian language’s popu-larity goes down worldwide

The Russian language is losing its positions in the world. According to the sociological research center of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, by 2025 it could become even less popular than Bengali or the Portuguese language.

The Russian Language Day has been designated by the United Union within the framework of the program for support and promotion of multlingualism and cultural diversity. This year it is celebrated on June 6, on the birthday anniversary of Alexander S. Pushkin.

One of the aims of this program – is to support equality of all the official languages of the United Nations: English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French.

“Nearly 225,000 pupils are studying the Russian language in Western Europe, whereas until the beginning of ’90s this number amounted to 550,000. About 28,500 students are studying the Russian language at the universities of the Western Europe”, – read the materials of the Minister of Education.

The Russian language is still the forth popular language in the world. The Chinese is in the lead with 1,35 billion people speaking this language, which is followed by English (over 650 million people), and Spanish (over 330 million).

“The number of people who know the Russian language is supposed to go down in 10 years thus totaling 212 million people. French, Hindi, and Arabic are going to leave the Russian language behind”, – the document reads.

By 2025, when according to sociologists, the number of Russian language speakers will go down to around 152 million people, it will be outnumbered by Portuguese and Bengali.

The Ministry stresses that the policy of the majority of CIS countries and Baltic States regarding the Russian language is likely to have the following consequences: within the first years of independency it could be considered the mother tongue, then – the second native language, later – the language of international communication, next – the language of national minority groups, and at last, one of elective subjects.

“The Russian language went through similar evolution in Baltic States, Azerbaijani, Georgia and Turkmenistan”, – the materials read.

The number of secondary schools in CIS countries and Baltic States, where the education is carried out in the Russian language, has decreased on average two or three times as compared to the Soviet times. Russian language as a foreign also starts losing its positions, lagging behind English.

The same situation can be found in Europe. The Ambassador of Russia to France Alexander Orlov, claims that the number of French citizens, studying Russian is decreasing each and every year. In some lyceums and colleges Russian classes are being closed.

In order to support equality of all six official languages the English Language Day is celebrated on April 23, the French Language Day – on March 20, the Spanish Language Day – October 12, the Arabic Language Day – on December 18, and the Chinese Language Day – on April 20.