The Udmurt language of Russia

The Udmurt Language Everyday program was started at the beginning of May 2013 and has managed to garner hundreds of followers. The program was started on a social network known as Vkontakte and it incorporates the use of visual aids. Alexey Shkljaev, the founder of the program had wanted to develop a visual program to help learners grasp and learn the language fast. Everyday, a new word or phrase of words is displayed on the site, accompanied with a picture. These visual lessons have helped to attract the attention of non-Udmurt speakers as well as native Udmurt speakers, who frequently comment on the site, and give answers to various questions raised about the language.

Udmurt is a Uralic language. It is spoken by the Udmurt people, who live in Russia, in the Udmurtia republic. It is a co-official language with Russian. There are about 550,000 people who speak the language. Most native Udmurt’s do not speak the language, they speak other languages instead, such as Russian. Some Udmurt’s have no practical command of the language. Udmurt is closely related to the Komi-Permyalskiy and Komi language. The grammatical and phonetic structure of Komi and Udmurt are almost similar. Udmurt is used as a language of instruction in primary schools. There are also TV stations, radios and newspapers that use the language. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Udmurt language was almost dying out. However, concerted effort at revival helped to ensure that the language was preserved. This culminated into the language being recognized as an official language in the Udmurt Republic in 1994. But due to continuous opposition of state sponsorship of the language, the sphere of use of the language has narrowed down. Udmurt has borrowed some vocabulary from other languages such as Russian and Tatar.

Udmurt is written using the Cyrillic alphabet. The language has a history of written literature, which is pre-evolutionary in nature. Most Marxists and Leninist literature and scholarly works of Russia and the Soviet have been translated into Udmurt. Written poetry began to be used at the start of the 19th century.

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