On A Related Point

A few weeks ago I wrote about my own personal language here in Moldova, but a far more interesting topic is the issue of language as it applies to the nation as a whole, particularly the issues people have between the speakers of Russian and Moldovan and how this nations runs as a bilingual society (I tell people here all the time that if I knew more Spanish than the words for 'beer', 'book', 'girl', 'on fire', and 'no more', I would go back to America and get a Fulbright scholarship to compare multilingualism in a place like this and in a place like New York, Southern California, something like that). I live it what is, for all intensive purposes, a fully functioning bi-lingual nation.

Officially here the language is Moldovan, basically Romanian (the difference between the languages is like the differences between American and British English). However, as I was told within two hours of arriving in Moldova, being a Russian speaker is a huge advantage because everyone knows Russian – whether a person wants to or likes to speak the language is a different issue (more in a second), but at least every person over the age of 25 or so is fully able to communicate, with most people under 25 having a solid grasp of the language because 1)It's taught from the first grade in most schools, and 2) As odd as it sounds, a lot of the television channels are in Russian and most of the DVD's traded around are in Russian too, so children from a young age are are bombarded with the language and their comprehension is solid.

The history of the Moldovan language here is a long one – I may be off on some of the facts but basically, under the Soviet Union Russian was the only language, officially, and all the Moldovan was not only forced to the background but the alphabet of the language was also changed from the traditional Latin alphabet to the Cyrillic, Russian alphabet, an especially touchy issue (this also means that a person over a certain age could get by just fine just knowing Russian but would have huge issues just knowing Moldovan). At the end of the Soviet Union, when Moldova was about to declare it's independence, the first thing that the people of Moldova reclaimed was their language – as an example of how strong passions were, look no further than the Moldovan national anthem, “Limba Noastra,” which in Romanian means “Our Language.”

With this surge of nationalism for their own culture by the Moldovans comes a backlash against all those who were responsible for the original oppression – in this case, the Russians (who, in turn, have returned the tension to the native Moldovan speakers). There are numerous examples of tensions between the people, usually with Russian speakers showing high disdain for their Moldovan counterparts (my favorite examples – a teacher from Peace Corps once was told by a Russian speaker that “Moldovan is a language for the animals” and our former Training Coordinator once, while asking in Moldovan for a person to move so she could get off a bus, was told in Russian, “why don't you speak a normal human language”). I myself have also found my self in the presence of a surprised Russian speaker who thinks it only natural that my friends have a firm grasp of Moldovan after having studied only eight months (with Moldovan being considered a 'simple' language) but are more than surprised to learn that not only do I speak Russian but double surprised that I too have a firm grasp of the language after an equally small amount of time.

However, despite this fact the Moldovan speakers are not to be let off the hook totally, as there is a huge dislike for Russian speakers who are not fluent in Moldovan, who do a lot of mistakes. For example, if I'm with friends in a bar or in the market or something and a friend of mine makes a mistake, it's usually actually appreciated because it's known that the person making the mistake is an American and, frankly, not too many people go out of their way to try and master a language like Moldovan. However, if a native Russian speaker is in the same situation and makes the same mistake, said person can be laughed at because they've lived in this nation all their lives and are unable to speak the native language. In fact, this point to me is especially interesting – all the kids in my school who are in the Moldovan classes - 100 % of them - are fully functional in Russian, while I would say that the number of kids in the Russian classes who are equally functional in Moldovan is in the low teens.

And while it should be noted that much of the disdain shown for Russian speakers is justified, it should also be noted that most of this tension is mainly amongst the older set, amongst those old enough to remember the treatment of the Moldovan language under the Soviet Union. Amongst the youth of Moldova, the problem is minimal.

The language situation in my host family is a little interesting. My host brother, for example, understands about 80% of Moldovan but I've only heard him speak it twice, both times on the phone and both times to the same person. If he's in the market selling apples in Chisinau, there's no doubt that he's fully able to help a person and speaks Moldovan well enough to do so, but he simply won't do it for fear of making a mistake and being a point of amusement (see the above note on Moldovan speakers not having much patience for Russian speakers and their mistakes). My host mom, on the other hand, told me (we had a big conversation about language here on Friday evening) that she understand about 50% of Moldovan language, that unlike a lot of native Russian speakers she has the utmost respect for the Moldovan language and the people who speak it, likes Moldovan culture in general – she simply never had the chance to learn the language and as a result, can't speak it (a point of embarrassment for her, actually). She told me that often she's in a place – in a store in Chisinau, for example – and the person helping her simply refuses to speak Russian despite the ability to do so, which drives her crazy. Also, she's found herself in situations where someone will ask her a question in Romanian, she'll fully understand the question and respond in Russian, upon which the asker of the question will turn to another and make some smart comment about how she really didn't understand the question.
And in closing, her inability to speak Moldovan has another huge downfall – we have our mayoral elections in the village coming up in a few months and there's nothing more she would like than to become mayor .However, her ability to speak the language immediately removes the option for her, as it's one of the few requirements of any would-be mayor.

Notes:
- The weather here has taken another turn for the worse – it's officially cold. During the day the temperature hasn't been over 30 degrees in a week or so, and at night it gets to as low as 10 degrees below zero. In my room at night it gets really cold, down to the low 40's – thank God for the four inches of blanket I lay under. However, all signs point to the weather turning warm within a few days, the snow melting, and the mud coming with it . . . .

- Last week brought one of the most . . . interesting experiences I've had so far here. On Wednesday my host mom told me that she wanted to get on the Internet because she needed to find something that had to do with Biology. So Wednesday evening we spent an hour and a half working together, pumping words into Russian search engines and seeing what came up. The low . . . er, highlight for me was typing words into the engine one letter at a time, toggling between a overlay of the Russian keyboard, finding a letter, then toggling back to the Internet site to enter the letter – this is how sentences were built. Can't describe how fun that was. And it can be frustrating to communicate with a person who knows something about computers if both people speak the same language fluently – just imagine how tough it can be when one person knows absolutely nothing about computers and their communication is limited by language.

On the bright side (really), we did manage to find out exactly what she wanted without either of us hurting the other. That's a plus.

- We have our first vacation of second semester coming up next week (after eight weeks of lessons), and I'm off to Chisinau at 6:00 AM Saturday morning. I have two days of lessons for teachers (in which my whole group will be together for the first time in 6 months, all 35 of us), two days of lessons for Russian, then on Wednesday I'm off to the village where I lived in the summer – they called me two weeks ago out of the blue and invited me back, so I'm off. Should be a good time, especially because my language skills have grown immensely since I last saw them in August. My host brother from the time went to Moscow to work a week after I left and has since returned – he said the work was very, very tough. I can't wait to see them all again . . . I think I'll return also with my friends from the summer who I studied with, all one group returning together. Promises to be a great time.

- Highlight of the week – on Saturday, simply walking between villages after a tutoring session in the village next-door. It was one of the classic winter days, about 10 degrees without cloud in the sky, the sun shining, a little wind, the air cold, fresh, and clean with a new six inches or so of snow covering everything. “Brown-Eyed Girl” was playing on the Ipod – the top 15 minutes of my week.