The strengthening of economic ties between Russia and other emerging markets has created a boon for the country’s language sector, according to stakeholders. Educators and agents confirm that the demand for Russian has increased mostly due to student’s seeking to benefit professionally from the country’s growth.
“Our traditional markets have always been Western Europe mainly German speaking countries, ” Walter Denz, owner of Russian language school Liden and Denz. “But now we see the demand is growing in emerging markets. We have a foot in Korea and Turkey. The next step is Latin America because of worldwide globalisation.”
With two locations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Liden & Denz is the largest provider of Russian as a foreign language in Russia. Denz says that in the last few years the school has gone from having no students from Turkey or Korea to them each making up about 4% of the total population. Latin American students currently make up 1% but he expects further growth almost exclusively driven by agents.
“For young people adding an additional language in terms of career planning it makes sense to learn Russian”
“Our website isn’t in Korean or any other language so it’s always agents who are attracting attention from a specific market,” he said. “They invite us to come because of growing interests and we rely on them to tell us how to package it, what to do and when to do it. Otherwise there’s no point.”
The reasons for learning Russian are very diverse says Denz, but for students from emerging markets there’s a clear career goal. “For young people adding an additional language in terms of career planning it makes more sense to learn Russian than other languages that are nice for travelling but won’t help you get a better job.” he said.
Most students are studying Russian as their third or fourth language and tend to be older than students of other languages. The average age at Liden and Denz is 33.
Izzet Aslantatar, director of Alternatif agency in Turkey says agents have seen demand for Russian go up by 20-30% in the last year. “Russia is the third most important language in Turkey as far as commercial languages are concerned, just behind English and German. We have quite a lot of tourists from Russia here and the commercial ties are getting stronger every day.”
“There are also a lot of younger Turkish students who want to do undergraduate degrees in Russia after their language course,” he added.
In addition to clear professional benefits, Aslantatar said learning Russian in Russia is good value for money. “The price is quite competitive compared with Germany or the UK and the US.”
