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Up to the beginning of the 20th century Yakut was a regional lingua franca used for communication between the different ethnic groups in North Eastern Siberia.
Russian has been established by force as the official language through public life and education in the beginning of the 20th century. Generally the Yakut have accepted this situation without protest, although on a few occasions the Russians have met resistance, in defence of the Yakut language and status. One example of this was in the 1960s and 70s, under Soviet rule when the Yakut protested to the discontinuation of use of their language. The percentage of Yakut with the language as their mother tongue was recorded to be 95% in 1991. This can be compared to neighbouring Evenks of whom only 11% spoke Evenk as their mother tongue at this time.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union the Sakha Republic was founded. The law on languages in the "Sakha Republic" was adopted in 1992. Yakut was proclaimed official state language alongside with Russian and the languages of the northern minorities became official languages in their regions.
Yakut, Russian and other languages of regional ethnic groups have coexisted side-by-side in Yakutia for centuries. For that reason, there have been the most varied kinds of bi- and multilingualism and an intense assimilation process among these languages.
There is a higher percentage of Russians living in the Republic of Sakha than Yakut and more recently it has been noted that more mixed marriages have occurred. These amount to 20% of the marriages taking place in Yakutia and whether the parents are Yakut or Russian makes a huge difference on which language the child will grow up with as the first language. If the father is Yakut then there is a 78% chance that the child will primarily learn Yakut whereas if he is Russian there is an 83% chance they will learn Russian. Despite the determination of the Yakut to maintain their language there will always be a threat from the Russian language, as well as from English and other world dominating languages.
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