Limba Moldovaneasca

My time here has given me an inappropriate and selfish pleasure in truly experiencing the knowledge that the United States is not alone in making self-serving decisions at the expense of other nations. The question of Russia in Moldova is far more complicated than I could hope to fully understand or summarize here, but the issue of language is one that crops up daily and each instance leaves me more uncertain in my position.

Briefly, since before living memory Russia has exerted its influence over this portion of Bessarabia. That has included enforcing use of the Russian language, mass deportation of original inhabitants and mass migration and settlement of ethnic Russians in the territory. Imperialistic it was - and effective to some degree as the US has also discovered. The problem is that cultural memory dies hard and lies are eventually exposed.

The USSR employed "linguists" to prove and propagate a usefully divisive idea that the Moldovan dialect of Romanian was divergent enough to be considered a language in its own right and, until 1989, was written using a form of Cyrillic. Scientifically speaking, this is akin to asserting that US and British English are seperate languages. While Americans may indeed be taking a crap on the hood of the car of the Queen's grammar, it would be nothing in comparison to the consptipated elephant eyeing the science of linguistics were we to assert that they are fundamentally different.

And so continues a debate between the banks of these ancient rivers. Should the national language be Russian or Moldovan? Is there even such a language as Moldovan? What right does an imperialist power have to destory a local culture, language and its heritage?

These debates spill over into the public discourse in somewhat more mundane arguments over the use of slang and Russian buzz words. In general, informal speech does not erupt into lectures over the integrity of the language, but now and then it does come up. I have officially learned Romanian, though in my own speech I use some Russian words and grammatical structures - knowingly for comedic effect and unknowingly simply as a product of having learned the language from the population and not a university professor. At times I am lectured for a dirty county bumpkin accent and lazy slurs. I am speaking Romanian and I should have the respect to speak it in a literarily clean diactect, right?

But what the hell is a "literarily clean" language?

When I came here that question seemed a lot easier to answer. It was a mark of education to use the acedemic standard of a given language. On how that is established exactly I am not altogether clear though I assume some people are paid pittance for long hours to do so.

I had a discussion with one of my students yesterday who was pushing hard for the Romanian literary standard and I'm sure the historical and cultural reasons listed above form a large part of her motivation. I understand that but I have trouble understanding the violent pride taken in a
"clean" form of a language. I don't mean that facetiously, I honestly don't understand.

No language evolves in a vacuum, nor does any language stand outside the forces of change (intrinsic and extrinsic) over time. Romanian itself is born of very un-literary soldiers' latin along with numerous gaulic, germanic, slavic, and geto-dacian influences. Beautiful though it is, it was not simply placed here by God in its current form. Similar "corrupting" influences throughout history has made it what it is today.

(As an aside, there is also a firey debate raging in Romania about the introduction of English jargon in the language. Currently it stands at less than one tenth of one percent but is growing. I assume this is in large part due to the increased use of computers and the Internet. I wonder if such arguments took place as English co-opted French and Latin tendencies through scholarly pursuits.)

It seems to me that language is an ever changing beast and that acedemia is forever playing catch-up to document it and cage-up to make it static. Grammar crusaders often overlook the fact that the goal of language is effective communication and so spend (waste?) time splitting hairs instead of moving forward. A standard of language seems to be little more than a snap-shot of general practices at a given point in history. On the other hand, some standard must be recognized to permit mutual understanding at all. Dialects of English in the Appalacians demonstrate the problems that arise in communication if two groups use widely divergent standards, stereotypes and educated arrogance notwithstanding.

Where then is the line drawn between dialect and language?

To what extent should students and officials be made to drop Russian words from their vocabulary?

The political ramifications of these question are important but are not my realm. At the end of the day I just want to be understood and to end conversations on the topic started, not in a lecture about how I ate tîrci for breakfast, not caşa. I understand the cultural motivations as well as the problems that arise in multual understanding for ignoring clean Romanian, but "clean" as used to describe a language seems arbitrary if not completely meaningless.

And so even that sef-rightous resentment of the Bear in the end doesn't help me figure this thing out.

Paka.

Something beautiful in tradition

I've been in two different directions as regards tradition and its value in life.

On the one hand, while studying philosophy I had to put tradition on a level that admitted its distinctness from Truth proper (it might give us hints, but it itself is not Truth). On the other, I am from a mobile family that has spent much time overseas and traveled widely. This was followed by my tour with the Peace Corps and the experience that brings with new cultural traditions.

One part of my worldview distrusts tradition as a perpetrator of illusion and an obstacle to clear understanding of the universe; the other is fascinated by and is in awe of the various methods of human expression that have arisen throughout time and geography.

As an adolescent who took that role quite seriously, I dutifully let this dichotomy exist in my mind and argued the more impressive position when the situation called.

What brings this up now is that since Thanksgiving I have been playing Christmas music on repeat at home. This is the same music I just to roll my eyes at and give my dad a hard time for just five years ago. This is the same music that my parents grew up on, the same music that my grandparents weathered a war on, the same music that folks I never met in an era I never saw loved and continued my prestigious family name with (nothing like a good carol to get the reproductive juices flowing). Songs very much like these have their roots deep in my very heavily European line.

To be honest, not all these songs are very good. Some of the things Ella Fitzgerald does with her voice and pronunciation distract me from actually feeling the music. It's annoying. There's no accounting for taste, right? But that's not really the point. It brings me back to Christmas' across the US and across the world. It brings me back to Christmas' with grandparents past and it connects me to those I never had the chance to annoy by digging holes in their lawn.

It seems me that very few people can stand in a place of great age and not be struck at once both by how transient they are but also how connected they are in that one moment to a wealth of generations past. Who could gaze upon the foundations of ancient Rome in indifference? Our traditions are living manifestations of these foundations and our partaking in them a recognition of our unity with all other souls who throughout history have struggled against the conditions of existence.

The fact remains that when searching for capital 't' Truth one cannot look to tradition as the authority; precedence does not establish accuracy. This is not the point, though. From crappy Christmas songs to fruitcake to mistletoe placed in strategic locations, there is something beautiful in our silly traditions.

Evil starts with 15 volts

In his talk on the processes which influence people toward evil or heroism, Philip Zimbardo used the phrase in the title of this entry. His larger point was that evil (dehumanizing or unjust acts) often appears in the midst of a dysfunctional system in which people can comfortably renounce their responsibility to a higher authority or otherwise refrain from engaging morally in prevention of evil acts. He was referencing the Milgram experiment in which 15 volts was the starting level on a scale that ranged to 450 with the point that in the right circumstances it is quite easy to ignore one ethical guidelines - especially if the consequences can be reasoned away as negligible. That step is a desensitizing first of many and is what, ultimately, separates those who do evil - actively or passively - from everyday heroes.

The larger most interesting question concerns how to recognize, evaluate and change (or dismantle) those systems that encourage or permit immoral behavior. I will not be pondering that one. Instead, I've been trying to pin down all those 15 volt shocks that I deliver daily - consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or inadvertently. Where are those tiny acts of obeying systemic norms to the harm of the individual or ignoring the needs of others for my own comfort that eventually snowball?

Unsurprisingly, I guess, this has been harder than I initially imagined.

As people we are quite skilled at absolving ourselves from responsibility in a great many situations. We say to ourselves that we probably have misunderstood, we're not aware of the circumstances, that it isn't our business or that intervention would probably just escalate the conflict. This is what I say to myself, at least. If I can escape the discomfort by just enough then out of sight, out of mind takes over and I can sleep soundly.

That is a less-than-heroic coping mechanism for dealing with uncomfortable (unjust) situations, however small they might be reasoned to be.

I am going to make a concerted effort to be mindful of those times when I try to reason my way out of responsibility for the well-being of others, not just in the major headline-making cases, but in those that will never be mentioned. I really hope that the easy and comfort of passivity doesn't win out.