Abstract
Despite current positive attitudes of the Nivkh people towards their culture and language, Nivkh is disappearing in the face of the vast penetration of Russian in all linguistic domains and the full adaptation of traditional Nivkh culture to Russian lifestyle. The chapter gives an overview of Nivkh traditional culture, describes the current sociological situation of the Nivkh language and provides a diachronic and synchronic survey of political, socioeconomic and cultural reasons leading to marginalization and loss of the language. Furthermore, the article traces the development of language shift from Nivkh to Russian, outlines the history of the study of the language, and describes the attempts for standardizing, teaching, and preserving Nivkh at different stages of its history.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Peoples of the North’ is an umbrella term used for a substantial number of peoples inhabiting the tundra and taiga regions of Russia whose southeast boundary is the Pacific Ocean.
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Gruzdeva, E. (2015). Explaining Language Loss. In: Marten, H., Rießler, M., Saarikivi, J., Toivanen, R. (eds) Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union. Multilingual Education, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10455-3_9
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