Dmitry Oparin interviews Vasily Kharitonov for the Russia Program:
Vasily Kharitonov is a linguist at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2022, he went to the Nanai village of Dada in the Far East to teach children the Nanai language and study the local linguistic landscape. In a conversation with anthropologist Dmitry Oparin, the scholar talks about his methods of studying native speakers, the factors that influence the prestige of a language, and how the infrastructure in Russia works for those who communicate and read in more languages than just Russian. […]
You teach at a school in the village of Dada. Is this a Nanai village?
In Dada, all families are Nanai. That is, there are many non-Nanai here, but usually these are members of a Nanai family. There are almost no people like me who are not a part of some family.
How many Nanai are there in Dada and how many of them are native speakers?
For me, the question of being a native Nanai speaker isn’t binary — a simple “yes” or “no.” A person may have excellent comprehension, but may not speak a word. And there are those who both understand and speak, but usually understand better than they speak. This year, I came up with an entire language proficiency map. […]
Recent Comments