Sorry for the long silence, I have been very busy all of the Fall semester teaching 4 classes. Now I hope to be posting something regularly, at least weekly, to generate more interest. The results of the new Census of population of Russia 2010 are becoming more and more available. One interesting statistic that was collected is the number of people claiming proficiency in various languages. This can be also an indirect measure of the national makeup of the Russian Federation, because nationality is no longer officially documented in the census, unless people volunteer this information. Not surprisingly, 99.4% of responders indicated proficiency in Russian, because virtually all adults in the country communicate in this language. English was in the second place with 5.48% of responders claiming proficiency in it. In the third place was the Tatar language (3%), followed by German (1.5%), Chechen (1%), Bashkir and Ukrainian ().83 and ).82% respectively).
Based on personal experience with ESL speakers, very few of the seven or so million who indicated proficiency in English actually speak it well, but at least there are some folks (7.6 million strong) who believe that they do!
If you are intrigued by really rare languages, there were single individuals recorded in the census who claimed proficiency in Sesoto, Surinamese, Bikhar and a few other languages and fewer than 10 individuals proficient in Ido, Volof and Fijian. Among the rare, but indigenous to Russia, languages only around 1000 could speak Selkup language of Western Siberia (Uralic family) and merely 93 could speak Tofalar (a Turkic language related to Tuvin in south-central Siberia), among a few others in the same ballpark numerically.
The full table can be found
here.
