Dagestan sociolinguistic field trip data

The establishment of Russian as a lingua franca led to a dramatic decline of the command of local second languages. The turning point is usually in the 1920s – 1930s. You can see it in Chuni with Russian and Kumyk, in Archib with Russian and Azerbaijani and in Rikvani for Russian and Chechen.

Men were more multilingual than women. In Chuni 19 out of 236 people spoke Kumyk, all of them male. In Archib, 16 people out of 156 spoke Azerbaijani, of which 15 were male.