Eurasian Media Studies Center

At the end of 2022, the Russian language ranked fifth in terms of competitiveness in the world. Andrey Shcherbakov, Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Philology of the Pushkin State Institute of the Russian Language, announced this at a Kostomarovsky forum’s press conference on the Russia Today media group basis:

“There is an index of the global competitiveness of the Russian language in the world. And here, in fact, there are no major changes – despite all the external circumstances of a geopolitical nature, the Russian language has retained the fifth position in the world. Of course, in terms of the number of speakers, the Russian language, for example, is still inferior to English, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and some more. This year, by the way, in our index we recorded that there are slightly more Portuguese speakers in the world. And the Russian language in this sense has lost one position, ” said Shcherbakov.

Moreover, the number of Russian-language sites on the Internet is growing, while the number of media published in Russian in different countries of the world and the number of scientific publications remain unchanged:

“The number of, for example, Russian-language content sites in the world is growing. The number of media published in Russian in different countries of the world remains somewhat stable.  <…> The number of scientific publications, which is also very important, is fixed. It has not undergone significant changes. There is even a slight increase, ” said Shcherbakov.

It is important to note that the Russian language occupies a fairly strong position in the CIS countries. And this is due, first of all, to the fact that it is represented in education systems:

“About 90 percent of candidate and doctoral dissertations in Kyrgyzstan are defended and written in Russian. This is a really serious indicator,” Shcherbakov emphasised.

As a part of the study, we found out in which countries the Russian language occupies a leading position in the field of culture. Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan are the countries in which the Russian language is most represented in museums, libraries and theaters. Also, the Russian language is developed in the sphere of culture of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Abkhazia and Turkmenistan.

Earlier, Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said that the English language has become dead, instead it is necessary to learn other languages ​​of interethnic communication.

Photo source: Aglaya Kovaleva