Has Canada’s language immersion assistance finally produced concrete results in Estonia?
30 Sep 2005 Estonian Central Council in Canada
TALLINN - Statistics currently indicate that only 19% of non-Estonians declare their mother tongue to be Russian. Recent ”Eurobarometer” surveys show that the number of residents of Estonia who state Russian to be their mother tongue has decreased by 14%.
Canada has pro-actively supported the training of primary and secondary school teachers (many of whom are ethnically Russian) to teach Estonian to non-Estonian children using language immersion programs. Language immersion techniques and skills have a long and successful history in Canada.
Although it would be unsubstantiated speculation that this trend in the increasing use of Estonian as the mother tongue is directly and primarily related to Canada’s foreign aid program, the Canadian International Development Agency’s targeted efforts in this area have undoubtedly complemented and and bolstered existing trends. The program has definitely improved the self confidence of teachers in their expertise.
As a comparison, in Latvia 29% of the residents declare their mother tongue to be Russian. This is a decrease of 9%.
The “Eurobarometer” study showed that Estonia and Latvia have the highest percentage of residents whose mother tongue is something else than the state language; that is 19% and 29% respectively – a situation that has spurred controversy in the past. The trends towards a wider use of the language of the indigenous population would maybe be related to the prevailing pro Estonian and pro-Latvian language laws. But in view of the constant accusations from Moscow, observers state that Québec language laws are more stringent.
Fully 87% of the Estonian population can speak more than one language. In comparison only 50% of the population of the European Union are conversant in a language other than their mother tongue.
In the European Union the most used language is English which only 13% of the EU consider as their mother tongue. Fully 34% of the people of the EU can speak English, 30% German, 23% French and 15% Italian.
The Estonian Central Council in Canada sees as one of the crucial essentials for Estonia`s cultural survival to be the vitality of its language of heritage. The present trend indicated by the “Eurobarometer” study is certainly an encouraging indicator of future possibilities.
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