So what exactly are you doing here?
This is a question I get asked nearly every day, and which my answer "to study the Chuvash language" leaves most Russians with more questions than answers. There's a pretty high shock factor - which I like. One of the main reasons I came here is to fully realize and describe the complicated relationship that the Chuvash have with their language, which may affect future transmission of the language to younger generations. The reaction I get every time I explain that I am here to study Chuvash is nearly the same reaction I got when I learned a few words in Akha and used them (instead of Thai) to communicate with the Akha people in the mountains above Chiang Rai in Thailand. Wide eyes, a surprised little gasp, and then a sympathetic "ooooh" with a twinkle in their eyes as if they think I'm one of the strangest and cutest researchers they've ever met.
Attitudes vary among the Chuvash population - some people think it's useless, while others think it's very important. Most reside along the middle ground where they only use it to talk to their grandparents and anyone else still residing in the villages of Chuvashia. An estimated 1.2 million people speak Chuvash (which is by no means 'small'), however I predicted, and have seen in the past month, that the language is being transmitted to less than half of Chuvash children and even if there is a wish to save the language - opportunities (like in every domain in Russia) are severely lacking.So, while I can see this phenomenon through my sociolinguistic eyes - the situation is not very clear to the Chuvash people (or the Chuvash government), who can't believe that their language is going anywhere. It's a well documented linguistic phenomenon, called "delayed recognition of language death". Often communities don't realize that their language is in grave danger (or mobilize to reverse the language decline) until it's too late. I hope that my work can catalyze this realization to give the Chuvash who wish to pass on their language as many resources as possible.
To conduct my research, I will be using two tools that measure language dominance in bilinguals. Bilinguals do not necessarily speak both of their languages equally. If younger Chuvash bilinguals are shown to speak Russian at a much higher level than they speak Chuvash, this will prove language decline EVEN BEFORE an entire generation stops speaking the language!
The Hawai'i Assessment of Language Access (HALA) test, created by linguists at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, is a speaking test, where speakers are presented with pictures and are asked to reply in a given language as quickly as possible. According to UH, response speed is directly correlated with language dominance. This allows us to measure language dominance numerically, and put speakers on a continuous spectrum.
The Bilingual Language Profile is a more traditional survey tool that requires speakers to answer 19 questions about each language. Each answer is correlated with a number which give each bilingual speaker a number on a spectrum where 0 is equal, and a negative or positive number indicates dominance in Russian/Chuvash. Again, this allows us to view the bilingual population on a continuous spectrum.
Both of these tools were developed in the past two years. I'm using them both at the same time in order to get a clearer view of the bilingual situation of Chuvash/Russian speakers and ALSO to see if these tools are both measuring the same thing (dominance) effectively. If they don't line up - then why? And which test is giving the dominance results that matter? How can each test be made better? Besides the bilingual population sketch, I hope that the answers to these questions will be beneficial to linguists in other communities who are also seeking to measure the directions of a bilingual population.
Anyway, long story short, I'm taking 8 hours of Russian a week, 2 hours of Chuvash a week and then networking, networking, networking to hear from as many Chuvash people as possible. I will be taking trips soon around the Republic to hear from people outside the city, so stay tuned!
Kate
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