Estonia & language politics
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Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 08:58:37 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Estonia & language politics
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Gregg Zachary <[email protected]>
Estonia & language politics
Lingua Franca:
If We Woo in English
And War in Russian,
This Must Be Estonia
---
In a Nation Torn by Language,
Anglo-Saxon Comes in Handy
----
By G. Pascal Zachary
Staff Reporter
The Wall Street Journal Europe via Dow Jones
TALLINN, Estonia - Russians don't like to speak Estonian. Estonians
don't like to hear the Russian language. In a country where the
population is split between these two language groups, this is a
problem.
But it is less of problem than it could be, because many people here
speak English.
Around the world, English is often seen as the enemy of local
languages. But for many people here, English is welcome as a bridge
between two camps of warring linguistic chauvinists.
Estonia was born in the breakup of the old Soviet Union, and its
language - a rare tongue related to Finnish and Hungarian - was
suppressed during communist times. Upon gaining independence a decade
ago, Estonia's government relegated its Russians - who comprise
one-third of its 1.4 million people - to second-class status refused
citizenship even to those born in Estonia. Only those who spoke
Estonian fluently were offered passports. Few Russians in Estonia
could; most still can't.
This situation has given rise to a curious linguistic mix. One recent
evening, at a language camp that promotes Estonian, a boy and a girl
are dancing in the dark to a blaring boom box. The boy, 15-year old
Tanel Uibo, is nearly 1.8 meters tall and wears a sleeveless denim
vest, black loose shorts and sneakers. He is a native Estonian
speaker. The girl, 14-year old Katya Savchenko, is a thin blonde who
wears tear-away sweat pants and a pink halter top.
Ms. Savchenko barely comprehends Estonian and is too embarrassed to
say even a few words to Mr. Uibo. He's assigned to improve her
Estonian, but since she won't respond he tries another language.
And it isn't Russian.
"We must celebrate," he tells her in English. "It's the last night in
camp."
"OK, we will," she answers, also in English. Then she drags him off to
the camp cafeteria, where dinner is about to be served. Along the way,
they stop off at her dorm room, which she shares with three others.
The English words, "Happy Girls," are taped to her door.
In Estonia, English isn't a bridge just for the lovelorn. The Estonian
government publishes virtually no official documents in Russian but
all of them in English, including reports on often-stormy relations
between Russians and Estonians. The language it uses to train teachers
how to teach Estonian to Russians? English. The country's newest
university gives its classes in English. Some applicants even do their
admission interviews in the language.
So Russians have a lot of incentive to learn English. So do Estonian
speakers. English is the language of trade and business. And of the
country's Scandinavian neighbors. Estonia's capital is only a
half-hour ferry ride from Finland, where English is widely spoken.
Since Finns treat Estonians like younger siblings, English often binds
these two groups together.
Not without some pain, though. Serje, a schoolteacher in Estonia,
spent three years babbling in English to her boyfriend in Finland. She
would prepare for her daily phone calls with him by scripting her
conversation with the help of a dictionary. Since he isn't fluent in
English, either, "it was like we were speaking a strange stupid
language together."
Still, it beats fighting. Choosing a language is partly about power;
it isn't unusual for one language group to tilt the rules in its
favor. In Estonia, the penalties for speaking only Russian are great.
Public employees lose their jobs if they can't show basic fluency in
Estonian. An elected official can't take his seat in Parliament if
he's unable to speak Estonian. And Russian-only secondary schools are
slated for closure.
These days, Estonians no longer wish to wipe out the Russian language.
Under the prodding of the European Union, which is considering Estonia
for membership, the government now supports Russian efforts in the
media and schools, so long as they co-exist with Estonian. One novel
television program, for instance, profiles interesting Russians in the
country, using two anchor people: a Russian and an Estonian speaker.
The show flip-flops between the languages.
Two languages aren't enough, though. "We need to speak more," says
Katrin Saks, the Estonian cabinet minister who oversees the country's
language efforts. "Bilingualism isn't enough."
The importance of English - the third language - was driven home to
Estonia's elite during its fitful movement toward nationhood the late
1980s, when it declared independence even before the Soviet Union's
collapse. In the spring of 1989, pro-Soviets marched on Estonia's
parliament and tried to seize the country's chief radio station.
Secessionist leaders quickly drafted a letter to then U.S. Secretary
of State James Baker, but it was so poorly written that it came out
gibberish. Out of this frustration came the idea that Estonians needed
a command of English to reach the wider world.
Can three languages co-exist in some sort of balance? That remains to
be seen. Skeptics say that by tolerating Russian and encouraging
English, the government will doom Estonian. Critics portray English as
a potential enemy and hold out the specter of death for languages that
get in the way. Complaints are growing that English terms and phrases
appear too frequently in standard Estonian. The word
telecommunications, for instance, has supplanted the earthier native
phrase, "tying people together across a distance."
For Russians - who can't even put up political posters in public that
contain Russian words - English poses a bigger threat to Estonian than
their own tongue. "We are fighting with each other over language, and
yet we will open our eyes someday and see everyone is speaking
English," says Alla Dmitrijeva, a schoolteacher in Estonia's
Russian-dominated northeastern region. "Then we will ask, 'What did we
fight for?'"
Even so, the steady gains by English don't spark the resentment that
the hegemony of Russian once did. "Whereas people were guarded about
the Russian language, seeing it as the language of the conqueror, they
are more open to English," says Peter Mehisto, who directs the
trilingual efforts in public schools here.
English gives Russian and Estonian speakers a common window on the
world. It reduces, in a definite way, the chances that tension between
the two groups will mutate into lasting enmity. On the island of
Hiiumaa, off the west coast of Estonia, two 15-year-old boys watch
television, their eyes glued to "The Simpsons." The show has Estonian
and Russian subtitles as well as an Estonian voiceover. But the boys,
Alo Lepik and Tima Pugovkin, keep the volume loud - so loud they can
clearly hear the underlying English dialogue. Both boys are trying to
better their English. Besides, Mr. Lepik says, "This way we laugh at
the jokes at the right time."
The two teenagers are language buddies, part of a program to encourage
contacts between native Russian and Estonian speakers. Mr. Pugovkin,
whose parents moved to Estonia from Russia during the Soviet era,
wants to learn Estonian alongside English because, he says, "here in
Estonia, without the Estonian language, no one can prosper."
And without English, he adds, he would learn Estonian more slowly. "If
I don't understand something in Estonian," he says, "I ask Alo for the
word in English."
--
G. Pascal Zachary
Wall Street Journal
10 Fleet Place
London UK EC4M 7QN
(44) 207 842 9218 (ph)
(44) 208 297 8126 (fax)
Watch for Zachary's new book, "The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and
the Competitive Edge - Picking Globalism's Winners and Losers," a
study of how rich nations handle ethic, racial and national diversity
in their societies and why a certain approach to diversity brings
social, economic and cultural benefits. Published in July, from Public
Affairs.
--
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