Петиция за признание русского языка

Mon May 21 17:06:38 UTC 2012

Hi Seelangers,

The topic of Russian in the Baltics is controversial, emotional and difficult. Some clarifications:

- I am not sure that Russian speakers in the Baltics have the same rights as other linguistic minorities (please consider I am not an expert here). What they have (in Latvia) are: Russian schools (but scares opportunities for higher or professional education in Russian), Russian media and "ethnic" political parties plus a Russian-speaking environment if they stay in their own ethnic group.
- It is certainly not true that Russians haven't learned the Baltic languages at all. 

I don't see how Russian should become an official EU language if in the Baltics it doesn't even have state language status (in fact, Latvia just had a failed referendum about that). And even if Ukraine or Moldova in some far-away day join the EU, this is no "avtomat" for Russian, since the linguistic landscape in these countries isn't univocally pro-Russian either.
So what is this discussion about?

Best,
Anne-Kathrin Schumann

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of George Kalbouss
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 7:27 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Петиция за признание русского языка

	I'm not going to be Pollyanish and ignore the reality that some of the language policies of the Balkans were legislated to "get back" at the Russian domination during the Soviet era, but -- let's face it -- it is now 20 years since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have regained their independent state status.  From what is being discussed in SEELANGS, it seems that the Russian speakers in these nations haven't yet learned the languages of their respective realms? Am I incorrect in my assumption?  And, if they haven't, why hold out?

George Kalbouss
The Ohio State University

On May 21, 2012, at 11:48 AM, John Dunn wrote:

> In terms of EU practices and procedures the Russian speakers resident in the EU (not all are EU citizens) are not voiceless: they have the same rights as Catalan speakers in Spain, Sardinian speakers in Italy and Welsh speakers in the UK, or, if you consider Russian to be an immigrant, rather than a regional or minority language, the same rights as Urdu speakers in the UK and Kabyle speakers in France.   Given enough good will from enough countries there may be ways of giving Russian some form of recognition, but from an EU point of view it is difficult to see why Russian should be treated differently from other regional, minority or immigrant languages by being given official status.  Incidentally, there is no automatic link between official status in a member country and official status within the EU: Irish had to wait 34 years (until 2007) to become an official language of the EU, while Letzebuergesch and Turkish (official languages of Luxembourg and Cyprus respectively!
 ) !
> remain out in the cold.   
> 
> John Dunn.
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list 
> [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of anne marie devlin 
> [anne_mariedevlin at HOTMAIL.COM]
> Sent: 21 May 2012 15:12
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Fwd: Петиция за признание русского языка
> 
> As stated in the original posting, the main reason for this is the 7 million or so native-speakers of Russian who are EU citizens.  Many of these citizens have been denied language parity in their own countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lituania being the most obvious countries). Although the reason for the rejection of Russian as an official language in these countries is very understandable, it does result in a significant percentage of the population essentially being rendered voiceless.  With that in mind, there may be a valid case for the EU to accept this minority language as an official one; however this would undoubtably be a source of great conflict between the member states and the EU.
> AM
> 
>> Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 13:51:36 +0100
>> From: John.Dunn at GLASGOW.AC.UK
>> Subject: Re: 
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