Latvia: Tongues Wag At Riga Conference

Reply-To: [email protected]
Sender: [email protected]
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 18:08:46 +0300 (EEST)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Latvia: Tongues Wag At Riga Conference

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Felix Corley <[email protected]>

Latvia: Tongues Wag At Riga Conference


LATVIA: TONGUES WAG AT RIGA CONFERENCE
By Nick Coleman
RIGA

The Baltic Times, http://www.baltictimes.com/ - Watched by the
cheerful black minstrels that adorn the walls of the central hall of
the Blackheads' House in Riga, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga
opened a conference for politicians and experts from some 30 countries
entitled "Small Languages in 21st Century Europe" on April 20. But not
everyone was convinced by the two-day centerpiece of Latvia's
presidency of the Council of Europe. Some complained that it ignored
Latgalian, which has a 300-year-old literary tradition in its
heartland in eastern Latvia but is officially considered a "dialect."
But as the conference drew to a close on April 21, Robert Phillipson
of Denmark's Copenhagen Business School said it was a "marvelous
beginning" for a Europe, which lacks any forum for addressing language
issues. 

Particularly on Phillipson's mind was the subjugation of small
languages by English. Earlier, his wife, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, of
Roskilde University, also in Denmark, warned that 90 percent of the
languages currently spoken in the world may be dead by the end of the
century. "Formal education and media are the main culprits," she said.
Her fighting talk came as a respite for many. The morning was
dominated by Latvian politicians, who, for the most part, hailed their
country's language policies - despite indications that Latvia still
has work to do in this sphere if it is to satisfy the Council of
Europe's human rights body, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe. Leonid Raihman, a minority rights campaigner,
said the conference would have benefited from including a greater
range of opinion from Latvia. 

"Latvia's non-citizens are also interested in what is meant by small
languages," he said. By lunch several participants were privately
voicing the same opinion. 

Dinner was at the Lido leisure center, a venue where delegates could
get a feel for the real Latvia, according to Foreign Minister Indulis
Berzins. 

As an illuminated windmill rotated outside and an electronic elk
nodded inside, Anna Antonowicz, a doctoral student from the Catholic
University in Lublin, Poland, gave her verdict on the event. "The
speeches were devastatingly boring, monotonous and repetitive," she
said. "A conference isn't only about selling ideas. Ideas only change
when there is a clash. The message I got was that we in Europe are all
doing a great job, which isn't true." 

Alongside contributions from as far afield as Cyprus, Ireland and
Armenia, some of the Baltic states' marginalized languages did get a
look in. 

Anna Verschik from Tartu University in Estonia talked about efforts to
revive Yiddish, which, until the Holocaust, was a medium of education
in all three Baltic states. Vilnius, as a capital of Jewish culture,
once boasted eight daily Yiddish newspapers, she said. "The bastions
of Yiddish were destroyed by the Holocaust and Soviet rule. 

The Yiddish legacy is part of European history." Liv, spoken by as few
as 20 people from Kurzeme, on the Latvian western coast, did make it
onto the agenda, with a short talk by MP Ilmars Geige. But Latgalian
was missing - to the surprise of Anna Stafecka, doctor of philology at
Latvia University's Latvian Language Institute. "We suggested
something on Latgalian, but the organizers were not interested," she
said. 

Ina Druviete, a linguist and conference adviser, told The Baltic Times
that Latgalian is not a language. Rather, it is a "standard form of a
Latvian dialect," meaning that it cannot be used for official
purposes. But Jurs Cybuls (Juris Cibuls in Latvian) disagrees. Writer
of a textbook which, he says, "sold like hot cakes" when it came out
in 1992, was not invited to the conference. "Latgalian should at least
have been mentioned," he said. Latgalian, spoken by 150,000 to 200,000
speakers, is a separate language, says Cybuls, and should have
official status in Latgale. Pulling out a textbook he pointed out that
some of the simplest words bear no resemblance to their Latvian
counterparts. "If a Latvian and a Latgalian want to speak about
agriculture, plants and animals in their own languages they wouldn't
understand each other. My mother has trouble filling in forms in
Latvian. Of course Latgalian has words borrowed from Slavic languages,
but people forget that Latvian is also not pure. It borrows from
English." 

Short of a separate state, Cybuls would like Latgale to have its own
banknotes, street signs and stamps. "I don't feel like a Latvian," he
says. 

"Latvian as a nationality only appeared in the 19th century and the
word 'Latvian' does not exist in our language. Latgalian words for
rivers and lakes disappeared at the time of the interwar Latvian
Republic. I would like my name to be written in my passport using
Latgalian spelling, but it's forbidden." But despite a lack of support
by the state, Latgalian is not about to disappear, says Cybuls. "All
Latgalian schools were closed in 1939 and books were burned. Even now
there are no schools where Latgalian is the (main) language of
instruction. But Latgalian is not dying. Parents teach it at home,
though they don't know how to write it. Very few people forget the
language." 

Whether speakers of other small languages in the former Soviet Union
are so optimistic is doubtful. Mark Diachkov of Moscow State
University told delegates at the conference that the outlook is bleak
for the languages of the 172 ethnic groups that identified themselves
in a recent survey of the Russian Federation. The "democratic
euphoria" that informed the drawing up of the 1991 Act on the
Languages of Russia has turned out to be a "delusion," he said. He
added that the act, which enshrined the principal of linguistic
sovereignty, has since been watered down, and the Russian-speaking
majority has been unwilling to accept the equal rights of other
languages. Russia has promised to sign and ratify the European Charter
on Regional and Minority Languages, but few ethnic groups know of the
document's existence. 

"The signature could be nothing but a nominal act," said Diachkov. 
  

- Visit http://www.baltictimes.com/ - for more news and subscription
information. Or contact mailto:[email protected] 

-- 
==============================================================
MINELRES - a forum for discussion on minorities in Central&Eastern
Europe

Submissions: [email protected]  
Subscription/inquiries: [email protected] 
List archive: http://www.riga.lv/minelres/archive.htm
==============================================================