Turns out there’s another February holiday that gives us reason to be depressed: It’s called Native Language Day, and it came and went on the 21st. Created by the United Nations a decade ago, the holiday was observed this year with the release of UNESCO’s Atlas of Languages in Danger, a work whose findings on Russia are being heralded as “disturbing” by researchers and members of the media alike. Linguists, brace yourselves for what follows.

Specifically, the study finds that 19 languages once spoken on the territory of the Russian Federation have ceased to exist altogether, 21 languages are classified as "unsafe", 47 are “definitely endangered,” 29 are “severely endangered,” and 20 are “critically endangered.” Among the languages currently losing out to Russian and English? Aleut, Chechen, Yiddish, and Tuvan, to name just a few.

The obvious reason for the language extinctions: globalization. People move, they take on new languages in order to adapt and assimilate. That’s not the disturbing part; it’s the obvious part. The biggest problem, according to activists, is that the Russian government could care less about saving the dying tongues.

Languages supported by governments have longevity. With that in mind, human rights activists have been writing to their local officials in Russia, asking the government to ratify the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which most of Europe agreed to in 1992. Moscow has, of course, shown zero interest in these pleas. The cause is apparently so hopeless that the UN and other language specialists will be dispatching “emergency linguists” to the Motherland to keep records of the dying languages, write their dictionaries, and record their grammar. A lot of talkative old people in Russia's provinces are in for a treat.

More than 100 Languages in Russia at Risk of Disappearing [diena.lv]