Ziua Limbii

Exactly one year ago, I decided to celebrate Moldova's Language Day by speaking only Moldovan (or Romanian, depending on what you want to call it). When volunteers called me or sent me text messages, I answered only in Moldovan. This was problematic when the two Russian speakers from our group tried to contact me, but I was convinced that it was their fault for not learning the official state language, enshrined in law on August 31, 1989.

This morning, the first word I said was "Привет". This was intentional. My opinion about Moldova's language issue has changed a lot in the past year, mostly because of my experiences and discussions, but also because I now better understand the politics of language in Moldova.

With the exception of the inter-war period of 1918-1940, Bessarabia (basically current Moldova without Transnistria) had been controlled by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union since 1812. By the time 1989 came, Russians had been a major ethnic and political influence in Bessarabia for 177 years.

Russians were also not the only non-Moldovan ethnicity in Bessarabia in the 19th century. According to Charles King in his illuminating book, The Moldovans, Bessarabia in 1897 was only 47.6 percent Moldovan, while Ukrainians, Jews, Russians, Bulgarians, Germans, Turks, Poles, Armenians, Turks and others comprised a plurality of the population. Moldovan was not the predominant language in cities, and the majority of newspapers were published in Russian because that's the language that readers wanted.

In 1918, Moldova's Sfatul Tarii hastily voted to unite with the rest of Romania. Minorities in this new combined nation were not well treated, especially the Jews who were slaughtered in the Holocaust. This was also the first time that Moldovans began to read and write their language in the Latin alphabet, echoing Romania's 19th-century change from the Cyrillic alphabet. Meanwhile in Transnistria, which had become a large part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet language reformers were trying to create Moldovan grammar texts and words that would differentiate the dialects of Romanian and Moldovan into two separate languages.

In 1941, the newly formed Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, which encompassed the territory now known as the Republic of Moldova, was 68.8 percent Moldovan, 11.1 percent Ukrainian, 7.5 percent Bulgarian, 6.7 percent Russian and 4.9 percent Gagauz. Thus over 30 percent of the population would not necessarily be expected to speak the Moldovan language. Because nearly a third of the population new Russian better than Moldovan and because the MSSR was only one republic that needed to communicate with other Soviet states, Russian was declared the state language.

When discussing politics, this is the point where Romanian language nationalists tend to become upset. When you went to the store in the MSSR, you spoke in Russian. When you filed paperwork, it was in Russian. When you went to university, you studied in Russian. Two academics who studied French at Moldova's largest university have told me about times when they made an entire presentation in French and then were told to repeat it in Russian. Moldovan was not the esteemed language, and Russian speakers were often unwilling to stoop to what they called "the peasant language".

The most important thing about this time is that while ethnic Moldovans clung nearly unflinchingly to their language, other ethnicities began to use Russian. In 1989, 36.7 percent of ethnic Ukrainians in the MSSR spoke Russian as their native language, as opposed to 61.6 percent who kept Ukrainian, according to a Soviet census cited by King. Of those who continued to speak Ukrainian, 43.0 percent of them spoke fluent Russian, as opposed to only 12.8 percent who spoke fluent Moldovan.

Of ethnic Gagauz, who lived mostly in the south, 7.4 percent spoke Russian as their native language and 72.8 percent spoke it fluently; only 4.4 percent spoke fluent Moldovan. Over two-thirds of Jews in the MSSR spoke Russian as their first language.

Russian became not only the language of power, government work and commerce. It also became the language of Moldova's many ethnic minorities. These minorities were not accounted for by politicians in 1989.

After nearly a year of public debate, the MSSR Supreme Soviet on August 31, 1989 declared Moldovan as the official state language. This was mainly the work of nationalists and academics, and they immediately began talk of leaving the weakened USSR and re-uniting with Romania after nearly 50 years apart.

This talk was not only hasty, but it caused the ethnic minorities, nearly one-third of the MSSR's population, to worry. They were suddenly told that they spoke the wrong language, and many of them did not expect good treatment as minorities if unification with Romania were to happen. This led to the secession of Gagauzia and Transnistria.

In my opinion, ethnic Moldovans took the politics of language too far in the early '90s when they declared the national anthem to be "Limba Noastra," meaning "Our Language". This sent a message to Russian speakers that they were no longer included in the "we" of the Moldovan people?

Although the politics of language no longer creates large-scale demonstrations like in the late '80s and early '90s, there is still tension between Moldovan-speakers and Russian-speakers. On this blog I often write about times when I am frustrated with someone who only speaks Russian, and I've only lived here for a year. Because it is Language Day in Moldova, I want to list some observations about and suggestions for easing the language problem in this country.

• It is very easy for foreigners coming to Moldova to look at language in this country as a straightforward timeline: Russian was the dominant language in the Soviet era, both Russian and Moldovan are prevalent now, and some time in the future the entire country will speak Moldovan. But a significant minority in Moldova never considered Moldovan to be their language and entire ethnic groups, namely Ukrainians and Gagauz, have embraced Russian and see no need to learn Moldovan. This simplistic view is unrealistic.


• Moldova is a linguistically diverse country in which citizens need to know both Moldovan and Russian in order to get by. Native Russian speakers do not need to master Moldovan, nor do Moldovans need to master Russian. Moldovans don't need to have perfect Russian grammar, and Russians don't need to be able to describe their feelings or talk about abstract concepts in Moldovan. But every citizen should know how to buy food, get and give directions and otherwise be able to navigate life on a basic level in both languages. Moldovan-speaking restaurant workers who don't know the menu items in Russian are ignorant and ill-equipped for their job, just the same as a Russian-speaking shopkeeper who has to show a Moldovan-speaking customer the number 42 on a calculator because she doesn't know enough Moldovan to say how much his beer and water cost.


• Having the Moldovan national anthem only in the Moldovan language is offensive to Russian-speaking minorities. It should be recognized as a knee-jerk post-Soviet reaction against Russian language imperialism and retired as the national anthem. Moldova should look to the example of Canada, whose national anthem can be sung in either English or French.


• The Russian language should be recognized in some way in the Moldovan constitution. How, I don't know. But the fact that so many people speak it as their first language and the language isn't recognized in the constitution makes little sense.


• Currently, all signs in Moldova must be written in Moldovan. After they are written in Moldovan, writing the same message in Russian is optional. Looking again at Canada and Quebec, Moldova should make Russian signs mandatory in some situations, perhaps in raions and cities where at least 30 percent of the population prefers Russian over Moldovan.


• Settling some of these minority issues will help Moldova feel more cohesive and will remove a major objection that Transnistrian separatists currently have with the Chisinau government.

I don't have all the answers on this subject, but neither does anyone else. Language in the territory of modern Moldova has always been a major question and it has made it difficult to form a single national identity. August 31, 1989 was an important day for Moldova because it was one of the first times when the Supreme Soviet acted as a legislative body instead of simply rubber-stamping whatever Moscow said, according to King. It was also important because it gave the Moldovan majority a cultural win that it had been waiting for for decades. The cultural pendulum had been so far to the Russian side, but over the course of several months it swung to the Moldovan side. But it is important for Moldova to ask itself, "Did we go too far?" Moderate Moldovans need to examine the language question and push the pendulum back toward the center.

15 ani

The fireworks lit up the sky over the Arc of Triumph while the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony played, delighting the thousands who had gathered in front of the Presidential Palace in the center of Chisinau. I was standing in the middle of the crowd, there with two students from this summer's English camp and a handful of their friends, all of whom had been wearing diapers when their country declared its independence from the Soviet Union on August 27, 1991. Today, as Moldova celebrated 15 years of independence, I was more excited about it than they were.

I started my day by coming into Chisinau and sending a text-message to my friend Lilia wishing her a happy Independence Day. She said that she had forgotten that Independence Day was today, but she was happy to be reminded.

At 5:30 p.m., I met up with Irina Nicorici, a university professor in Chisinau, Ryan Kennedy, a Fulbright scholar here, Ryan's wife, Allison, and a Frenchman named Camille who was working with a non-governmental organization here and had visited my village the day before.

I immediately noticed Irina's blue t-shirt with "Moldova" written across it and the national symbol covering a square foot of its front. Irina laughed and said that even just a year ago, she wouldn't have worn the shirt. "This year, talking with so many Americans, I've started to feel more and more Moldovan," she said, and with that sense of nationality came some pride in wearing a t-shirt that, paradoxically, she bought in Ukraine. I asked Irina how proud and excited she was for her country's anniversary. On a scale from one to 10, she told me she was at about five. After only 15 years, she said, there's no way for Independence Day to become as celebrated of a day here as the Fourth of July is in America after 230 years.

We walked to Chisinau's lakeside amphitheater, where the Ukrainian band Океан Ельзи (roughly transcribed from Ukrainian as Okean Elzy, or Elza's Ocean) was playing. The crowd was mostly teenagers and people in their early 20s, and a large amount of the people were wearing the black uniforms of youths who listen to hard rock and industrial music. In short, they were a lot like me and my friends when we were 16. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time at the amphitheater outside in a large crowd trying to file in through the one entrance. Crowd control and the concept of lines are not strong in Moldova.

Even outside the concert, it became clear to me that Romanian was not the event's preferred language. When I was asked at the security checkpoint to show what was in my pockets, it was in Russian first, although when I said that I didn't understand, the guard had no problem asking me in Romanian. When I attempted to not-so-subtly cut in the beer line, the girl behind me said something to me in Russian. When I responded, "Poftim?" she shrugged, since she had no way of explaining to me in Romanian that I was cutting. (I know that cutting in line is rude and awful, but sometimes you just want symbolic revenge after a 14 months of being cut in front of at every store.) I think my Russian is getting a little better; I can understand about 30 or 40 words now, although I don't have any of the grammatical knowledge that I would need in order to speak a complete sentence.

Because the concert was going later than I had anticipated, I had to leave Irina et al to go to the city's center at 8 p.m. There I met with three other Peace Corps volunteers, along with Nicoleta and Iulia, two girls from English camp who live in Chisinau, and a few of their friends. The main event for the night was to be Zdob si Zdub, Moldova's best band, playing on a stage in front of the Presidential Palace in the city's center at 9. We made our way into the crowd, which filled the streets of nearly the entire city block. The crowd here was very different from at the Океан Ельзи show, with much more Romanian spoken and with more brightly-colored clothing that fit with the warm August evening better than black. A traditional Moldovan folk ensemble was playing, and people in the crowd, including Nicoleta, Iulia and their friends, were dancing the hora.

I asked Nicoleta and Iulia the same question I had asked Irina about national pride. They basically shrugged off the question, but commented that it wasn't a very important celebration. Iulia said that because history is taught only twice a week in Moldovan schools, a lot of Moldovans aren't even sure what year their country became independent. I got the impression that for them, tonight was more of a Zdob si Zdub concert than an important birthday for their young country.

After the mayor of Chisinau addressed the crowd, the fireworks began. As I watched them, I thought about how I had arrived at this point. Here I am, 23 years old, already more than a year and a half out of college, living in a village without running water and with only one paved road in a country that I didn't even know existed 16 months ago, where I teach English and computers, speaking a second language for the majority of the day. That day, I had hitched a ride into the city on a bus that would have seemed highly disreputable to me if I were still living in America, and I had spent the day with a number of American, Moldovan and French acquaintances and friends, celebrating the independence of a nation younger than ourselves and fully realizing that Moldova still has many years remaining before it will truly be independent. At the exact moment of this fireworks show ("There goes the roads budget!" new volunteer Ren? exclaimed), I was standing with a group of Moldovan teenagers, speaking to them in English and eagerly awaiting a Moldovan band that we all loved. Suffice it to say, my life has changed more in the past year and a half than at any other time in my life.

The fireworks ended, and it was time for, as some of the Nicoleta and Iulia's friends called them, "Zdubii". The other volunteers wanted to move closer to the stage, so I was left with the girls and their friends. Even if scientists figure out cold fusion some day, nothing will ever match the energy of a teenage girl whose favorite band has just taken the stage. The jumping, the clapping, the screaming. And here I was with four teenage girls and four more stoic teenage boys.

"Buna seara, Chisinau!," called out Zdob si Zdub's lead singer, Roman.
"Buna seara, Roman!," screamed back the girls.

The band launched into over an hour of its most popular songs, including my favorites, "Nunta Extremala," "Everybody in the Casa Mare" and "DJ Vasile," and of course the Eurovision hit, "Bunica Bate Toba," (the girls knew all of the English lyrics to "Bunica Bate Toba," but I only knew the Romanian chorus). We barely looked at the stage, instead dancing in our own circle and jumping up and down during particularly rocking parts. By the end of the concert, the other volunteers had found us again and we all danced like madmen to my absolute favorite, "Buna Dimineata," which closed the show.

Nicoleta, Iulia and their friends left, and we volunteers met up with more volunteers, Moldovans and Camille, the Frenchman, for a few more beers, celebrating the independence of a country that we all, to some extent, now call our own.

The next day, when I returned home to Mereseni, I was still a little disappointed by Irina's, Nicoleta's and Iulia's low self-assessment of their patriotism. I was ready to chalk it up to the difference between an established country with its own national culture, like the U.S., and a young country that still has so many issues to deal with before it can feel truly unified and independent. Then I asked my host mom, Maria, and my host sister-in-law, Olesea, how proud they were of their country's independence.

"Somewhere between a seven or an eight," they both agreed. Maria began to talk about the opportunities that have opened to ethnic Moldovans in business and in government that had previously been dominated by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. I asked Olesea why she was proud of Moldova.

"Because it's a young country," she said. "And every year, you see that it's getting a little bit better and better."

Viata peste hotare in musica moldovaneasca

Moldovan folk music is usually about love, dancing and drinking. But another major lyrical influence in current folk music is the Moldovan experience abroad. Because the subject of living and working abroad resonates with so many Moldovans, as well as Romanians, song lyrics are increasingly describing how much they miss home.

There is a popular song now in which the male singer says goodbye in Italian and proclaims that, "Our language is the richest and full of love.... I miss home."

Here are some other lyrics that I heard on the bus to Chisinau today:

"Nicaieri e mai frumoasa viata ca la tine acasa."

"Nowhere is life more beautiful than at your home."

"Zece ani am plecat, si m-am saturat."

"I've been gone for 10 years, and I've had enough."

Living abroad is currently, for better or worse, one of the most important aspects of the Moldovan experience. Moldovan music will continue to capture the yearning for home and, after years of not seeing your family and friends, the joy of returning home.

Tecnologie si Cules