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.