Recent discussion on language policies

[Johanna Laakso]

Dear Uralists,

again, with most sincere apologies for cross-postings, I would like to refer
the recent discussion on language policies for those who do not follow the
ural-lista and ugrimugri lists. (Those who do - and others as well ;-) -
feel free to press the delete button now.)

After several messages on the ugrimugri and ural-lista concerning the
oppression of the newspaper "Kudo+Kodu" and Mari national(ist) intellectuals
in general, and after Esa-Jussi Salminen (Helsinki/Izhkar) had pointed out
that this "oppression" cannot be compared with the terror of the 1930s or
the real crimes and political violence that still take place in some Russian
circles, Annika Pasanen, now Finnish teacher ("language assistant") in
Yoshkar-Ola, sent her very thought-provoking answer to the ural-lista list.
She gave many examples of the offences that the Mari experience in their
everyday life (people getting scolded for speaking their "incomprehensible"
or "uncultured" language in public places, a student girl being shouted at
for using the dormitory telephone to contact Mari Ushem, "that fascist Nazi
organization", teachers telling schoolboys "not to behave like a stupid
Mari", graffiti: "KILL THE JEWS AND THE CHEREMIS" etc.) - all "harmless" or
maybe even "humorous" in itself, but, accumulating as it does, all
contributing to the paradox that the same people who work hard for their
dearly-loved minority language prefer to speak the majority language in
public places, with their friends and even to their children.

Annika's message has brought forth many sympathetic reactions. For instance,
Olga Karlova from her Karelian perspective points out that mere complaining
about these offences, however real in Karelia as well, will not take us
(them) anywhere - and Kristi Salve has confirmed that similar problems are
known to Vepsians as well. In particular, I would like to refer to Márta
Csepregi's (Budapest/Helsinki) comment on the Hungarian finnugor-l list. She
has just participated in a conference in Khanty-Mansiysk - where all papers
were presented in Russian, except those by the two Hungarian participants
who used Khanty - and noticed the beneficial effects of Éva Schmidt's
consistent use of the Khanty language everywhere. To quote her (my doubly
non-native translation from Hungarian): "As paradoxical as it may be, it is
a universal phenomenon that speakers of a majority language feel their
identity being threatened when hearing the minority language spoken. This is
why the representants of the minority, out of politeness, and in order to
avoid conflicts, prefer to use the majority language in public. This is the
situation that Éva has been able to change, by the fact that she, although
not a "primitive forest dweller", consistently speaks Khanty and uses Khanty
in her scholarly work."

What could be the moral of this for us linguists? More publicity, more
consistent use of minority languages? More sympathy for the conditions many
of our colleagues are working in - and what else, beside sympathy, could
help?

Best,

Johanna

PS. Curiously enough, there is an interesting discussion going on at the
same time on the endangered-languages-list (see
http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/lists/endangered-languages-l/), about the
language policies in the USSR. The discussion was initiated by Juan Carlos
Azkoitia (a Basque activist?) who obviously had got a blue-eyed idealist
picture of the status of minority languages in the former Soviet Union -
whereby there were many answers and additional information provided by
"Finno-Ugric" experts in particular but curiously few reactions from the
experts of other minority languages of Russia.
--
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Institut für Finno-Ugristik der Universität Wien
Universitätscampus, Spitalg. 2-4 Hof 7, A-1090 Wien
Tel. +43 1 4277 43009 | Fax +43 1 4277 9430
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at | http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/

--
ura-list at helsinki.fi - list for Uralic linguistics and related disciplines
to (un)subscribe, send majordomo at helsinki.fi a message:
(un)subscribe ura-list my.own at email.address
Mirror archive: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/ura-list.html