Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation, marina.kutsaeva@iling-ran.ru
ABSTRACT
Introduction: the Mari people are an indigenous people of the Middle Volga region, however almost half of the Mari population of the Russian Federation lives beyond the Republic of Mari El, forming old and new diasporas. The article focuses on the ethnic language vitality and possible ways of its maintenance in conditions of an internal diaspora.
Objective: approbation of the “Master-Student” program based on Mari materials.
Research materials: the author’s field materials, the “Master-Student” program within the framework of the pilot project.
Results and novelty of the research: due to the weak intergenerational transfer of the ethnic language in the new type of a diaspora (Moscow region) and its gradual disruption in old diasporas (according to survey results), the issue of maintaining the ethnic language, introducing it to new speakers and some representatives of the younger generation, who do not speak Mari in the family, seems urgent. In the context of the revitalization of minority languages, there are various programs, one of them is the “Master-Student”. Since ethnic culture (Mari songs and dances) plays the significant role in
the Mari communities, the author decided to act as a student in a linguistic and at the same time dance experiment to study the Mari language and the traditional dance of the Bashkir Mari people. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact
that for the first time the author proposed and tested the “Master-Student” program based on the Mari material. During the implementation of the project and the development of practical activities, the student studied vocabulary on the topic of “Body parts”, “Direction of movement”, “Character of movement”, “Movement in dance”; learned the names of days of the week, parts of the day, time, demonstrative pronouns, some adverbs, encouraging words, basic counting skills, etc. The author concludes that ethnic culture can be the source of communion to the Mari language for new speakers and the
channel for its maintenance.
Key words: Mari language, ethnic language, internal diaspora, linguistic ideologies, language shift, language revitalization, “Master-Student” programme, ethnic culture
Acknowledgments: the work is part of the project “Functioning of Mari idioms in old diasporas” supported by a grant from the Russian Scientific Fund, contract № 24-28-00157.
For citation: Kutsaeva M. V. Singing, dancing and speaking in Mari: to the issue of revitalization of ethnic language in diaspora // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2025; 15 (3/62): 588–597.