The Slavic component of the modern language situation in the Amur region

The colonization of the Far East began at the end of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Most immigrants were Eastern Slavs: Russian, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Resettlement had an impact on the language situation in the region. Autochthonous peoples' languages, Russian language in all its forms, dialects of Belarusian and Ukrainian immigrants, Ukrainian literary language, the languages of other nationalities coexisted in the Amur region at the end of the nineteenth century. However, over time the situation has changed. Russian literary language is the dominant language now. It is also the language of international communication. The use of other languages is limited to the national environment. Russian literary language has a significant impact on regional dialects and erases bright dialectal features. Thus, the descendants of Belarusian immigrants, who live in the villages of the Amur Region now, speak the Russian dialect, although the Belarusian and Ukrainian vocabulary is noted in their speech. Ukrainian dialects are also being lost. The vast majority of the older generation descendants of Ukrainian immigrants use Russian dialects, but retain single Ukrainian dialect inclusions. The Ukrainian dialect is preserved only in the speech of some older individuals. It is mostly women born in 1920s-1930s in the Ukraine who later moved to the Amur region, or in the Amur region. During their life they have lived in the village, worked in the kolkhoz. They usually have no education or simply studied in an elementary school. Middle and younger generations of Ukrainian immigrants are Russian-speaking people. But the people of the middle generation still passively know Ukrainian dialects: they know the speech of their parents, can tell you about the realities of the past life, using Ukrainian and Russian dialect vocabulary. This is confirmed by a comparative analysis of linguistic characteristics of different descendants' generations of Ukrainian immigrants in the same family: mother using the Ukrainian dialect (85 y.o.) and her daughter (55 y.o.).

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