Evidence of attrition in second-generation Russian-speaking immigrants in Italy

This study shows that some of the features identified by Glovinskaja as “weak points” of linguistic development are present in the speech of second-generation Russian-speaking diaspora in Italy, in accordance with that of other speakers residing in different countries. This phenomenon of attrition seems to be considerably linked to the limited input received by the speakers if their Russian language education has been restricted and they do not have mono-ethnic families. Viceversa, the linguistic support of the Russian-speaking family and the possibility of receiving a supplementary education in Russian for a continuous period can contribute to the maintenance of a balanced bilingualism. These hypotheses should be confirmed through a further longitudinal investigation on the same sample of children attending the Russophone schools selected for this analysis.