Current Situation and Endangerment

A Brief History

The Chulym community, for numerous years, has been shut out by the Russian government. In 1959 the Chulym people were dropped from the census. They were instead put under a different ethnic group known as the Khakas. The people do not accept this name, but some have adopted it (Anderson and Harrison 2003).

In the 1970s the Russian government rounded up the Chuylms and forced them into smaller speaking communities apart of a small village relocation project. This project's goal was to gather smaller speaking communities and group them together by their non-economic viability (Anderson and Harrison 2003).

In 1999 the Chulyms were given back their ethnic pride by given the name Tomsk and formed an ethnic organization called Chulymyets, literally meaning Chulym man. This organization was formed under the Russian government and given the encompassing title "The association of the small-numbering peoples of the North" (Anderson and Harrison 2003). Even though the group was given a government role, they still saw no change within their local communities.

Current State of Endangerment

Chulym is currently 'severely endangered.' There are about 35 speakers of Chulym worldwide, but they are primarily located in Russia, in Tyukhtet County. David Harrison goes on to describe the endangerment of the language by saying, "chulym now has fewer than 10 fluent speakers. The Chulym speaker population continues to decline sharply. Six speakers we interviewed in 2003 and 2005 have passed away. Only three speakers remain who are able to work with us. (Harrison and Anderson 2003)

Macro-Level Variables

Education

During the Soviet regime, Joseph Stalin put the 'second mother tongue policy' into effect, which declared Russia as the state spoken language of Russia. This forced students into boarding schools, where Russian was the primary language used in schools. This was the policy for many years until 2017 when Vladimir Putin dismissed this policy. He said that, 'forcing the person to learn a language which is not his/her native is impermissible.' While this seems to be great news, the use of Russian in schools is still more prominent than any other minority language. The Russian government may not have a law in place that requires Russian to be spoken, but they still reinforce its use by all means possible (ICELDS)

Regional Attitudes

Due to this overwhelming nationalism, any use of minority languages were prohibited. Many speakers of Chulym are afraid to use the language for this reason. In the film The Linguists, it is presented that Vasya created an alphabet for the language. But he got rid of this alphabet due to the negative attitudes toward his language. The consequences of nationalism lead speakers of Chulym to lose the sense of pride in their language (The Linguists)

Types of readily available printed materials

The Chulym people live in a rural area of Siberia. They do not have access to printed materials and there is not an orthography for the language. This makes it very difficult to spread literacy (Anderson and Harrison 2003).

 Micro-Level Variables

Acquisition of Literacy

Chulym is not taught in schools. Due to Russian being the primary language that is taught and used in schools, Chulym is not being used by children. The largest demographic of speakers of Chulym are elderly people. There are no speakers of Chulym under the age of 50. There is no systemic teaching of the language (Anderson and Harrison 2003).