Where I live in Northern CA there is a huge Russian-speaking community, and I am so happy that my kids gets to be exposed to Russian a lot, just because of that. Recently it dawned on me that out of the people I know who speak Russian so many are not actually FROM Russia, although most are from the former USSR.

This led me to look up: How many Russian-speaking people actually live in the US? And Wikipedia never disappoints, so here is another article on the topic. For your information, out of the 316.1 million (2013) there are 836,171 Russian speakers (for comparison, there are 36,995,602 of Spanish speaker in the US). And the table below ( taken from Wikipedia) explains why I meet so many Russian-speaking people in CA :

State	Total	Aged 5–17	Aged 5–17%
New York	216,468	24,531	11.30%
California	141,718	19,503	13.80%
Washington	49,282	13,975	28.40%
New Jersey	46,094	6,636	14.40%
Illinois	41,244	4,871	11.80%
Massachusetts	37,865	5,180	13.70%
Pennsylvania	35,029	5,275	15.10%
Florida	31,566	4,002	12.70%
Oregon	21,443	5,622	26.20%
Maryland	19,892	2,175	10.90%
Texas	17,310	2,108	12.20%
Ohio	15,672	1,847	11.80%
Minnesota	14,427	3,104	21.50%
Virginia	13,922	1,846	13.30%
Georgia	13,091	2,332	17.80%
Colorado	13,090	2,228	17.00%
Michigan	12,363	1,553	12.60%
Connecticut	11,457	1,496	13.10%
North Carolina	9,288	1,699	18.30%
Missouri	7,831	1,566	20.00%
Arizona	7,685	895	11.60%
Wisconsin	6,817	770	11.30%
Indiana	5,722	962	16.80%
Tennessee	4,270	933	21.90%
Utah	4,218	730	17.30%
Alaska	3,912	976	24.90%
Nevada	3,808	436	11.40%
South Carolina	3,806	991	26.00%
Maine	2,408	849	35.30%
Kentucky	2,208	236	10.70%
Idaho	1,966	283	14.40%
Kansas	1,919	288	15.00%
Oklahoma	1,774	270	15.20%
Rhode Island	1,740	90	5.20%
Iowa	1,683	238	14.10%
Louisiana	1,576	267	16.90%
New Hampshire	1,447	263	18.20%
Alabama	1,437	177	12.30%
District of Columbia	947	48	5.10%
Montana	893	332	37.20%
New Mexico	887	109	12.30%
Hawai’i	814	136	16.70%
Nebraska	807	60	7.40%
South Dakota	762	153	20.10%
Mississippi	725	81	11.20%
Vermont	637	80	12.60%
Delaware	550	77	14.00%
Wyoming	519	130	25.00%
North Dakota	429	88	20.50%
Arkansas	415	34	8.20%
West Virginia	338	47	13.90%
Total	836,171	122,578	14.70%

 

But how many countires apart from Russia actually still use Russian as their official Language? According to Wikipedia, only 4:

Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan.

However there are 6 regions where Russian is an official lanaguage. According to Wikipedia, in addition to the above mentioned countries in which Russian is an official language, there are several other countries where Russian, though not official, is spoken by a significant portion of the population. These include:

•  Armenia, see: Russian language in Armenia
•  Azerbaijan
•  Estonia, see: Russian language in Estonia
•  Ukraine, see: Russian language in Ukraine
•  Georgia
•  Israel, see: Russian language in Israel
•  Latvia, see: Russian language in Latvia
•  Lithuania
•  Moldova, see: Russian language in Moldova
•  Mongolia
•  Turkmenistan
•  Uzbekistan

If you look at the map of the former USSR and the current Russian boarders – it all makes sense. Israel is there because of the large volume of Russian speaking immigrants, I assume.

One of the beautiful and very differen from Russia countires that uses Russian is Mongolia. In the last Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #20 I came across two wonderful articles which helped me learn about Mongolia and it’s food:

Learning about Mongolia 

Around the World with Pancakes: Mongolian Gambir 

After reading about the country I am now curious to know about the Mongolian language too. As far as I understand, the cyryllic alphabet is used now but the original script for the lanaguge is being re-introduced. I see several hours of research about the Mongolian language in my future!

If you are interested in raising a Multicultural child or want to interest your child in other country’s languages, culture, traditions, or food – it’s a great source for such information! Visit Multicultural Kid Blogs – we are a proud member of that wonderful community!

If you are teaching your child Russian and are not actually from Russia, I would love to know where you are from!