7.222, Disc: Slovak Language Law & LSA statement (fwd)

Tue Feb 13 05:02:03 UTC 1996

Dear colleagues:

The following forwarded message appeared on the LINGUIST list a couple of
days ago.  I was hoping someone else would post it to SEELangs;  no one has
appeared to have done so, so I will.

Before turning to James Kirchner's well argued comments, I'd like to bring
up one thing that is not news to many of you, but, for some reason, hasn't
appeared on this list (to my knowledge):

Slovakia was the only nation that actually paid the Nazis to take Jews
away during World War II.  This may be a distortion; I'd encourage those
who know the details more closely to inform me better.  Assuming that this
unfortunate historical footnote is true, then the Slovak people have an
obligation to be even fairer to their ethnic minorities today.  The same
reasoning led to Germany's admirable policy (until recently) of taking in
many of the world's refugees.

I do not wish ill of Slovakia.  I have even investigated this language,
working (gratefully) with Martin Votruba of the Univ. of Pittsburgh.  I and
my spouse have very fond memories of a Slovak bus driver who drove several
kilometers out of his way to return travel documents which would be worth
plenty if sold.  Suffice it to say that I do not take pleasure in writing
this.  I do think that this negative information should be considered also.

Sincerely,
Loren Billings
billings at mailer.fsu.edu

> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> LINGUIST List:  Vol-7-222. Sat Feb 10 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines:  154
>
> Subject: 7.222, Disc: Slovak Language Law & LSA statement
>
> Date:  Mon, 05 Feb 1996 00:24:48 EST
> From:  JPKIRCHNER at aol.com
> Subject:  Disc: Slovak Language Law & LSA statement
>
> The recent posting on the Slovak language law in light of the LSA
> statement on linguistic human rights brings up a lot of questions for
> me that I don't have ready answers for.  I'm not big on legislating
> against the use of minority languages in private and limited official
> contexts, but postings on the subject on this list always strike me as
> having a distinctly anglophone worldview that can't quite be
> transferred to the context of how so-called "small nations" view their
> language situations.
>
> English has not, in recent generations, been in danger of being
> overwhelmed by a neighboring language, in fact it's usually vice
> versa.  Likewise, in modern history English hasn't been singled out
> for total extermination by any official entity, as have many other
> languages, including Slovak.  The discussion would be quite different,
> I imagine, if instead of by the legislature in an actual sovreign
> country, such legislation were passed on, say, a Chippewa reservation.
> I'm convinced that Slovak legislators must see their situation in
> terms more similar to the latter.  (After all, Slovaks, like Czechs,
> are fully aware that their nations are only sovreign when the major
> powers allow them to be.)
>
> As for specific matters brought up in the posting, I'll play devil's
> advocate here:
>
> > [Background information on Slovakia: over 10% of Slovakia's
> > population, about 600,000 people, are ethnic Hungarians, who are
> > indigenous to southern Slovakia and constitute the majority of the
> > population in hundreds of localities.
>
> Further in the background (and historians can correct me where
> necessary) we find that Slovakia was ruled for quite some time as part
> of Hungary, and the official policy for years (at least according to
> what the Slovaks tell me) was official extermination of Slovak
> language and ethnicity through Magyarization.  Until the founding of
> the Czechoslovak Republic after WWI, there was no secondary school
> anywhere in Slovakia, and those wanting to study beyond the elementary
> level had to do so in Hungary -- in Hungarian.
> This is still fresh in the Slovak national consciousness.
>
> Slovaks are also acutely aware that by the 19th century,
> German-speaking rulers had nearly succeeded in eliminating the
> neighboring Czech language to the point where it had to be
> artificially reconstructed.  They are also aware that the presence of
> largely German-speaking sectors in West Bohemia served Hitler as a
> pretext for annexing the entire country. (This is why the Czechs
> expelled the German inhabitants of these areas in the late 1940s.)
> The same rationale could serve an antagonistic Hungarian government,
> if things ever went wrong someday.  Most anglophones don't worry about
> such things from day to day, but in small, weak countries, minority
> languages that happen to be the *majority* languages of larger
> neighbors can play a large part in people's worries about future
> colonization.  From this standpoint, the Slovak legislature could see
> itself as instituting a measure that helps protect the Slovak state
> from future occupation, while in no way posing a threat to Hungarian
> language and culture in a broader international sense.
>
> > - All signs, advertisements and announcements designed to inform
> > the public, especially in shops, sports grounds, restaurants, in
> > the street, on roads, at airports, bus and railway stations, in
> > prisons and in public transport must be in the state language. They
> > may be translated into other languages, but the text in other
> > languages must follow after a text of equal length in the state
> > language. (8, 6)
>
> There are the same nationalistic concerns here too, but we're not only
> talking minority rights in this instance.  Few anglophones can imagine
> life in a country where many day-to-day announcements and instructions
> are never translated into the majority language.  In countries like
> the Czech Republic and Slovakia, such things are a constant reality.
> Their severity can range from the merely insulting (One Proctor &
> Gamble detergent no longer comes in a box printed completely in
> German, now that it's manufactured in Prague.
>  Rather, the top, back, and side panels are in Czech or Slovak, while the
> front one is left in German, acknowledging the perception that German
> products must necessarily be better than local ones.)...
>
> ...to the inconvenient (long lines at photo and electronics shop
> counters, because instructions for most products are not printed in
> Slovak; often each customer must receive a detailed verbal explanation
> of the product being bought, while others wait interminably)...
>
> ...to the profoundly frustrating (Computer manuals are usually only
> partially translated into the languages of "small nations".  DOS and
> Windows systems still operate almost completely in English, and only
> the Mac has completely localized operating systems that non-English
> speakers can understand all the time.)...
>
> ...to the downright dangerous: (A lot of necessary medical and safety
> equipment is imported under the apparent assumption that everybody in
> the world speaks English or German, and there are neither localized
> operating instructions nor sufficient local user support.  There may
> be no one in a locality with good enough English comprehension to
> adequately translate these manuals -- provided the hospital has the
> money to pay for translation.  Once I was asked by a Czech hospital to
> translate the rather hefty manual for a sophisticated little piece of
> diagnostic equipment.  When I responded that my technical and medical
> Czech were not up to the task, nor would my schedule allow it, the
> doctors told me it would be sufficient if I just showed them how to
> turn it on and off.  How would any of you like to be tested with a
> piece of medical equipment if the examining doctor was not completely
> sure how it worked, or how to know when it was giving an false
> reading?  This is a frequent occurrence where foreign suppliers don't
> deem even a country's *majority* language important enough to bother
> with, and the Slovak law may be a step toward remedying this.)
>
> If my perceptions are correct, this legislation not only affects
> minority languages within Slovakia, but non-indigenous languages as
> well.  I'm not particularly excited about the general human rights
> direction of the current Slovak government, but before we start rising
> to action over language legislation in countries we've never lived in,
> we should look beyond the anglophone worldview, and the issue of
> minority rights.  As I mentioned, we anglophones have never in most of
> our nations' memories been seriously threatened with colonization
> because of the presence of minorities speaking the languages of larger
> neighbors, and we seldom encounter language-related consumer safety or
> protection problems on our own territory.  As I've mentioned before on
> this list, citizens of "small nations" live in a completely different
> linguistic universe than English speakers do, and their legislation
> may reflect this in ways that are objectionable upon superficial
> anglophone examination.
>
> James Kirchner
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