Bashkir language

Bashkir or Bashkort (Bashkir: Башҡорт теле, romanized: Bashqort tele, [bɑʂ'qʊ̞ɾt tɪ̞ˈlɪ̞]) is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. It is co-official with Russian in Bashkortostan (a republic within the Russian Federation). It is spoken by 1.09 million native speakers in Russia (in Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan Oblasts), as well as by minor groups in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Estonia and other neighboring post-Soviet states.

Quotes

• The leading tendency of national-linguistic development has become bilingualism: the mastery in equal degree of the native and the Russian languages, and this has been by far an unfinished process, which requires constant attention [...] The interest towards the Bashkir language from other ethnicities has kept growing, the functions of the Bashkir language expanding [...] - Preface, Bashkir-Russian Dictionary: 32000 words. Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1996. Page v.
  • Ведущей тенденцией национально-языкового развития становится двуязычие: владение в равной степени родным и русским языками, а это ещё далеко не завершённый процесс, который требует постоянного внимания [...] Интерес к башкирскому языку у других народов всё более возрастает, расширяются функции башкирского языка [...] - предисловие, Башкирско-русский словарь: 32000 слов / РАН, М.:Дигора, Рус. яз., 1996. Стр. v.