off list

[Yoshimasa Tsuji]

It is kind of you to have written to me off list. You must understand
politics are most unfavorable for academics. When I mentioned Lukashenko,
I just wanted to remind you of what politics really are. You cannnot do
anything with it, nor can I.

I am also very concerned with mirority languages: I am fairly
informed with many dialects/accents of the British Isles and of
some regions of Leningrad and Moscow (Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Pskov,
Tver, Novgorod). K sozhaleniju, I haven't been able to visit
much of Russia because of travel restrictions (I am having trouble of
obtaining visa at the moment to visit places in Russia). I am sure
I will love Belarus as much as you do once someone managed to invite
me there. As a matter of fact, a good friend of mine and his wife
were born in Mogilev and I very often hear about Belarus with pleasure
from them.

I was introduced to Father Nadson by a famous lady who makes her
living by translating Russian into English when she gave a "doklad"
at our annual convention of Slavic studies in UK. I remember she
talked about Belarusan literature and language in a session and the
audience was only me out of some 300 participants of the convention.
We naturally became good friends and she became so kind as to introduce me
to Father Nadson who happened to live only 15 minutes away from my house.

Out of many things I remember most about Father Nadson is that he told me
that sending medicines to Belarus was more important than talking about
the language and culture in Belarus and asked me to organize an assistance
in Japan for the victims of Chernobyl. He said people could live without
Belarusan culture but not without medicine. I was very, very impressed.

I must admit I don't understand Belarusan as much as you do, which is natural
since I have never lived there.

One thing I want to advise you: you must (are forced to/have to/are obliged to/
ought to) speak in the language your audience understand with comfort and
readiness because you must first understand what the others say and then
need to convey your message in the way others will understand you. In this
sense, I always think that every language is a foreign language because
the language always belongs to others, not to the one who wish to
convey one's message.

It is good of you to love what you call the Belarusan "language" and
go on studying it, but it is other people who decide whether to use it
or not, at least not us outside Belarusan Republic.

Good luck and cheers,

Tsuji