This literally means, «Illiteracy in the Area of the Former Soviet Union». However, people often use the word «illiteracy» here to refer to poor grammar and lack of education as well. It’s the second meaning that I am talking about.

The Russian language is quickly disappearing in some areas of the former Soviet Union.

In Tajikistan, most women in rural areas, and many women in the cities, cannot converse at any level in Russian. Among the younger generation of women, who are much more likely to have left school after the third or fourth grade than their mothers, very few even feel comfortable saying hello or using Russian numbers. Among men, most adult men over, say, forty, speak Russian to some extent, but among the generation that has spend most of their adult lives «free», it is becoming harder and harder to find people outside the center of the city that can speak Russian. There is evidence that this process is also occuring in Uzbekistan, although more slowly because education is more strictly controlled, and also in Kyrghyztan.

In Asia Plus, «The Newspaper of the New Tajikistan», there is currently an article entitled «Will Tajikistan Be Left without Any Russians?» The article reports that in 2000, 68,171 Russians were left in the country and that «Russians comprised just 1.1% of the general population.» This was in 2000, and nowadays the estimates done by the Council of Russian Countrymen, only 45 to 50,000 remain. They estimate, however, that the number of russkoyazychniy, or Russian-speaking nationals with no other native language but who are not, ethnically, Russian, is around 15,000. Such people include many Tatars, Koreans, Germans, people of mixed origin, and others.

The evidence of this mainly anecdotal because truly standardized testing in Russian has all but disappeared. But for people like me who get by on Russian (I know, I’m a pitiful case), it’s easy to see the level of Russian decline year by year.

Signs and Spelling

The decline in Russian (and education levels) is also visible in the signs posted around the city. There are many loan-words from Russian in Tajik, and although some of them have had their spelling reformed to fit the Tajik language many of them remain Russian, with letters that do not exist in Tajik.

Russian spelling is very easy. I won’t go into the details here, but suffice it to say that the system is almost totally phonetic, with four rules that are fairly easy to follow. And yet, in Tajikistan, I often come across egrarious spelling errors in very simple signs, such as those for «sale» and «help». So far none of these have confused the meaning of the words.

Up to now, I haven’t seen anything to the degree I saw today. Although I have wanted to do this post before, I couldn’t justify taking out my camera. I felt silly and didn’t want to attract attention. But I couldn’t pass this one up.

The Russian for hot-dog is «хот-дог», or «khot-dog». It is pretty close to its English origins, although it’s pronounced «khote-doke». This is because they don’t pronounce voiced coonsonants at the ends of words (one of the four spelling rules, but anyway) and when the accent is on an «o», it must be pronounced as a long «o» (instead of «ah»- another spelling rule).

In the sign below, the Tajik hot-dog stand owner, however, appears to have gotten mixed up somewhere along the way, for he or she spelled it «khod-dok». What is funny is that ход (khod) actually means something in Russian. It means someone’s walk, or pace, or step, as in, «He has a very distinctive step.» It can also mean passage, movement, speed, stroke, and a number of other related things. Док (dok) also means something: dock. So the sign literally says something like, «passage the dock» in Russian.

Tajikistan being a landlocked country without any docks to speak of, I’m guessing this does not confuse most of the few Russians remaining in the country. Though I doubt I’m the only one who had a nice chuckle to herself, in a rueful sort of way.

Television and the Media

Tajikistan now has two television channels, and they are definitely improving, but that’s another post entirely. On Tajik Channel 1, they have started to show little comedy vignettes, written by local stand up and theatre comedy teams. Tabassum, which means «smile» in Tajik, is one such group. The other night, they did a number of sketches about gastarbaytars, or migrant workers, in Russia.

These mainly focused on the extremely poor knowledge of Russian among Tajik migrants. This is a major cause of distress and exploitation among Tajiks there, for although it’s reported that many go to Russia because they know the language, in fact for many it has much more to do with the fact that other Tajiks are already there, and then the fact that they don’t need a visa. Among younger men, they may go in a group of twenty, none of whom know Russian well enough to register at OVIR (where all foreigners must register upon arrival in Russia).

The skits were as follows:
• One in which a Tajik worker was killed by a load of falling bricks and his coworkers had to explain the incident to the Russian police using only the words, «hello», «goodbye», «here», «then», and «disappeared».
• One in which a man had to change money in the local town knowing no Russian at all, and in which he mixes up the words razmenyayte and razdevaytyes’. The first means, «exchange» (as in, «exchange this, please») and the second means «undress». Of course the person at the counter was a woman…

Another article in Asia Plus, written for the Day of the Tajik Language (officially celebrated on June July 23rd), questioned which would be more useful: Tajik classes for russkoyazychniy in order to further cement Tajik as not only a home language but also as the language of government, business, and literature, or Russian classes for the thousands of migrant workers going to Russia and other former Soviet states, since the most urgent problem seemed to be the latter group’s inability to defend their rights abroad.

Jokes and Stories (Anekdoty)

I’ve heard a number of such anekdoty that revolve around some poor Tajik’s inability to speak Russian, but the most recent I heard was this one, from my brother-in-law (not the one with whom I am presently staying, but one who works in the construction sector in Russia):

Some Tajik guys went to a restaurant in Russia to celebrate the end of a big job. There were only a few and some of them were having a very hard time reading the menu. Finally it came time to order, and the waitress came up to them and asked what they would like. Most of them were forced to order foods for which they knew the names, rather than choosing from the menu. But one guy really wanted chicken, although he couldn’t remember the word for fried chicken. Suddenly he saw another waitress carrying an omelette to a nearby table. He told the waitress, «Look, young lady- see what that man is having? Bring me its mother, fried.»