International Mother Language Day
21 February
According to UNESCO, the Belarusian language belongs to the group of languages that are threatened with extinction. In the Atlas of world languages in danger, it is designated as vulnerable. This is the first of four steps on the path to extinction.
According to statistics, on average only 3% of respondents do this. But on the so-called "trasianka" an average of 43.5% of the population speaks. People communicate on it in stores, with friends, in the family. But about 18.5% read publications in the Belarusian language.
- Why do you think so few Belarusians speak Belarusian?
- What will happen to our language in a few years? How can we avoid the extinction of our language?
Nowadays, the Belarusian language is not in demand because it is not used anywhere else except Belarus. And also because only the old generation speaks it and the new generation from birth is taught only the Russian language. How can we change that? You just need to popularize the Belarusian language, to speak Belarusian on national holidays. But it seems to me that our country does not really need the Belarusian language. Although, on the other hand, if there is no Belarusian language, then there will be no country Belarus.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you, Alex!
ReplyDeleteThe main reason for language degradation is, that Belarusian language is unpromising in modern global society with English, Chinese, Russian and others. Speaking Belarusian, you do not receive any bonuses outside our country. If we want to preserve nationality, we must preserve the language.
ReplyDeleteI agree that if we want to preserve nationality, we must preserve the language. In one hand I agree thet there's no point learning Belarusian. You won't get any bonuses outside our country.
DeleteBut on the other hand, I believe, that we must know our motherlanguage. It's really important for us to persuade children to try to learn our language for them to make our country exist longer
In my opinion it doesn't matter what language people use to communicate. Of course I agree that language is important. It also can show other countries that we're belarusians. But we need language to speak and understand each other, to make new friends and etc. That's why I think that it's doesn't matter what language do you speak while you understand others.
ReplyDeleteBut on the other hand if we lose our language we can soon lose our nation too. And it's terrible. Belarusian language is part of us.
I think that a lot of people don't use and even learn our native language because the majority of belarusians use our second native language - Russian. And some belarsians don't pay attention to this problem because they want to live abroad.
In my opinion it doesn't matter what language do you speak, however I believe that Belarusian language is really beatiful and it's a symbol of all belarusians.
In my view, to save our language, firstly we need to change our attitude to this problem.