Russian schools began to study the African languages Swahili and Amharic. According to RBC, this was stated by the director of the Institute of Asian and African countries of Moscow State University Alexei Maslov at the International Parliamentary Conference “Russia – Africa”.
“In Russian schools, Swahili and Amharic are being taught as additional languages, which was generally not the case even during the Soviet Union. This means that we have a cross-cutting training school-university-employer,” he said.
In Russia, according to Maslov, they are preparing a new generation of people who will be able to understand “the mentality and basic models of development in Africa,” and also that Africa is not just a large and unified continent. “There are different regions with different economic and political traditions,” the scientist concluded.
Swahili is the language of the people of the same name, whose representatives live mainly in East Africa. It is the official language in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. Distributed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Somalia. Latin is used for writing. According to UNESCO, Swahili is one of the ten most widely spoken languages in the world. As of 2021, it was spoken by over 200 million people.
Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia. About 30 million people speak it in this country. Amharic uses its own writing system to write.
Since July 2021, the study of a second foreign language in schools has become optional. In Russia, new Federal State Educational Standards (FSES) for primary and basic general education have been published, which have consolidated this norm.
Source: Rosbalt
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