According to UNESCO, “Belarusian, while an official language of an independent country, is regarded as vulnerable, based on the widespread use of Russian in its stead.”
If you ask any Belarusian about their native language, you might not get a straightforward answer. The overall majority of people in Belarus understand Belarusian and may even consider it their mother tongue, but very few use it in everyday life. Popular stand-up comedians from Minsk used to joke that the most foreign language in the country is Belarusian.
The process of Russification in Belarus began a long time ago and has been slow but steady. The current regime is still pursuing a policy aimed at systemic eradication of the Belarusian language and heritage.
Many Belarusians have experienced at least some form of marginalisation of their native language and for many years been subjected to the narrative that it is a tongue of peasants and lower classes. Such rhetoric is often shared by those living outside Belarus, even by people from the younger generation.
The current regime has adopted as their deliberate official strategy to erase the history, language, and national identity of Belarusians.
In 2020, when detaining peaceful protesters, the law-enforcement officers marked Belarusian speakers to single them out from the others. Later on, some pensioners were reported to police for reading books by Belarusian authors on trains. They were later persecuted and slapped with heavy fines, while one elderly woman was sent to a prison cell for 15 days.
There are two official languages in Belarus – Belarusian and Russian, but according to Belsat, only 10 % of school students receive their education in Belarusian. No universities offer teaching in Belarusian unless you choose it as your profession. The same applies to vocational education. To make things worse, some school teachers consider the Belarusian to be a dead language.
Since 2020, the current regime intensified its efforts to eradicate the Belarusian language. Last year, the authorities launched a campaign to ban the use of the Latin script, which has been historically a part of the Belarusian linguistic system. Each language should provide for a Latin spelling of geographical and other proper names. The Belarusian is one of the few languages which had such versions embedded in its system. Now this has been artificially replaced by its Russian variants.
The situation with the Belarusian language is so dire that even outside the country not many Belarusians speak it.
Before 2020 the non-government organisation “Godna” actively promoted the revival of the Belarusian culture and language. Thanks to the efforts of its activists, the billboards in Belarusian began to appear on city streets. Its members launched Belarusian language campaigns and organised events celebrating Belarusian heritage. Like many others in the last few years, many of their members had to flee Belarus in the face of intensifying repressions, while others ended up in prisons.
Since 2020 more content in the Belarusian language has begun to appear on social networks and the Internet. It gives hope that the language is still alive and in demand. Some people started switching to Belarusian in the aftermath of 2020. They often say that as long as a language is alive, so are its people.
“So do not abandon our Belarusian language, lest we perish!”
Francisak Bahusevic
Author Dmitry Kurapatsky
List of online programs for learning the Belarusian language:
https://uroki.movananova.by/classes/
https://www.lingohut.com/en/l112/learn-belarusian
https://www.lingo-play.com/en/learn-belarusian-online/
https://mylanguages.org/belarusian_articles.php
https://www.50languages.com/belarusian-for-free
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