language question in recent years has increasingly become a subject of political rhetoric, pre-election promises and flirting with voters.Often it is just a cover-standing problems in the social and economic spheres, but there are countries where the question of a language as the state "is an edge."The language policy of the state as a set of measures aimed at supporting one language or several languages, always seeks to unite the different peoples inhabiting the country into a single integral state - nation.Another thing is how it achieves the desired.
We are before the eyes of many historical examples of inept language policy led to a completely opposite effect - rather than unite the people, she had separated, fueled separatist sentiment and led to internal tensions, sometimes end civil conflicts.For example, in the UK back in the mid-twentieth century teachers punished students who used the speech in Welsh, Irish or Scottish word.The armed conflict in Northern Ireland was wearing not only a religious character (Catholics against Protestants), but also a language (Irish against British).
In France in 1794 the Republic passed a law that prohibits the use of any of the other languages and dialects in the country, except for the French literary (in fact, is a dialect of the province of Ile-de-France).This law was repealed only in 1951, but over half a century Occitan, Basque, Provencal, Breton, Italian, Corsican and others - have almost entirely disappeared.Did the language policy of this nation to unite?Far from it - and the mass demonstrations calling for the revival of regional languages nationalities inhabiting France are a clear example of this.
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the language policy was aimed at maneuvering and the kind of appeasement conquered territories.Despite the fact that the communication between the monopoly and the colonies went to the German, Austro-Hungarian government supported national languages: Opens the Slovak schools, supports creative Ukrainian and Polish teams to sponsor talented Italian youth.Therefore, the "Spring of Nations", and later - the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire occurred is not a language issue as purely political.
Unlike Czarist Russia, where the vast all "non-Russian", since 1917 began to promote the ideology of support for regional languages.However, further promotion is not gone.In 30-ies actively exaggerate the view that in the Soviet Union only 15 fraternal peoples, and the 15 languages of the Union Republics is actively maintained.At the same time, without any support from the state were, for example, German, Old Mongolian, Finnish and other languages whose speakers compact or sparsely inhabited the territory of the USSR.In addition, the government announced some of the languages of the republics "underdeveloped" demanding "language engineering" - so, Moldovans forcibly transferred from Latin to Cyrillic alphabet.In the 50-60-ies of the language policy of the USSR secretly, but radically changed: the whole declaration of support languages of the Union republics, not speak in Russian, to be "natsmenov" became unfashionable, it was a sign of backwardness and rural origin.The unfortunate consequence of this policy, we can observe the example of Russified Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in part.
Language Policy in Russia, unfortunately, inherited many of the trends of the late USSR.In addition to the declarations, claiming support for languages of national regions, republics and provinces, the Russian government often forgets about the language minorities living on the territory of the state.Of course, every citizen should know the state language of the country, but that does not mean that it is forbidden to speak and teach their children to speak their native language.If the state is not at the highest level to support minority languages, using the levers of administrative power, the media and the promotion of writers who write in languages of national minorities, after some time, these languages and dialects die out, and we will be frustration, resentment and national strife.
