[lg policy] Ummamuudu: Goodbye my Estonian

[Harold Schiffman]

Goodbye my Estonian

Some people have been irritated by the fact that I don't use Estonian
in my blog. I am sorry, but I have some reasons not to do it. First of
all, I have written and published poems, essays and articles in
Estonian for more or less fifty years, that is, for half of a century.
Isn't it enough? And for about thirty years, I have written about the
problems of contemporary Estonian language. Often polemicizing with
people who have the authority to say how one should write and speak
Estonian, what words and forms we are allowed to use in press and in
books. I have different, sometimes radically different ideas about
this. I want to use my own breed of Estonian. I have had a lot of
controversies with people who think they know better -- editors and
specialists in language policy and language maintenance
(keelekorraldus). I haven't found much understanding, and even now,
editors change the words and forms I use calling their changes
amendments and generously giving me the right not to agree with such
"amendments". I certainly accept real corrections of my typos and
other mistakes -- errare humanum est; I think every writer needs an
intelligent and attentive "first reader". But to a writer with fifty
years of experience and a background of linguistics being able to read
texts in about dozen languages, to see his text, his style changed,
his words replaced with different ones, is an insult. But my attitude
towards the official Estonian is not just a purely personal matter. I
feel deeply sorry about the fact that the language that, according to
my deep conviction, should be our common property, should belong to
the people who have created and are using it, has become a property of
a group of specialists (and, in fact non-specialists too) who have
usurped the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong, and to
many amateurs who enthusiastically try to invent new words to replace
the old ones. I cannot agree with such a situation: I don't think
anybody has the right to tell Estonian people what words they should
use or not. And nobody has the right to change the language according
to his or her ideas, but the people, the speakers and owners of the
language.

This simple fact is ignored both by our authorities and institutions
whose task is to maintain and develop our language. Our linguistic
policies are authoritarian, and it seems to me that this
authoritarianism has increased in recent years. Now, even our
president has intervened in our language policies telling to us what
words we should use and what words not. Even if his command of
Estonian and knowledge of linguistics were perfect (what is not the
case) no president has the authority to teach people how to speak or
write. Now, our State Broadcasting authority has, in a hurry, replaced
the loanword "infrastruktuur" with a newly formed word "taristu", and
all the reporters are obediently using the new word. In my opinion,
this neologism is a failure for several reasons. I could explain my
opinion in detail, but here I mention only the fact that it makes
little sense to replace one compound with the word "struktuur" instead
of finding a purely Estonian word for "structure". And for most
Estonians, the root "tari" has only the meaning of cluster of berries.
But the authority of our president has most probably helped to replace
a well-established international word with a strange neologism. In my
opinion, such instances are a proof or the absence of democracy in our
language policies. It is the result of some ideological stereotypes
our language authorities and amateur neologists have inherited from
the futuristic ideas of the early XXth century, and the passive
attitude of our common language users who have given away their
rights, their proprietorship of their language. I has led and is
leading to creeping alienation of our people from their language, of
the standard Estonian becoming more and more an artificially
standardized and maintained language. While most people seem to
silently agree with this, I cannot. I feel I have been too intimate
with my language, I have tried to do my best in using it intelligently
and creatively. I have tried to defend it from escessive normativeness
and escessive fondness for neologisms. Now I feel that my efforts have
had no results. I have lost my battle. I have nothing left than to
resign. I don't want to read Estonian press, to listen to our radio or
TV. The modernized language hurts me. I have to abandon writing in
Estonian, and try to write in Võru keel, English and Russian.
Certainly my command o these languages is not perfect, but I can
without resentment accept editors correcting my texts written in
English or Russian. And I cannot accept editors "correcting" my
Estonian texts. Thus I feel I have been an Estonian writer for half of
a century, but I am no more an Estonian writer.

http://jaankaplinski.blogspot.com/2010/12/goodbye-my-estonian.html

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