Raising the Levee Against the Linguistic Tide
This article examines the history of a people and a language. First known under as the « Perm », they were renamed « Zyrian » and finally « Komi » in the 20th century. The decline of the Komi language can be correlated to the rise of another people called « Slavs » and then « Rusin » and finally « Russkii » (Russian). The case of the Komi is not atypical: the forces that undermine the Komi language are virtually identical to the problems faced by most minority languages, including the French language of Western Canada. What will finally kill a language are not solely the political and social forces that favor one language over another, but the shame and the stigma that are attached to a minority language. This article is therefore a history of the Komi language and an examination of the day-to-day actions that devalue the language of the minority, in this case the ethnic Komi that have been a minority even within its traditional territory and the contemporary Komi Republic located within the Russian Federation.