Maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany: A longitudinal approach

Bernhard Brehmer

doi:10.22363/2687-0088-2021-25-4-855-885

Abstract

The study discusses the perspectives of long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany. Based on data from a longitudinal study (2014-2018) we investigated changes in the sociolinguistic situation of 19 adolescent heritage speakers and in their proficiency in Russian. The aim was to investigate whether changes in the participants sociolinguistic situation are reflected in their knowledge of Russian. Data on the sociolinguistic situation were collected via an extensive questionnaire that the participants had to fill out once a year. Language proficiency was measured by experimental tasks targeting different linguistic domains. For the current paper, we used data from the longitudinal measurement of lexical and grammatical proficiency. The results revealed that the participants exposure to Russian input is decreasing in several domains over time, especially concerning media consumption and personal visits to the homeland. Russian is increasingly restricted to interactions with parents, and to educational settings (classes in Russian as a foreign or heritage language). Regarding language attitudes, our participants explicitly consider Russian important primarily for family interactions and cultural factors, but less with regard to career goals. Nevertheless, there was a positive trend in lexical and grammatical proficiency. We interpret these findings as a result of the prolonged exposure to heritage language instruction which leads to a stabilized proficiency in Russian. Given the institutional support and the size of the community, we hypothesize that the perspectives for long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany are better than for Russian heritage speaker communities in other countries.

Highlights

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union Russian has become one of the most widely spoken allochthonous minority languages in Germany
Following the three groups of parameters that were distinguished by Laleko (2013) for assessing heritage Russian vitality in the U.S, we first present the results of our analysis regarding the answers to questions which targeted the conditions for developing proficiency in the heritage language
The ratio of participants who have been exposed to formal instruction in their heritage language over a longer period is very high in our sample and stands in stark contrast to the situation in the U.S, where “[a]ccording to the most recent data, in a sample of 254 heritage learners of Russian, 84.3% have never studied Russian at a community or church school, and only 14.7% reported having attended a community or church event in their heritage language within the last six months” (Laleko 2013: 92)

Summary

Introduction

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union Russian has become one of the most widely spoken allochthonous minority languages in Germany (cf., among many others, Besters-Dilger 2013, Brehmer 2007, Isurin & Riehl 2017). More than 280.000 individuals were born in Germany to families, where at least one parent is an L1 speaker of Russian (Statistisches Bundesamt 2018: 130). It is this group of individuals that we will focus on in our contribution. Given the fact that the peak of immigration from countries of the former Soviet Union to Germany was in the early 1990s, the offspring of the first generation of Russian-speaking immigrants are currently building their own families which inevitably involves the decision whether to transmit their heritage language Russian to the following (= third) generation or not

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Discussion

Conclusion