Published:  00:00 Monday - February 09, 2009

Vietnamese and Russian linguists are working on the production of a joint paper on teaching and learning national and ethnic languages.

The 450-page monograph, entitled “The functions of language in multi-ethnic countries such as Russia and Vietnam,” is a collection of 18 studies by experts from the Moscow Institute of Linguistics under the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Hanoi Institute of Linguistics.

“Russia and Vietnam need to preserve the languages of their ethnic minorities on the one hand and use their official languages as a tool to bring their culture, science and technology to the world,” Irina Samarina, a scientific collaborator at the Research Centre on Ethnic and Language Relations, was quoted by the Voice of Russia as saying.

The paper is expected to contribute greatly to the continuous linguistic research in both countries.