Kyrgyz vs. Russian

A big issue in Kyrgyzstan right now is a proposed law which would boost Kyrgyz at the expense of Russian. Most of the debate centers around the concerns of the Russian minority and Kyrgyz nationalism, but this article suggests some economic questions, relating the situation of Russian in Kyrgyzstan to French in Morocco. It cites a study in which the decline of French in Morocco led to a decline in earnings among young Moroccans.

In much of the developing world, knowledge of a European language is the key to future economic prosperity. Some of this is due to globalization and the chance to work for a company that does business overseas. In addition, English is required for many jobs where people come into contact with foreigners. When I was in Jordan, for example, I found that although young people having jobs was rare, McDonald's was filled with them because the company required proficiency in English to work with all the tourists who came there. In addition, access to higher education is a huge reason for learning a European language. This vignette from when I was in Aleppo, Syria a few years ago is perhaps instructive:

"In the suq you find merchants with all kinds of wares, from boxes to carpets to food to clothing, generally friendly, usually with at least one son of around 10 and another family member sharing the day's labor. To buy, you have to bargain, though we quickly found a friend of one of the girls who was here last year and who just started giving us the "rock bottom prices" without us having to bother talking him down. His neighbor had a son who was there, kind of a chubby kid in a red T-shirt; while I was waiting on a friend the father asked if I would mind speaking English with him so he could practice, though the kid was generally a less then enthusiastic student since the kid across the hall - apparently the smartest kid in their class, kept snickering at him. Later the father of the smart kid, after shooing the obnoxious kid back into the shop, sent his younger son over, too, and I wound up speaking/teaching English with both of them, with the father of the smart kid sort of hanging out trying to help things along but mostly getting in the way.

"As we were leaving, the father of the first kid thanked me and said that when he inherited the shop from his father, he didn't have a choice in what to do with his life. His son wanted to go to the U.S. to study medicine, and he wanted him to have that choice. This is a common story, I think, throughout the region, as people seeking new opportunity turn toward the language of the land of opportunity. In this part of the Middle East, the United States may function as the hegemonic Western power despised in global politics, but even more relevant to the lives of the people, it symbolizes hope and the future - the dream that going to America will get you a great job, the reality that knowing American English will open more doors than you can possibly imagine, and the media image of the U.S. as a place of unmatched technological prowess. The trade made by people such as these suq merchants, of course, is in the cultural arena - an exposure to American values in place of Arab ones, a straight-up deal of "culture" for "opportunity." It is not my place to evaluate this trade-off, and given the past I'm not sure it's as drastic as liberal intellectuals like to make it (see the Islamization of Western Africa for what I suggest is a similar situation). But it does exist, and forms a real part of the lives and plans of millions of people."

The real issue in the above aeticle isn't bilingualism, but the economic benefits and cultural costs of retaining certains ties with a more powerful neighbor. After all, I haven't heard of Russians worrying about the state of Kyrgyz in their country. And it's still not a issue I'm inclined to judge.