The Kumyk-Russian Bilingualism of Children from the Perspective of Schoolchildren and Their Parents. Linguistic and Ethnosocial Aspects

The article presents the third phase of the study of the linguistic and ethnocultural situation of the TerekKumyks in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania using the example of the Terek-Kumyks of the village of Predgornoye. The choice of this group is due to their high residence (the Terek-Kumyks of Predgornoye village live in the Republic of North Ossetia), the linguistic identity of the Terek-Kumyks living in the village, while they are in constant cultural and linguistic interaction with representatives of other peoples of the village and the republic. In this work, attention was focused on analyzing the Russian-Kumyk bilingualism of the children according to the perceptions of the parents and the children themselves. Quantitative and qualitative sources were used for the study. The team of authors carried out the study in several stages. A survey of children and adults was conducted in August 2023, followed by a survey of school-age children only in February 2024. An in-depth interview with a teacher of the Kumyk language at the school in Predgornoye was used as an additional ethnological source. The article presents the questionnaire results in the form of ‘violin diagrams’ reflecting the indices of the dominance of the use of the Russian or Kumyk language. The researchers compared the data from the first and second questionnaires and the perception of the existence of the Kumyk and Russian languages among the schoolchildren from the perspective of the children themselves and their parents. To clarify the questionnaire material on bilingualism, the children were asked four questions about the observance of Kumyk/Russian holidays and knowledge of folklore. The interview with the Kumyk language teacher enabled us to supplement and partially revise some of the questionnaire data. As a result, the study revealed that there is a twofold situation. On the one hand, the children rate their knowledge of the Kumyk language higher than their parents and, above all, their teacher at school. On the other hand, the adults note that although the children use Kumyk to communicate with each other (during breaks, in the yard, etc.), they have great difficulty when they read literary texts in Kumyk or write their own works. This means that the knowledge of the Kumyk language seems to be exclusively of an everyday nature; the children have a minimum of oral communication. At the same time, they read literature and watch visual contexts, mainly in Russian.