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Share of people calling Belarusian their native language shrank from 73.6 to 53.2 percent

A total of 5,058,400 people who participated in the 2009 General Census, or 53.2 percent of the population, called Belarusian their native language, Alena Kukharevich, deputy head of the National Statistics Committee, told reporters in Minsk on September 8, as quoted by BelaPAN.

In the previous census, held in 1999, 73.6 percent of the population, said that Belarusian was their native language.

Last year's census findings suggest that 3,948,100 people, or 41.5 percent of the population, view Russian as their native language, and that 6,673,000 people, or 70 percent of the population, usually speak Russian at home, Ms. Kukharevich said. As many as 2,227,000 people, or 23 percent of the population, said that they spoke Belarusian at home.

The number of people describing themselves as fluent in English and German increased 3.2 and 2.2 times between 1999 and 2009 to 450,000 and about 138,000, respectively, she said.