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From: "Scotland-Russia Forum" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@address.invalid>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 10:03 AM
Subject: Fw: Letter to The Scotsman, printed today
THE SCOTSMAN
Mon 17 May 2004, page 19
Cost of cutting investment in language learning
In your report, "From Glasnost to Gleneagles - why the Russians are rushing to Scotland" (5 May),
you said that Russians are now "the biggest growth market in Scottish tourism", and that hoteliers
are desperately trying to teach their staff to speak Russian.
Meanwhile, two of the five remaining Scottish university departments of Russian are in the process
of closure (including Heriot-Watt, a centre of excellence for translation and interpreting) and the
subject has all but disappeared from the school curriculum.
Why is this happening? The reasons cited are all too familiar: funding problems, ration-alisation of
teaching, optimis-ation of resources. The result is devastating.
Russian is not a minority language. Russia occupies one-fifth of the surface of the Earth and its
language is spoken by some 270 million people worldwide, including 30 per cent of the population of
Estonia and Latvia (making it a European Union language). It is not economically insignificant
either, with an amazing gross domestic product growth rate of 7 per cent a year, Russia is of
increasing interest not just to the tourist industry but to a wide range of Scottish businesses,
from oil to Irn-Bru.
There is some understanding of the problem at national level. The Scottish Parliament has more than
once raised awareness of the lack of language skills in Scotland, and recently Mike Pringle, MSP,
campaigned for the support of Russian language teaching in particular.
However, these concerns somehow do not translate into action at grass roots. By not making the human
and financial investment in language learning, and by allowing languages like Russian to slip first
into the category of minority languages, and then to disappear altogether, Scotland loses out in
vital skills which translates into lost business contracts and lost political influence.
CHRIS BRANDIE (Russian Representative, Scottish Association for Language Teaching); JENNIFER CARR
(Scotland-Russia Forum); (DR) JOHN DUNN (Head of Russian, University of Glasgow); (DR) VADIM
GOLOUBEV (University of Edinburgh); MIKE FALCHIKOV (Hon Fellow, University of Edinburgh); TANYA
FILOSOFOVA (Dept of Russian, University of St Andrews); JAMES HALLIDAY (Dept of Russian, Heriot-Watt
University); IRENE McGRATH (Teacher of Russian, Dundee High School); MARION OCKENDON (teacher of
Russian , Anderson High School, Shetland); (DR) LARA RYAZANOVA-CLARKE (Head of Russian, University
of Edinburgh); TIM STEWARD (Scotland Officer, Language Network Scotland); (DR) MARGARET TEJERIZO
(Dept of Russian, University of Glasgow; ELIZABETH WHITE (teacher of French & Russian, George
Watson's College, Edinburgh)
Scotland-Russia Forum
c/o Marchmont Crescent
Edinburgh
This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=561182004
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