Brits' Lost Russian

From the BBC:
"UK struggles with language of Russian diplomacy"

We have heard a lot about Britain's financial deficit over the past few years but not much - until now - about Britain's linguistic deficit. A report by the UK Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee has concluded a lack of Russian speakers in the Foreign Office left Britain's diplomats ill-equipped to anticipate the events in Ukraine. According to the report, an absence of Slavonic know-how meant Britain had been unprepared for the most serious East-West tensions since the end of the Cold War. The consequence: a drive to recruit Russian experts.   In a speech last week at the international affairs think tank Chatham House, the British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, announced the government was actively seeking diplomats and spies who knew their soft signs from their hard signs, who looked at the backwards "R" in "Toys Я Us" and saw the final letter in the Cyrillic alphabet.  Proficiency in the language of Pushkin and Putin is once again a desirable asset. In the short term, the emphasis will be on Putin rather than Pushkin.  The new recruits will presumably spend their time dissecting speeches about military doctrine and foreign policy.  For those of us who have studied Russian and lived in Russia, the renewed valuing of our language skills is a double-edged sword - a source of satisfaction, tempered by the profoundly depressing reason why those skills are back in vogue: Mr Hammond's assessment Russia "has the potential to pose the single greatest threat to our security". The parliamentary report pinpoints a more general falling away of language skills in Britain's diplomatic service, but Russian has suffered worse than most: according to the figures, only 27% of posts associated with a level of proficiency in Russian are filled by someone who meets the required standards. 

 

The Russian language

• Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet
• There are 33 letters in the Russian alphabet: 11 vowels, 20 consonants, and two pronunciation signs
• The letters are: А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, К, Л, М, Н, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э, Ю, Я
• There are only three tenses in Russian
• The same word can have different meanings, depending on which syllable of a word is stressed

So, what is being lost? Beyond dealing with the cold, hard facts of a potential military threat, I would argue that, for improving relations in the longer term, the real value of language skills is in the "softer" sphere of diplomacy - understanding Russian culture and history is key to understanding where the Russian public is today and where it may be tomorrow. In other words, reading the language of Pushkin could help to explain the popularity of Putin. From the initially confusing Cyrillic alphabet to noun declensions and cases, Russian isn't a straightforward language, but it's a hugely rewarding one.  Russian as an academic subject has seen its popularity dwindle in recent years.  For geopolitical and economic reasons, Arabic and Chinese have become more desirable languages for Westerners to study.  For a leadership in the Kremlin smarting from the loss of empire and feeling threatened by Nato's eastward expansion, it is not hard to see how this linguistic neglect might reinforce the sense Russia's interests are not taken seriously in the West. In Russia itself, language learning has been flourishing.  As the country opened up to the outside world, there was an upsurge of interest in foreign languages.  The younger generation of Russians is far better travelled and more comfortable speaking English than their parents.  And the Russian government has embraced the change. The Education Ministry has proposed making a second foreign language compulsory in Russian schools and, from 2020, including a foreign language as one of the three core subjects in the unified state exam - putting that on a par with Russian and maths. But, that is beginning to sit uneasily with the current nationalist mood in Moscow. 

 

 

^ As someone who has studied and speaks Russian and has travelled to the UK and other parts of the EU this report floored me. When I was in Germany last December I heard more Russian spoken in public than I did English. The British should hire some of the EU citizens from eastern Europe (especially Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that were made to learn Russian and speak it fluently. There are many eastern Europeans living and working in the UK - I remember travelling through England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and when expecting to hear a typical English, Irish or Scottish accent instead I heard a thick Slavic one. Not very good for tourism, bit good for a government that needs Slavic speakers. As for Russians learning foreign languages. It is very hard to find someone who speaks anything other than Russian even in major cities and in tourist places like airports, train stations, museums, etc. If anything Russia needs more emphasis in learning and using a foreign language rather than what it currently uses. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31856880