Nivkh Language Revival

Revitalization of Nivkh

However, there are also cases of revitalization processess with limited success where the traditional methods have not brought any prominent results. This was the case of Nivkh, an isolate language spoken on the territory of the Sakhalin Island belonging to the Russian Federation. The transmission of the language was slowed down if not interrupted by several factors including demographic, economic and political changes and most importanly the relocation of Nivkh-speaking population to the settlements with predominantly Russian-speaking population (Gruzdeva 2015). There, Russian has a more prestigious status and makes navigation in everyday life easier. Nivkh has systematically been taught in kindergartens since 1980s, however the proportion of participating children is lower than ever before.

References

Gruzdeva, Ekaterina; Janhunen, Juha (2018). "Revitalization of Nivkh on Sakhalin". The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization. New York: Routledge.

Gruzdeva, Ekaterina (2015). Explaining language loss. The Sakhalin Nivkh case. In H. F. Marten, M. Riessler, J. Saarikivi and R. Toivanen (eds.). Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union. Comparative Studies on Equality and Diversity. Berlin: Springer, 233‒252 Multilingual Education 13.