Russian Learning

From MT:

"New Council to Promote Russian Language Abroad"

The Cabinet has formed a new council to promote the Russian language abroad, allocating a 1.5 billion ruble ($46 million) budget to fund the opening of linguistic centers in dozens of countries around the world. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed an order on Tuesday establishing the council to "help fulfill the government's policy aimed at popularizing the Russian language, supporting and developing it," the Cabinet said on its website. Among the council's tasks will be the opening of Pushkin Institute linguistic centers in about 50 countries, including former Soviet republics, Europe, the U.S., China, Japan, Syria, Iraq and several other Middle Eastern nations, news reports said. The new council will be headed by social policy chief Olga Golodets, her spokesman Alexei Levchenko said. The spokesman said some of the Russian language centers overseas may be free, while some may charge tuition, and one of the first centers to open under the project will be based in Paris, Izvestia reported. Levchenko added that popularizing the Russian language is "one of the instruments of promoting the country through soft power, as opposed to rockets and weapons," Kommersant said. Russian language councils existed in the country in the 1990s to the mid-2000s, mostly to help Russians speak and write their native language properly. One of its major accomplishments was the creation of the literacy website Gramota.ru in 2000, to explain both the basics and many of the trickiest issues of the language's arcane spelling and punctuation rules.

A member of the Kremlin's international relations council, Vladimir Zorin, said that the language council was part of President Vladimir Putin's national development strategy through 2025. "If people know more about the Russian language, culture, our mentality, this by itself would help improve the image of our country abroad," Zorin told newspaper Vzglyad. Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Russian World foundation and the State Duma's educational committee, said that the number of Russian speakers around the world has shrunk by 50 million people in recent years, and though the creation of a council was a good idea, its budget of 1.5 billion rubles was insufficient.

^ Most countries have a council to teach foreigners their language and their culture. When I was living in Russia and needed a break and wanted to read or see something in English I went to the nearby British Council (which has since been forced to close by the Russian Government.) While the person there barely spoke English they had movies and books that I could take home. On thing I found interesting about this article is that it wants to teach Russians living in other countries how to speak their own language. I can understand teaching non-Russians to love Russian culture and language, but Russians themselves is funny. The Russian language is very difficult (especially for an English-speaker) so the more opportunities foreigners have to learn from a native speaker will make thing easier (it is along the same lines of a native English-speaker going to another country to teach English.) ^

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/new-council-to-promote-russian-language-abroad/489058.html