Strange as it may seem, not only Russians live on the territory of the Russian Federation. There are many diverse nations in our country. Accordingly, the dialects they speak are also enough. What are they - the languages of Russia?
What is a language family
Any existing dialect in the world belongs to one or another language family. The languages of the peoples of Russia represent fourteen different families. Before talking about them in more detail, you should understand what a language family is.
So, a language family is a group of languages that have something in common. All of them once descended from one thing in common. The language family is the largest unit. In one such family there may be several language groups. For example, there is a Slavic group, which includes Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and other languages related to our.
Language families in the Russian Federation
As already mentioned above, as many as 14 language families coexist in our country. Of these, only four are most numerous: Indo-European (by the way, the state language in the Russian Federation — the Russian language — belongs to this family), Altai, Caucasian, and Ural. The Indo-European language family includes 89 percent of the languages of Russia, the remaining eleven are almost evenly divided between the three remaining families.
Languages of the Russian Federation
So what languages are spoken in Russia? It is important to understand that many dialects that make up a particular language family no longer exist at this time. Their disappearance is due to the lack of carriers - as a rule, small indigenous peoples who are gradually dying out.
So, nevertheless, what languages are spoken in Russia? In order to more thoroughly answer this question, it is necessary to touch upon at least four main families in our country.
Living Adverbs
It should be noted the living languages of the peoples of Russia. In the Indo-European family, there are forty living languages that are represented on the territory of the Russian Federation. Of these, the majority of Russian speakers - almost one hundred and thirty-seven million people. A significantly smaller number of speakers of Ukrainian (approximately one million one hundred thousand), Belarusian (one hundred seventy-four thousand) and Polish (sixty-seven thousand people). All these dialects belong, incidentally, to the Slavic group of the Indo-European language family.
The national composition of the population of the Russian Federation is so diverse that on its territory the dialects of other groups of the Indo-European language family are also represented in large quantities. True, there are not so many native speakers, therefore, they cannot be compared with the Russian language and its counterparts.
So, for example, the Armenian branch is represented by the East and West Armenian languages, the Baltic - by Latvian and Lithuanian. From the German group, in Russia they speak Swedish, German and Low German, Yiddish. Among Iranian languages in Russia there are Ossetian, Pashto, Tajik, Rushan, Kurdish and others. Romanian, French, Italian are also common in our country and belong to the Romance group of the Indo-European language family.
When answering the question of what languages are spoken in Russia, one must not forget about the Caucasian family. It includes fifty living languages. Among them are Kabardino-Circassian (half a million carriers), Adyghe (one hundred seventeen thousand people speak it), Urakhinsky (about seventy three thousand), Ingush (three hundred five thousand), Georgian (almost one hundred seventy one thousand people).
Twenty-three living dialects are represented in the Uralic language family , such as, for example, Estonian (fifteen and a half thousand native speakers), Finnish (almost thirty nine thousand), Komi-Zyryan (one hundred fifty six thousand people), Udmurt (three hundred twenty four thousand) Nenets (twenty two thousand people).
The Altai language family in Russia is represented by forty-one dialects. These are Evenki (four thousand eight hundred carriers), Chuvash (just over a million carriers), Khakass (forty-two thousand people), Turkmen (thirty thousand), Kazakh (four hundred and one thousand people). Of course, in fact, in each of these families there are much more languages that coexist side by side on the territory of one of our country (at the same time we will not forget about ten more language families, which are not so widely represented), however, list all of them within the framework of one A small article is not possible.
Dead adverbs
There are also dead languages of Russia. In the four language families mentioned above, there are also adverbs whose carriers are no longer there. There are few of them. In the Caucasian family, this is the Ubykh language and the Sadz dialect, in the Ural, it is Meryansky, Yuratsky, Kamasinsky, Babinsky, Sami and Matter-Taiga-Karagas. Indo-European and Altai families do not have dead languages.
Moreover, such dialects exist in other language families. Four of the disappeared languages are in the Yenisei language family, two in the Yukagiro-Chuvan, three in the Chukchi-Kamchatka, two in the Eskimo-Aleut, two in the Ainu language family.
The most common languages in Russia
If you believe the census of fifteen years ago, the inhabitants of our country speak more than one hundred and fifty languages. The most common of them, as already mentioned, of course, is Russian. The top ten in popularity are also Tatar, Chechen, Bashkir, Ukrainian, Armenian, Kabardino-Circassian and some others.
But the most common languages of Russia are, for example, Yugian (only one person speaks it, and it is not known for sure whether he is alive - the latest information about him is dated last year), bakva, sesoto, hiri-motu (also one each ), Monegasque, Nuba, Rushansky (two carriers each) and so on.
Languages of Siberia and the Far East
It is in these regions that many small peoples of Russia live with their interesting history, traditions, customs, and, of course, with their own languages. For example, the yugas (or rather, their last living representative) are the Siberian people. And there are many such tribes. To find out reliably about the life and existence of many of them at the moment is not even possible.
Of the Indo-European languages, Siberians and Far Easterners speak Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, German and Low German. From the Urals - in the Mansi, Khanty, Enets, Nganasans, Nenets, Selkup. From Altai - in Even, Evenki, Nanai, Buryat, Mongolian, Khakass, Shor and others (this language family in Siberia and the Far East is most fully represented).
The question of what languages are spoken in Russia cannot be answered specifically - there are too many of them. Russia is a multinational country, and there are just as many diverse dialects and dialects in it. The number of extinct languages directly indicates that there were even more peoples in our country before. And this is a separate and very interesting topic to study.