Table of Contents
Did they speak English in the Soviet Union?
Yes. But most people never learned to speak it. There was a choice between German and English.
Did all Soviet countries speak Russian?
Only five former Soviet republics now have Russian as an official language alongside their own: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. But even in these countries, the issue of language remains contentious.
Do Russian air traffic controllers all speak English?
Russian pilots and air traffic controllers at the country’s international airports will be required to conduct all conversations in English starting in March 2011, and the practice could eventually be extended to domestic flights.
Is speaking Russian easy?
Some people say that the Russian language can be hard to learn. This is not really true, learning Russian is no harder than learning other languages. The main difficulty for a lot of people is learning the new grammar structure. With Russian the pronunciation is normally quite clear from the written form of the word.
What was the official language of the Soviet Union before Russian?
Before the Soviet Revolution (1917) only Russian was an official language, but some of the “Christianized” groups (Armenians, Georgians, Baltic peoples, Finns?) used their own languages and had for some time.
What happened to the former Soviet Union’s Slavic population?
H. Schiffman, Instructor Languages of the former USSR Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, the population of the USSR was approximately only half Russian-speaking, and the percentages of Slavic speakers was declining.
How did the Bolsheviks change the language of Russia?
Before the Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, meeting clandestinely in various places, developed a strategy (1903) on language that would have, at first, continued the hegemony of Russian in Slavic areas at least, but under pressure from especially the Poles, a more tolerant and pluralist policy was planned.
How retentive are Russians in terms of language?
Russians tend to be most retentive of language, while other groups vary; Ukrainians scored low on this; Jews even lower (loss of Yiddish language, but still classified as Jewish in `nationality’). In USSR, language was main criterion of nationality, but loss of language did not necessarily mean loss of nationality.