Abstract

Languages are not called mirrors, but rather lenses of the world, and for a reason. The world perceived by an individual refracts in the native language according to his ethnic mentality. As an intermediary between individual thinking and social reality, language sets not only cogitative stereotypes and world outlook limits, but also standards of behavior. The language assimilation alters the ethno-cultural identity at social and individual levels. Since the familiar material life conditions, cultural environment, social surroundings do not always correspond to occurring changes in the mentality of a polyglot, it leads to personal and social contradictions, inter-ethnic conflicts. Cultural and linguistic unification accompanying globalization entails extinction of small and rare languages. The gradual extinction of the world languages raises the questions of language rights, language freedom, language planning, and language politics. Observations of the mentality of the Chuvash people show that for young people original positive qualities gain strength before the threat of globalization. During a modern era ethnic features and ethno-cultural activity of the population don’t disappear, and it casts a doubt that the processes of modernization and integration remove ethnic problems from today’s agenda.