Russian Language Society of Gandoor

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The Russian Language Society of Gandoor (Russian: Общество русского языка Гандура, Obshchestvo russkogo yazyka Gandura) is an organization that promotes the usage of the Russian language in Gandoor. They were established in 2011 due to declining usage of the Russian language in Gandoor. They currently have 91,000 members nationwide and are the largest organization that promotes the Russian language in Gandoor.

History

The Russian Language Society was established by Sergey Polyakov and Cristina Polyakova in response to a report that only 17% of Gandoorese citizens aged between 20 and 30 could understand fluent Russian and only 11% said that they considered the Russian language important to Gandoorese culture.

While originally consisting of only Russian-speakers from the founder's hometown of Hebron, they would rapidly grow in membership and soon became known as the unofficial promoter of the Russian language in Gandoor and have been regarded by the Russian-speaking community as having partial responsibility for the passage of several laws, both locally and nationally, that promote the Russian language.

Organizational Goals and Successes

Goals

A poster reminding Russian-speakers that Russian is one of the the official languages of Gandoor

The primary stated goal of the Russian Language Society is 'promoting the usage of the Russian language by encouraging Gandoorese youth to take up the language in schools as well as by encouraging the government to promote the usage as well'.

Members of the society admit that one of the issues they have to deal with is the fact that, per the 2020 Gandoorese Views on Foreign Countries survey, 81% of Gandoorese citizens have a negative view of Russia. The organization attempts to mitigate this by specifying that they promote the usage of what they refer to as 'Gandoorese Russian', which contains loanwords from English and Japanese that aren't used in other dialects and is often written entirely with the Latin alphabet as opposed to the Cyrillic one.

Despite being headquartered in Freena Yon, the Russian Language Society does little work within Freena Yon itself, as usage of the Russian language is already predominant within the yon, which contains nearly 60% of all Russian-speakers in Gandoor and census data reports that out of the 44 million people living in the yon, only about 4 million speak a language other than Russian at home.

The society is also aware that merely encouraging the learning of Russian isn't enough and they also place importance on the usage of Russian in Gandoorese culture. They believe that if people see the Russian language being used in things such as television programs, books, or songs; then they may be encouraged to learn it as well. The Russian Language Society annually releases a report in February on the amount of media that predominantly utilizes the Russian language in Gandoor over the previous year. In their most recent report, published in February 2021, they reported that 4% of all new television programs, 2% of all movies, and less than 1% of all songs were in Russian.

Successes

The Russian Language Society has had several successes in their goals of promoting Russian. Their first success is regarded as the 2012 passage of new educational standards for Yontan Yon where the teaching of the Russian language, alongside Japanese, would be made mandatory in primary school starting in the 2013 school year. Previously Yontan Yon followed the national educational standards which only mandate Russian and Japanese language education starting in intermediate school, with primary school education in those languages only being 'highly encouraged'.

The biggest success of the organization is regarded as the passage of the 2019 Foreign Language GBC Act in which the Gandoor Broadcasting Corporation would, by 2030, establish two additional channels with programming entirely in Russian and Japanese. After this act was passed by the Forum, founder Sergey Polyakov stated 'having foreign language channels operated by the GBC will be a great asset to our cause, as they are regarded as the most trustworthy organization in our nation. While it won't be an overnight change, I do think that the Russian language will make a resurgence in Gandoor.' The Russian-language GBC channel, named GBN Russkiy, began broadcasting in 2023 alongside its Japanese-language counterpart, GBN Nihongo.

Controversies

While there are no controversies involving the Russian Language Society as such, they are sometimes confused with the National Organisation for the Russian Language, an organization of 7000 that desire for Russian to become the only language spoken in Gandoor and whose members refuse to speak any language other than Russian.