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Speaking In Tongues

Cliff and Ferry Street

07:30 / 02.11.02

I was wondering about your thoughts on an issue. Bear with me if my words don't flow as elegantly as some of yours, perhaps I'll get better at this with practice. The situation I'm thinking of is such:

Say there was this hypothetical nation with a language and something of an identity, and say they were living on a patch of land between the sea and everybody else, and say, something happened. Like, maybe, there was a different nation, with a different language and a very different identity who made their way over to that patch of land after the confusion of a World War, and the people of that other nation came, perhaps, in good faith and had their children and were not evil, but were easy to peg as such, because of the political whatever-s and maybe genocide and maybe something else that they were not personally responsible for, but rather their naiveté might have contributed to helping build. But never mind all that.

Say, fifty years passed. And then some.

The hypothetical nation with the language has kept their identity in tact, has regained political power over that patch of land, has done this and that. However, about a third of the people on the patch of land, people who were born there or else have lived there most their lives, now speak a different language to the one of the original habitants of the area.

What would you do? Integration? Naturalization? Adopt the "other language" as an official state language? What about education, should all children be able to receive a basic education in their mother tongue, whatever that may be? What about the Government, should legislations be equally passable in either language?

Mind, the natives identify very strongly through their tongue, and consider it an integral component of their autonomy and the keeping of the continuity with their first republic before the other people arrived with their different alphabet and their different everything.

Where does discrimination end and protection of an original culture begin and vice versa?

pointless and uncalled for

10:45 / 02.11.02

Erm, excuse me for being confused, but are you saying how could you resolve a language barrier issue in a Palestine - Israel state of affairs on a hypothetical basis?

11:03 / 02.11.02

No, I think it's a slightly different scenario...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:55 / 02.11.02

I thought that too at first.

Surely there needs to be some crisis to make settling this an important issue? After all, parts of Wales are bilingual and other than the danger of Welsh becoming a language used by gift shop owners it's not a burning issue.

Respect for differences an' t'ing.

Cliff and Ferry Street

19:40 / 02.11.02

Resolving this is a _burning_ issue only so far as solving any conflict that causes discontent in one or more groups within a society is a burning issue.

It's an issue _at all_ because the "other language" was sort of forced on the people of that country for 50 odd years. The problem with making the country officially bilingual is that language is looked at as a carrier of culture and mentality, and there's a bit of a clash on that level between the two nationalities who cohabit the country. We are talking about a newly independent nation state, and most people would absolutely have a problem with accepting the "oppressors' language" as an official second language of the country. Especially because, as many older people doubtless believe, it's not over till it's over, and to them, the "others" (who are not, technically, others, but are also citizens and are lovely) represent the curious and large Russian Bear that nursed their mothers and fathers.

However, everybody wants to get along. So what I'm asking is, how would you go about keeping everyone feeling loved but also confident in the future of their homeland in such a situation? What are the priorities (preserving the culture of a nation state versus appreciation of individual backgrounds), and what would be fair considering the circumstances?

I claimed it was a hypothetical case only so as to be able to look at it "from the outside in" and maybe not take sides for arbitrary reasons like loyalty. I am trying to distance myself from the whole thing to better understand it. Does that make sense? I am actually, of course, talking about Estonia. Sorry to have confused you.

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

19:48 / 02.11.02

Yes, I think you would end up like wales. Things like being allowed to display a red 'D' rather than a red 'L' on your car when you are learning to drive. Presumably the welsh word for Learner begins with D.

Eventually, the smaller language would start dying out. There would be a few people trying to 'save' it, sticking 'D' plates on their cars, insisting on state documents being translated and the like. But eventually, it will be a dead language. Languages are dying out fast: Look here for a list of those classified as 'endangered'. Obscure offshoots of modern languages spoken only by a few elderly people.

I find it unlikely that the two cultures and languages would not physically separate themselves. This happens in most places, and the regions formed have their own culture and identity. Sometimes they break away entirely form the main country, or get devolved.
But if they really did live amongst each other - say there was only one good water supply river, or one area of fertile land in the country. The language with which the biggest, richest most powerful population spoke would dominate, and the other one die away. After being given various levels of token status in the law and in public life. But to get by, you would need to speak the bigger language as well.

This is presuming that the two groups do not hate each other, have grudges or feuds that make either entrenched to their language and culture by hatred. But in a country where two communities are forced together by geography and land whilst (on a generalised level) hating each other, you get nasty wars. Very nasty wars. And that changes everything.

Cliff and Ferry Street

01:37 / 03.11.02

Hm. I don't really see it. Isn't Welsh the smaller language in Wales, because Wales is a part of the UK and such? But then, what you have in (the famously post-Soviet) Estonia right now is a Russian minority who is not completely coping with the situation as far as learning Estonian, although they consider it as their homeland and have family ties here and whatnot. So Russian is the smaller language. I don't suppose there's a threat of that one dying out, is there? I don't think it's a similar situation in that respect, unless I'm misinterpreting something.

(I have some thoughts re: what you wrote about cultures and land and languages, but it's half past five in the morning and I haven't had any sleep yet, so I'll leave it at that right now and come back to this later if that's okay. Thanks for an interesting response!)

11:59 / 03.11.02

So what I'm asking is, how would you go about keeping everyone feeling loved but also confident in the future of their homeland in such a situation? What are the priorities (preserving the culture of a nation state versus appreciation of individual backgrounds), and what would be fair considering the circumstances?

Well, if I were King of Estonia for a day, I'd make sure the country had a constitution that defined the country in a political rather than a racial sense. I don't see how it's going to work unless you do this. Then I'd examine countries like Canada, Belgium and South Africa for ideas on how the two groups could be represented in government. Then, of course, being a republican (ie not a monarchist), I'd abdicate. :-)

Cliff and Ferry Street

22:41 / 03.11.02

I think I was throwing around that term "nation state" a bit too eagerly... Our constitution does not, of course, define the country in a racial sense. What I meant was that... I can't even tell you what I meant, because I'm sort of confusing myself here as well. Hmph. Lessee... The constitution is fine. The details are the problem.

Like whether or not it would be fine to make Russian an official language next to Estonian, sort of like Swedish is in Finland etc. Or whether this would even be necessary. Especially considering that if there was a vote, the majority might disagree with this being a good idea.

Actually, come to think of it, would a public vote be good idea?

23:08 / 03.11.02

So what do people use right now? Can many Russian speakers also speak Estonian?

01:58 / 04.11.02

Y'know, just to muddy the waters a little, I'd be curious how you think this differs from the "English-only" problem in states like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida (the ones with the Spanish names, see?). Although usually portrayed as immigrants, quite a lot of the Hispanic population in most of those states (though not Florida, as far as I know) is indigenous - in the 1800s, the Anglo soldiers came through, beat a Mexican/Spanish army, and suddenly the government spoke English.
People have a lot of strong feelings about whether official paperwork and such should be in two languages or one.

In South Africa, they got around the problem by being officially bilingual. During apartheid, actually, most folks were at least trilingual - English and Afrikaans were taught in school (and the only television channel had an alternating schedule of English and Afrikaans programming), and most white folks knew at least one black language, depending on where they were. Largely so they could speak to the help, yeah, but street signs and paperwork were also often in the black majority tongue. Xhosa or Zulu or Sotho, mainly - it varied by region.
The white bilingualism, though, was a point of pride and came from education along with the strict social enforcement of the rather paternalistic government.

10:43 / 04.11.02

Rambling Cliff> I think your example was too abstract in the first place. To answer the question in your abstract, it's never entirely clear what the balance between protection of a minority vs. standardisation thru schooling/legal sanction/etc should be. It's always a matter of negotiation.

It will ultimately depend on the power of that minority. E.g. if the Russians in Estonia occupy a geographically distinct area and can control local government at some level, then Russian will probably be taught in schools. I have no idea about this situation but this article may help.

I believe Deleuze and Guattari wrote about 'major' vs. 'minor' languages (with specific regard to Kafka). Anyone care to comment?

11:04 / 04.11.02

According to Pepsi's article, Estonia is using English to circumvent the problem. And why not?

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have a single, official language. South Africa is still very multilingual. I was there very recently and they have at least three editions of the news and on one channel, have soap operas in which, again, at least three languages are spoken, depending on which characters are on screen. And elsewhere, nearly all urban Nederlanders speak English as a second language, and very well, because hardly anybody speaks Dutch outside of their country.

Pepsi -- I think the Beak may like to take you up on your D&G discussion :-)

00:11 / 05.11.02

Following from Iggy's points, a nation with a single language is probably an exception rather than the rule. To what extent is the ideology of a 'national language' connected with the creation of a racially homogeneous 'Nation State' (both as an ideal and as actual states) in Europe in the nineteenth century?

Most states either suppress other languages or give them various levels of recognition - from subordinate to equivalent. In some cases, they actually have to create lingua francas. E.g. in Indonesia (world's 4th largest nation), a form of Malay (Bahasa Indonesia) is used acorss the hundreds of islands that make up the archipelago. But it's close to the native tongue of only a minority of the population (mainly on part of Sumatra).

And I have no desire to be bitten by the Beak on D&G.