Kamchatka Krai (hereinafter, Kamchatka) as a federal subject of Russia, situated in the Far East of Russia, is an ethnolinguistically and sociolinguistically complex region. It demonstrates a variety of linguistic situations, including language shift (involving the abandonment of minority languages in favor of the Russian language) as well as dialectal fragmentation and polyglossia of native languages.1
Kamchatka is home to eight groups of Indigenous peoples: Aleuts, Alyutors, Itelmens, Kamchadals, Koryaks, Chukchi (Luoravetlan), Evens (Lamuts), and Eskimosy. According to the All-Russian Population Census of 2020 (Rosstat 2020), the share of Indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East (hereinafter, Indigenous minorities) in Kamchatka amounted to 13,129 people (see Table 1). This is approximately 4.67 percent of the total population of Kamchatka, which, according to the Federal State Statistics Service, as of 1 January 2023 amounted to 280,700 people (Rosstat 2023).
The Number of Indigenous Peoples in Kamchatka
| Name of the people | The total number of indigenous peoples according to the 2020 All-Russian Census |
|---|---|
| Koryak | 6,418 |
| Alyutor | 89 |
| Itelmen | 1,926 |
| Kamchadal | 1,322 |
| Chukchi | 1,222 |
| Aleut | 345 |
| Eskimosy | 27 |
| Even | 1,780 |
| TOTAL | 13,129 |
The Russian language is the only state language in Kamchatka, being the dominant medium of communication. All groups of Indigenous peoples are fluent in Russian. Table 2 presents seven Indigenous languages, which is one less than the total number of Indigenous groups. This is explained by the fact that Kamchadals comprise the descendants of the Indigenous peoples who assimilated with Russians (Murashko 2016), and whose native language is Russian (Neroznak 1994). According to the 2020 Russian census, Kamchadals mostly speak Russian (1,321 people).
The Number of Speakers of Indigenous Languages in Kamchatka
| Name of the indigenous language | Language family | Number of speakers according to the 2020 All-Russian Census |
|---|---|---|
| Koryak | Chukotko-Kamchatkan | 2,344 |
| Alyutor | 172 | |
| Itelmen | 459 | |
| Chukchi | 547 | |
| Aleut | Eskimo-Aleut | 98 |
| Eskimo | 8 | |
| Even | Tungusic | 850 |
| TOTAL | 4,478 |
However, official statistics do not always accurately reflect the real language situation. For example, according to the official statistics, the number of Alyutors is only about half the number of speakers of the Alyutor language. This discrepancy in numbers can be attributed to the terminological confusion around the names of languages and minority groups, namely, “Alyutor” and “Koryak,” which will be discussed further in more detail.
Terminological Confusion: The Alyutor and Koryak Languages
The Chukotka-Kamchatka language family, which conventionally belongs to the Paleo-Asiatic language family, consists of five languages: Chukchi, Koryak, Alyutor, Kerek, and Itelmen. Most of the discussions—whether in Soviet, modern Russian, or international research—are centered around the issues of recognizing the Alyutor language as an independent language and the problems of classifying dialects of the Koryak and Alyutor languages (Stebnitskii 1938; Zhukova 1968; Skorik 1958; Vdovin 1973; Murav'eva 2013; Mal'tseva 1998; Pronina 2004; Golovaneva 2019; Nagayama 2003; Kurebito 2001). Both languages, Koryak and Alyutor, are characterized by polyglossia and dialect fragmentation (see Table 3).
Dialects of the Koryak and Alyutor Languages
| Name of the indigenous language | Dialects |
|---|---|
| Koryak | Chavchuven (supradialect) |
| Apukin | |
| Paren | |
| Itkan | |
| Kamen | |
| Alyutor | Alyutor (north-east) |
| Rekinik (north-west) | |
| Palan (south-west) | |
| Karagin (south-east) |
The Indigenous people of Kamchatka, in relation to whom the ethnonym “Koryak” is used, belong to an ethnic group that does not have a single self-designation. The reindeer-herding Koryaks call themselves Chav'chyvav’ (Chavchuven)—literally “rich in deer.” Sedentary Koryaks living on the coast of the Okhotsk and Bering Seas use the self-designation Nymylyu (Nymylan), literally meaning “resident of the village,” if necessary, specifying the name of the village, for example, v'iv'nylyu “residents of Vyvenka,” ӄapaӈenylyo “residents Karaga,” alutalu “residents of Olyutorka.”
In the 1930s, an attempt was made to unite both subethnic groups with one ethnonym “Nymylan” instead of the traditional “Koryak” and, accordingly, use the name “Nymylan language” instead of “Koryak language” (Stebnitskii 1935; Korsakov 1940). For example, the book entitled Self-Study Guide of the Nymylan (Koryak) Language (Korsakov 1940) constitutes the most complete description of the grammar of the Chavchuven dialect of the Koryak language. This led to great confusion, since the nomadic Koryak-Chavchuvens never called themselves this term, let alone identified themselves as Nymylans. V. M. Nutaiulgin, a correspondent of the newspaper Aborigen Kamchatki, notes that when issuing passports, nomadic Koryak-Chavchuvens registered themselves as Chukchi, since they did not identify themselves as Nymylans (Nutaiulgin 2010). Thus, these innovations with substituting “Koryak” with “Nymylan” were not welcomed by the Koryaks themselves. During the Soviet period, it was a generally accepted belief that there was a single Koryak nation, which was reflected in the creation of the Koryak National Okrug in 1930 (now the Koryak Okrug within Kamchatka Krai), which included all sub-groups of the Koryaks, including sedentary Alyutors and Karagins (Vdovin 1973: 17).
In terms of terminology, everything became even more complicated when, in 2000, the ethnonym “Alyutor” (sedentary Koryak-Nymylans) was added to the Unified List of Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of the Russian Federation (Edinyi perechen’ korennykh malochislennykh narodov Rossiiskoi Federatsii), and along with it, their language, Alyutor, which had been previously considered a dialect of the Koryak language. Among the sedentary Koryak-Nymylans, “Alyutor” did not really take root, since they only use the name Alyutor for residents of Olyutorka village (closed in 1975). The widely accepted name “Koryak” is still in use, which correlates with both the Koryak-Chavchuvens and the Koryak-Nymylans.
At the moment, Koryaks and the Alyutors remain as two distinct ethnic groups in the Unified List. The Koryak-Nymylans from other villages who do not identify themselves as Alyutor people were actually left without a self-designation. Thus, during the All-Russian Census in 2020, which introduced “Alyutor people” and “Alyutor language” in its lists, the number of Alyutor people (eighty-nine people) may be significantly underestimated, since many Koryak-Nymylans simply did not identify themselves as Alyutor people.
As for the Alyutor and Koryak languages and who actually speaks them, much of the literature is just as ambiguous. In 1931, a written system was created for the Koryak language based on the Chavchuven dialect, which was incomprehensible to the Koryak-Nymylans due to phonetic differences. In fact, the Koryak-Nymylans (Alyutors) were left without a writing system, so for a long time the Alyutor language was considered to be a dialect of the Koryak language. And it was only in 2000, as noted above, that the Alyutor language received the status of a separate language, while at the same time it remained unwritten. Thus, terminological confusion and inconsistency in the naming of ethnic identities, ethnic groups, and languages greatly complicates the situation both for linguists and for the Indigenous people themselves. To sum up it all, if we try to describe the situation in general terms, it turns out that the Koryak-Chavchuvens and the Koryak-Nymylans represent one ethnic group, but their languages, Koryak and Alyutor, are classified as separate, independent languages. At the same time, the classification of ethnic groups does not always coincide with how Indigenous peoples identify themselves. For example, V. M. Nutaiulgin notes that “despite the ingrained common name of the people ‘Koryaks,’ the Alyutor people do not identify themselves with them as one whole” and “in Achaivaiam [village], which is considered Chukchi by its population, the young refer to the Koryak-Chavchuven speech . . . as . . . Chukchi language” (Nutaiulgin 2010: 103).
If the Koryak language is the language of the Koryak-Chavchuvens, then the language of the Koryak-Nymylans, which is currently united under the common name “Alyutor,” would be more correctly called the Nymylan language. However, due to the fact that the attempt to use the term “Nymylan” for all dialects of the Koryak language had been previously made, such an innovation will likely bring even greater confusion. Thus, the terminological confusion together with the dialectal fragmentation of Koryak and Alyutor languages complicates the process of identifying the actual number of speakers of these languages.
The Vitality Status of the Koryak Language
Linguists have created different scales to assess the vitality status of any given language and the degree of its endangerment. Among the most widely accepted and used in the global context are the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) developed by Joshua Fishman (1991), the Language Vitality and Endangerment scale (LVE) proposed by the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group (2003), the Expanded GIDS (EGIDS) developed by Paul Lewis and Gary Simons (2010), which presents a synthesis of LVE and GIDS, and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) developed by linguists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and at Eastern Michigan University, using the language endangerment index (Lee and Van Way 2018). Each of the scales is based on a combination of factors with intergenerational language transmission being the most commonly used and considered the most important one, as it shows whether a given language is being transmitted to future generations or not (Fishman 1991). However, it is important to bear in mind that no single factor is able to determine the vitality of a language, as is stated in UNESCO's Language Vitality and Endangerment caveat that “no single factor alone can be used to assess a language's vitality or its need for documentation. Language communities are complex and diverse; even assessing the number of actual speakers of a language is difficult” (Brenzinger et al. 2003: 7). As outlined in the previous section, the problem of assessing the number of actual speakers is very relevant and acute in regard to Koryaks.
With regard to minority languages in Russia, this article adopts a national scale developed by the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS). It is based on three key sociolinguistic parameters: native speakers, intergenerational language transmission, and use of the language in daily communication. The scale can be accessed on the website of the RAS Institute of Linguistics project “Languages of Russia” (Kharitonov et al. 2022). According to this scale, the Koryak language receives an index of 2A, which is characterized by: 1) interrupted intergenerational language transmission; 2) limited regular daily communication; and 3) number of speakers between ten and five thousand (according to the All-Russian Census 2020, the number of Koryak speakers is 2,344).
All ethnic Koryaks speak fluent Russian and use it as the main language of communication. The Koryak language nowadays is spoken only by representatives of the elder generations (age fifty years and older). The younger generation may have a passive command of the language, and they can understand some phrases spoken by their parents or grandparents, but they do not speak the language. So, the Koryak language is spoken occasionally and sometimes as a “secret language” to exchange some words when speakers find themselves in a Russian speaking group (Pupynina n.d.).
Overview of Indigenous Language Conservation Efforts in Kamchatka
There are different approaches to the conservation of Indigenous languages; among the most common ones are documentation, language revitalization through summer-immersion schools, home- and school-based programs, and community classes, as well as cultural engagement through traditional art performances, folklore, and ceremonies. Documentation of endangered languages—be it in a digital or paper-based form—plays an instrumental role in accumulating the linguistic and cultural knowledge of native speakers in durable forms that can be used in the preparation of lexicons, grammars, and corpuses. It also plays an essential role in preserving traces of severely endangered languages for future generations in the worst-case scenario if/when an endangered language “falls asleep” with the death of its last native speaker, in hope that, by using archived materials, the language can be revived. However, documentation alone does not solve the problem of language transmission, because language is animated through speaking and sharing. That is why endangered language revitalization projects supporting language learning and speaking in local communities are important attempts to keep the language alive and to restore intergenerational language transmission if it is broken or challenged. Thus, only collaborative work between language experts and local communities on documentation and revitalization can initiate coordinated efforts to breathe new life into endangered languages.
Most of the efforts by linguists and anthropologists in Kamchatka have been centered around research, documentation, and archiving, but it is not because they view this as a panacea against the “linguistic death” of endangered languages or that they are more concerned with the preservation of the linguistic code itself rather than the community. Rather, there are a few possible reasons for this phenomenon. The first one is rather simple: documentation is the first thing that a linguist or an anthropologist can do for a local community, and it is also something that is more or less easy to do. It is a starting point for all further endeavors taken by educators, language activists, and communities in revitalizing and maintaining the language. The anthropologist Alexander King, who has worked with Koryak people in Kamchatka for 20 years, notes that language documentation conducted during ethnographic projects in collaboration with native speakers is “an easy way to make a significant impact now and forever. A small investment in time and money produces anthropology that makes a difference in people's lives” (King 2015: 8).
Another reason may not be so obvious at first sight. The number of linguists who are doing research on languages in Kamchatka, and with the Koryak language in particular, can be counted on one's fingers. Most of them do not reside in Kamchatka; they are mostly language experts working in language institutes in Moscow (Institute of Linguistics RAS), Saint Petersburg (Institute for Linguistic Studies RAS and Herzen University), and Novosibirsk (Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the RAS). The first thing they are able to help the local communities with is to obtain funding for research and field trips to remote villages in Kamchatka to document the language. By saying that documentation is more or less an easy thing to do, I mean the process of documentation, especially with the recent proliferation of computer software and inexpensive audio equipment. However, the logistics to get to the remote villages of Kamchatka is not that easy due to the absence of railways and roads. For an “outsider” living in Moscow, for example, it is expensive, logistically challenging, and very time-consuming: a nine-hour flight from Moscow to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii (PK, the capital city of Kamchatka), then an average two-hour flight to the remote villages. Flights to the remote villages for “outsiders” may be twice as expensive as the flight from Moscow to PK. The flights are also highly dependent on weather: one can wait for a week or two to get on the airplane. And that is not all—one often needs to take a helicopter or an all-terrain bus to reach some of the remotest villages and settlements. I mention these field logistics details only to emphasize that the documentation of endangered languages in the remote and hard-to-reach settlements of Kamchatka is a great undertaking carried out by only the most enthusiastic scientists and researchers.
There are only a few linguists residing in Kamchatka who not only document the language but also work closely with the local communities and participate in revitalization projects, where they apply their linguistic expertise, knowledge, and dedication together with their genuine initiative to work with communities and develop programs and projects to revive and awaken the language. I would like to mention here Valentina Dedyk, a native speaker of Koryak, PhD, Associate Professor at the Kamchatka Institute for the Development of Education, who teaches Koryak at Palana college in Palana (a remote settlement); Anatolii Sorokin, a native speaker of Alyutor with extensive experience of fieldwork with Koryak and Alyutor, who works as head of the Center of Ethnolinguistic Studies at Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University; and Maria Beliaeva, head of the Department of Cultural Heritage Conservation at the Kamchatka Center of Folk Art, who has enormous experience in organizing folklore-ethnographic fieldwork.
The local Kamchatka government is in the process of shifting its views and policies in favor of Indigenous people's rights and their languages. Recently, the local government has been undertaking some practical steps to move language revitalization forward and beyond just formal schooling in Kamchatka, by initiating, supporting, and sponsoring cultural events and language related initiatives, such as holding a storytelling contest in Indigenous languages. No doubt there is a need for more such initiatives in Kamchatka. One of the initiatives is coming from Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University with the opening of the Center of Ethnolinguistic Studies in 2021. The university has become a participant in the Russian program of strategic and academic leadership “Prioritet-2030” with the allocation of sufficient funds. The allocated research funds made it possible to implement a few projects. One of them is the Koryak language learning application “Koryak Tuyu” that has been developed by my team at Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University and released in Google Play in June 2024, and in AppStore and RuStore in July 2024.
The Mobile Application “Koryak Tuyu” as a Digital Tool to Support Language Revitalization Efforts in Kamchatka
One of the new possibilities for securing language vitality in the twenty-first century has been introduced by new media domains and digital technologies. Two studies by Candace Galla (2016, 2018) indicate that digital technology serves as an effective means for Indigenous language revitalization. It enhances the learning process by providing immediate access to information from virtually any location and fostering a collaborative environment for knowledge exchange between youth and elders. Projects for learning Indigenous languages with digital applications show multiple benefits: from increasing community interest and motivation in learning their languages to exposing learners to the language in much broader domains and contexts (Galla 2018; Elliott 2021; Meighan 2021). This blend of native and modern enables Indigenous communities to achieve digital inclusion and “to decolonize the digital landscape and ensure that Indigenous voices and worldviews are also represented and privileged online in a culturally relevant way” (Meighan 2021: 401).
However, in Kamchatka there has been a lack of digital learning content. In the digital education market for the Koryak language, there is only one mobile application with flashcards in Koryak, called kayuyu (“baby deer” in Koryak) designed and launched in 2023 by an ethno-blogger and language activist, Karina Kozub. As a response to the demand in the digital learning environment for an endangered language such as Koryak, we designed and developed the “Koryak Tuyu” application (tuyu means “you” in Koryak, homophonous to English ‘to you’). I do not see this application as a solution to save the Koryak language or to create proficient speakers. The target objective is rather to promote language learning among younger generations, attract public attention to the language, broaden public awareness of Kamchatka Indigenous languages and culture, and raise their social prestige in the local community through online presence, as one of the factors contributing to the decline of a language is the lack of social prestige (Ward and Genabith 2003). While technology may not be the ultimate solution for saving endangered languages, it can serve as a valuable tool to facilitate the learning process by expanding the realm of communication and permitting more access to the language (Galla 2016: 8–9). Also, I would like to emphasize that despite the powerful role that a digital technology can play in creating and developing language resources, it can only be used as a supplemental tool for language learning and teaching.
This section includes a description of the application; a discussion of the application's features and components; and an assessment of the effectiveness of the application for language learning.
1. Focal Group and Level of Fluency
The primary focal group are ethnic Koryaks living in the remote villages of Kamchatka; however, we also target anyone interested in learning and preserving the Koryak language. It is meant for teenage and adult audiences with very little or no knowledge of the language. This application has everything for the beginning Koryak learner to begin learning and understanding the language.
2. Team, Curriculum, and Material Development
The curriculum and the content of this application were developed by the author of this article, who is employed as a Researcher at the Laboratory of Regional Educational Studies at Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University. The following resources have been used in the development of the curriculum: Self-Study Guide of the Nymylan (Koryak) Language by G. M. Korsakov (1940); Koryak-Russian and Russian-Koryak Dictionary by A. N. Zhukova (1968); Grammar of the Koryak Language by A. N. Zhukova (1972); and Learning Vocabulary in Koryak: Guidelines by V. R. Dedyk (2023).
The proofreading of linguistic materials and audio recordings of Koryak words was done by Valentina Dedyk, a native speaker of Koryak, and by Anatolii Sorokin, a native speaker of Alyutor who has extensive experience of fieldwork with Koryak and Alyutor. Our goal was to incorporate both a male and a female voice into the audio component so that the user could hear the potential variation in pronunciation.
The mobile application “Koryak Tuyu” was developed by an IT engineer, Dinara Stepina, and was released in June 2024 on Google Play Market, and then in July 2024 on AppStore and RuStore. The application was written in Kotlin and Java programming languages for Android; and in Swift and Kotlin for iOS. This mobile application to learn the Koryak language is the first of its kind that goes beyond flashcards and allows people to independently study this endangered Indigenous language.
3. Application User Interface
The application utilizes a user-friendly interface in a flat design. When the user first opens the application, the categories are immediately introduced. The user can press on one of the categories and it is displayed. Each Koryak word is accompanied by its translation into Russian; each word is also written in the established Koryak keyword based on the Cyrillic alphabet with a few specific letters. The user can click on any word or phrase and the audio recording is heard. Navigation between categories is also easy: the user can press on any of the categories and the content of it will appear, or press the back button to return to the main menu (see Figure 1). With this easy navigation, even a user with the little digital knowledge is able to navigate through the application. One of the benefits of this application is that users can download it and then use it without an Internet connection, which is crucial for remote villages with unstable Internet connectivity.
Navigation and side bar menu of the “Koryak Tuyu” app.
Citation: Sibirica 24, 1; 10.3167/sib.2025.240104
4. Application Features and Components
The application consists of four parts: grammar reference, alphabet, ten lessons, and basic vocabulary (see Figure 2). The grammar reference covers brief information about the Koryak language, word stress, some phonetic rules, and parts of speech (see Figure 3). There is an option to “search by topic” that makes it easy for the user to search for a particular word.
Each lesson in the language learning category consists of grammar notes, vocabulary, and tasks that are required to be completed before proceeding further (see Figures 4, 5, and 6). Lessons are structured simply at first, providing a conversational setting with greeting phrases, and gradually begin to include more complex ones with a text. If something is unclear, a user can refer to the first category of the grammar reference. After completing all ten lessons, a user is offered a multiple-choice quiz. A user who receives a score of eight out of ten in the quiz will be awarded access to the audio recording of a Koryak folklore story, “The Wounded Bear,” narrated by a Koryak reindeer herder, Nikolai Tynetegin, who was also a native speaker of the Chavchu dialect of the Koryak language.
Basic vocabulary is categorized into ten themes, most of which reflect the local Koryak environment: tundra animals, sea animals, fish, hunting/fishing, weather/seasons, clothing, family, body parts, food, and berries. Each category consists of both a visual and an audio component as well as a Koryak and a Russian term (see Figure 7). One of the features that this application provides is that a user can share a word from the vocabulary with others via messengers or “add to favorites.”
Basic vocabulary organized by ten different themes in the app.
Citation: Sibirica 24, 1; 10.3167/sib.2025.240104
5. Use of the Application in Language Learning Courses in Kamchatka
This application is designed as a tool for learning Koryak that can be used individually by a user who is interested in Koryak language/culture or as a complementary/supplementary tool by a teacher in the classroom. It provides good amount of content in reference to textual and audio media: the application incorporates short texts in Koryak as well as audio components enabling users to gain familiarity with a word's pronunciation. The lessons in the application are designed in a way that an individual with no knowledge of Koryak is able to learn words and phrases. Some rote memorization is applied in the lessons with the repetition of focal words.
This mobile application is used as a supplementary educational tool at Palana College in Palana village (Tigil region, Kamchatka Krai) and in a master's degree program in ethnolinguistics that was launched in September 2024 at Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University.
6. Challenges in the Development of the Mobile Application
There were several technical challenges, including application testing and working with large text volume, that were met by the application developer, Dinara Stepina. A detailed overview of these technical challenges, however, is beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, I would like to outline one challenge, which involves checking correct answers. If there are open-ended tasks without a limited set of answers, providing a method for checking correct answers is often a difficult task for an application developer. Since in the “Koryak Tuyu” application a user is often asked to write an answer to a question, there were a few problems that the developer encountered. The first was the need for specific Koryak letters when writing an answer to a question. This problem was solved by adding buttons to the screens of such tasks, allowing a user to enter the required letters that are missing in the standard Cyrillic layout, such as ӈ, ӄ, в′, г′. Additionally, a Koryak keyboard was also released for Android users, which can be installed and activated on the phone.
The second problem was limited “correct” answers. Due to application limitations, the correctness of the proposed answer is checked by comparing the proposed answer with the sample stored in the application database. Let us give a specific example. The question “Who lives in the forest?” can be answered in different ways, such as “bear,” “Bear,” “bear!,” “bear:”; how can we be sure that the user will enter exactly the answer that the application needs, since it is impossible to foresee all possible options? Dinara Stepina insured that when entering an answer, the application aligns it (removes all capital letters, making them lowercase) and also removes extra spaces so that they do not interfere with the check. Additionally, when a complex answer is required, the application often provides a hint in the form of the beginning of a word, a punctuation mark or an underline that suggests the number of words in the correct answer.
Conclusion
The new era of globalization, together with the spread of new technologies, has introduced new challenges for Indigenous communities and their languages as well as new opportunities for language reclamation and revitalization and solutions to issues that these communities experience.
An endangered language should not be considered as being predestined to the fate of becoming “extinct.” Endangerment should not be a death sentence.
That process is inexorable but not inevitable: international cooperation and well-planned, intelligently implemented language policies can bolster the ongoing efforts of speaker communities to maintain their mother tongues and pass them on to their children, even in the face of powerful forces pressing them to shift towards larger languages (Moseley 2010).
I believe that sufficient top-down strategies and bottom-up initiatives and efforts can shift the situation. At the same time, I believe that no matter how enthusiastic linguists or language activists are about revitalizing the language, no revitalization can be successful without positive attitudes from its speakers and a willingness to contribute to language propagation and documentation. It is challenging to develop effective language revitalization strategies without positive attitudes towards minority languages. Nicole Dołowy-Rybińska and Michael Hornsby have identified three conditions for a minoritized language to be revitalized: “people must be capable of using it, having learnt it in the home or through minority language education, they must have the opportunity to speak it, in both private and public lives, and they must have the desire to use it” (Dołowy-Rybińska and Hornsby 2021: 114).
The revitalization efforts regarding Koryak and other Indigenous languages of Kamchatka are still rather scattered. The people who are working on language revitalization in Kamchatka are just separate, dedicated individuals; it is not a close-knit community of native speakers and language experts. This presents a significant drawback in moving language revitalization in Kamchatka forward.
Our project is a small but important step not only in promoting digital learning for Koryak and increasing its digital inclusion but also in uniting the efforts of linguists, native speakers, and local institutions. According to the application's statistics, there have been more than a hundred downloads in each platform: Google Play, RuStore, and AppStore. The number of downloads does not reflect the actual use of the application; however, we have received some positive feedback from the local community. The application has been covered not only in the local news (Aborigen Kamchatki 2024) but also in federal news (Nauka.rf 2024). Our project received the VIII All-Russian public prize “Keyword” for the preservation of linguistic diversity in the Russian Federation in December 2024. In 2025 we plan to update this application by inserting more cultural components, such as words that describe traditional Koryak clothing and dwellings, as well as by integrating visual components, such as actual pictures taken during ethnolinguistic fieldwork by Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University, so that these new components become more realistic and inspiring for users.
Acknowledgments
This study was implemented in the framework of “Linguistic and cultural diversity of Kamchatka Krai in synchrony and diachrony: interaction of languages and cultures” project at Youth Laboratory of Vitus Bering Kamchatka State University in 2024
Notes
Dialectal fragmentation refers to the existence of multiple dialects within a specific area or society. Polyglossia involves the use of more than two languages (or dialects of the same language) in a community. For example, the Koryak language is characterized by considerable dialectal variety (Chavchuven, Apukin, Paren, Itkan, Kamen). It is common for Koryak speakers to know neighboring dialects.
Application QR codes
Mobile application “Koryak Tuyu” on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.dinarastepina.koryakmobile
Mobile application “Koryak Tuyu” on App Store: https://apps.apple.com/kr/app/koryak-tuyu/id6593660048?l=en-GB
Mobile application “Koryak Tuyu” on RuStore: https://www.rustore.ru/catalog/app/ru.dinarastepina.koryakmobile
Koryak virtual keyboard on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.dinarastepina.koryakkb&hl=ru
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