Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
In other words, for any color, if you’re an unilingual speaker of that language, you can at the very least, likely manage to travel or even live or do menial work everywhere within the zone of that color.
|
For Russian no. Younger people in the Baltics don't speak Russian, so if you spoke Russian only, you would have a hard time living in the Baltics (outside of some tight Russian-speaking communities in Riga or Narva). It would be like trying to live only with the French language in Ontario. A bit difficult!
Same in the Central Asian republics. Apart from northern Kazakhstan, the younger generation don't speak or understand Russian anymore today. The revival of the Kazakh language in Kazakhstan has been pretty incredible and unexpected (at least I never expected Kazakh could someday replace Russian as a public and street language). Even the authorities have now decided to use mostly Kazakh in public speeches since the invasion of Ukraine, a clear message sent to the Kremlin.
As for Ukraine, technically you could be understood pretty much everywhere speaking Russian, but I wouldn't advise you to speak Russian with an accent of Russia inside Ukraine these days...
The one country that is fully Russified is Belarus. It's doubtful the Belarusian language will ever be revived.
Threaded Mode