Having studied several books on the development
and importance of languages in the former Soviet
republic of Moldova, I expected that people would
be eager to eliminate Russian elements from their
language and culture and promote their
native Moldovan/Romanian language and
culture very strongly. During the time we
spent in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, this
assumption proved to be incorrect.
We were still able to distinguish clearly between
the three different degrees of Russianization that
were mentioned in my earlier essay on language:
Russophone population in the cities, rural
population with only basic knowledge of Russian
language, and the smallest group, the humanistic
intelligentsia with a strong Moldovan national
consciousness. Already on the first day in
Chisinau, we discovered that speaking Russian was
very helpful there - although we were not in Russia,
you could address everybody in Russian and be quite
sure that your question would be understood.
Even native people who don't know each other often
address each other in Russian. In the minibuses,
for example, we heard hardly any Romanian. A student
in a German class at Chisinau University explained
this phenomenon to us in the following way:
"If you want to ask something and address a stranger
in Romanian, you might have to repeat your question
more slowly, because he doesn't speak Romanian that
well. Finally you might have to ask your question
a third time, because you may find that he doesn't
speak Romanian at all. It's easier and saves time if
you speak Russian." I think the teacher (remember: she
teaches German) was not too happy about that
statement; she accused her students of not knowing
their native language properly and of not using it as
naturally as one should.
In my host family, people spoke with each other
in Romanian. As I am not able to speak Romanian,
it went without saying that they communicated with
me in Russian. One day, they had guests: a friend
and her little son (about four years old). I tried to
start a conversation with him. It was no problem for
him to tell me his name; age was a bit more difficult
(because of counting); but when I asked him some
more questions, he said (still in Russian): "I'm
sorry, I don't speak much Russian yet."
The situation was just the opposite when we
went to the countryside. There the older and the
very young people in particular spoke hardly any
Russian.
Another interesting episode: we were invited to
visit the mayor of the village, who welcomed us into
her office. I caught a glimpse of her notes, and
discovered that they were written in Cyrillic
characters. I asked a young woman from
AEGEE-Chisinau and found out that people who are
30 years and older learned to write the Moldavian
language in Cyrillic characters and since then have
been writing that way. For them, it is complicated
to switch to the Latin alphabet. They use it, of
course, in official documents etc., but for
taking notes it is too troublesome.
Since we wanted to interview students with
different ethnic and political backgrounds, we also
went to Tiraspol', the capital of Transdniestria, and
to Comrat, the administrative center of the Autonomous
Region of Gagauzia. In both areas our group
focused on some language problems.
In Transdniestria the majority of the people we
met were native speakers of Russian. Some spoke
Moldavian or Ukrainian as their native language but
were, of course, also familiar with Russian. At first
there were some difficulties in finding English-
speaking people, but finally we succeeded. In Com-
rat the language problem was more serious. In order
to carry out our survey, we arranged a meeting with
a group of about 30 students. When we asked all the
students about the languages they spoke, the result
was the following: less than five people spoke either
Gagauz or Romanian, about five spoke English, and
everybody spoke Russian. That was amazing for us
- especially the fact that so few people know
Gagauz. One CST participant who interviewed a
Gagauz-speaking student in Turkish (Gagauz is an
ancient Turkish dialect) told us later that it was
difficult for him to do the interview, because his
interviewee did not know some special terms. One
interpretation could be that there is no literary or
standard Gagauz language any more: neglected for
years, it became a vernacular language. (As my
interviewees told me, the ratio of the use of Russian
and Gagauz would be about 60 to 40 percent.)
In the end, however, it is easier to describe these
linguistic experiences than to interpret them
accurately. Since we spent only about a week in the
Republic of Moldova, it is hard to draw conclusions
about the development of the different languages
spoken there.
