JoLIE 2:1 (2009)

THE HUNGARIAN-ROMANIAN AND THE MOLDOVAN -RUSSIAN

BILINGUALS: A COMMON OR A DIFFERENT FATE?

Elena Buja
Transilvania University of Braov, Romania



Abstract

After the fall of communism in 1989, many members of the Hungarian minority in Romania
and of the Romanians from Moldova started moving westwards, to Hungary and to
Romania, respectively. They all hoped for a better life among what they thought of as their
brothers. But it seems that many of them were disappointed by the attitudes of the people
in the mother countries. The present paper aims to investigate attitudes toward linguistic
diversity among nationals and immigrants. To this aim, I shall basically use two tools,
namely interviews conducted with Moldovan-Russian students enrolled in the programmes
of the Transylvania University of Brasov, and questionnaires administered to both
monolingual Romanians and Romanian-Hungarian bilinguals. I expect the findings of the
analysis to reveal many similarities between the two groups of bilingual people, but also
some differences.
Hopefully, this small-scale research will raise peoples awareness of the need for
certain linguistic policies and strategies.

Key words: bilingualism, language attitudes, linguistic chauvinism, ethnic solidarity and
identity.


Introduction

The former USSR and, to a certain extent, Romania were pluralistic societies in
which cultural and ethno-racial groups contributed to the whole, at the same time
trying to retain their original character. One characteristic of these groups may be
their language or their dialect. In the long period of Soviet domination, most of the
ethnic groups living in the former USSR tried to stick to their culture, and to their
mother tongue, too. One such ethnic group is constituted by the people of the
Republic of Moldova, a large territory which was disputed by Romania and the
Soviet Union. In 1944, at the end of WWII, Moldova became part of the Soviet
Union. Under these circumstances, Russian became the dominant language in this
area, the speakers of the non-dominant Moldavian dialect having limited
opportunities to use their mother tongue. A somewhat different situation was
experienced by the Hungarian minority living in Romania (especially in
Transylvania) who had to learn Romanian as a second language, but who
Elena BUJA 8
nevertheless were free to study in their own mother tongue and use Hungarian in
their daily activities.
Disputed in the modern times between Hungary and Romania, Transylvania
survived as an ethnic mix of Romanians, Hungarians and Germans. Transylvania
was incorporated into Hungary in 1868. In 1920 it was reunited with Romania by
the Trianon Treaty, afterwards northern Transylvania was granted again to Hungary
by the Axis Powers in 1940, to return again to Romania at the end of the war. The
history of this part of Europe is still a cause of dispute, since two versions of
history, a Romanian and a Hungarian one, can still present fundamental different
points of view over the matter. Nevertheless, under the Communist regime, it seems
that the Hungarians were granted a more liberal status (Le Grand Larousse, 1964,
quoted in Mungiu-Pippidi, 1999: 3) than the Moldovans in the former USSR, in that
they were not denied the use of their mother tongue either at home or in education
or the media. They had their own newspapers (Elore, Brassai Lapok) and even TV
programs in Hungarian. Apart from that, the laws concerning travelling to the
communist countries were milder in Romania than in the former USSR, so that
many Romanian Hungarians could travel to Hungary, keeping contact with the
standard language spoken across the borders. I would therefore say that as
compared to the Moldovans, the Magyars in Romania had a more privileged status.
The historical events that took place in Eastern Europe starting with 1989
have given this part of the world the chance for a new beginning. Thus, one
advantage of the new era was that the people belonging to the former Communist
Block were now able to travel more freely. As a consequence, many young
Moldovans (some born at the beginning of the 1990s) were encouraged to come and
study in the mother country, Romania. As for the members of the Hungarian
minority in Romania, many have chosen to start anew in Hungary in an attempt to
reunite with the people they consider their brothers and to settle down in a country
they envisaged as their homeland. The chance of moving to the countries where the
mother tongues (L1) of these bilinguals are the dominant languages has both
advantages and disadvantages, as we shall see later in the paper.
Since all the subjects in this study speak two languages, the paper will
focus on issues pertaining to bilingualism, defined by L. Bloomfield (1933) as the
situation in which a person has acquired two languages in a native-like manner, the
degree to which s/he masters both these languages being relative. Since
bilingualism is a very broad topic, I will mostly concentrate on the attitudes these
two groups of bilinguals have towards their bilingual behaviour and towards the
status this is assigned in their community. Of interest would be the attitude of the
Moldovans towards the Russian language and the Russian speakers living in
Moldova and that of the Hungarian-Romanians towards the Hungarian language
and the people living in Hungary: do they adopt an attitude of linguistic
chauvinism, or linguistic prejudice, as Wardhaugh (2002:114) calls it, or do they
rather look up to the language of the Russian/Hungarian culture? On the other hand,
it would be also interesting to see the attitude both these groups of bilinguals have
towards Romanians and the Romanian language: if they have experienced any
negative discrimination or if they have been embarrassed for their peculiar
The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan -Russian bilinguals 9
pronunciation of Romanian. Also investigated will be the attitudes of the
monolinguals in Hungary and Romania towards these specific groups of bilinguals.
Hopefully the findings of the analysis will bring to light both similarities, as
well as differences between the Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan-Russian
bilinguals.


I. Research methodology and ethical issues

In order to find relevant information to solve the puzzle of attitudes, I have used a
number of tools. First, I have employed interviews which I conducted with 5 of my
Moldovan students (one boy and four girls) within the premises of our university.
Prior to the encounter with my informants I asked them whether they would be
willing to provide me with information concerning their bilingual behaviour. Since
all of them proved eager to participate in a research study, I devised a set of general
questions concerning their acquisition and use of Romanian and Russian, but, as it
always happens with interviews, a number of other questions emerged during the
process of investigation. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed.
Another tool I used to investigate the Moldovan-Russian bilingualism is the
Moldovan internet forums where people are expressing their views regarding their
language. I was basically interested in their views concerning the use of Russian or
regional terms as well as their views concerning their mother tongue.
Thirdly, for the Hungarian-Romanian bilingual speakers I have used a
modified version of the attitude questionnaire devised by S. Romaine (1995:303-
304) which I administered to some Romanian monolingual and Hungarian-
Romanian bilingual friends, all IT specialists and to my first year students, via the
internet. The questionnaire was devised in Romanian, in two forms: one meant for
monolingual and one for bilingual people. Some of the questions were identical in
the two versions of the questionnaires, some were specifically meant for the two
kinds of respondents. The respondents were instructed to send back the
questionnaire anonymously
1
. Though I considered this instrument really helpful,
being easy to distribute and collect (Romaine, 1995:302), it seemed to be less
relevant, because I received only 3 filled in copies from the Romanian
monolinguals and 7 from the Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals. Since I tried to keep
the technical jargon to a minimum so as not to cause any misunderstandings among
the informants, the only possible reason I can think of for their refusal to participate
in the study is their unfamiliarity with such a task or the feeling that this is quite a
touchy issue which should not stir the waters. More helpful proved to be the
discussions I had (not necessarily on the topic of bilingualism) both in Hungary and
in Romania with Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals living in these countries.

1
Our students have a common e-mail address, and when I get messages from them, the
sender appears as Student_anul1. As for my IT friends, they agreed that I should indicate only the
initials of their names.
Elena BUJA 10
Out of ethical reasons, the respondents will be referred to by using their
first names or their initials, whereas for some (the first year Hungarian-Romanian
students) S followed by a number will be used (e.g. S1, S2). This will not be the
case of the forum participants, who adopt nicknames when posting comments.


III. The analysis

The premises I have started out from are the following:
a) Due to the long period of Russian domination and of the abuses committed by the
Russian communists, I expect Moldovans to have hard feelings about both the
language and the speakers of this language;
b) I also expect some negative attitudes of the monolingual Romanians towards
both groups of bilinguals due to the imperfect use of the Romanian language and
consequently potential embarrassment experienced by them and lack of self-
confidence when using this language.
c) Since the mother tongue of the Hungarian community in Romania is almost the
same with the one used by the natives of Hungary, I expect the latter will accept the
former unconditionally;
Before embarking on the analysis of attitudes, some general remarks related
to the bilingualism of the subjects in the study would be necessary. Both the
Hungarian-Romanians and the Moldovan-Russians
2
acquired their mother tongue in
the family, whereas the dominant language
3
(Romanian or Russian) was acquired at
various ages and under different circumstances. The Hungarian subjects reported
having started learning Romanian at the age of 3, 4 or even 7; whereas the
Moldovans confessed that they learned Russian early during childhood. Most of the
Hungarians learned Romanian from their playmates, some learned it from their
parents and school, whereas one particular respondent stated that s/he attended a
Romanian kindergarten and at that time s/he spoke Romanian better than
Hungarian. All the Moldovan subjects learned Russian from their playmates, and
later on at school, where Russian was taught as a foreign language. But as opposed
to the Hungarian respondents who evaluated their performance in Romanian in
between medium-good and good, the Moldovan subjects stated that they speak both
languages (i.e. Romanian and Russian) equally well. My assumption concerning the
reason for this difference is that the Russian policy was much harsher with respect
to the imposition of Russian in Moldova than the policy adopted by the Romanian
government. One other possible explanation could be the much stronger desire of
the Hungarians to stick to their tradition, culture and implicitly to their language.

2
Elsewhere (see Buja, 2008, in print), by analogy with the distinction between British
English and American English, I have called the Romanian language spoken in the Republic of
Moldova Moldovan Romanian. For simplicity reasons, in this paper, the bilingual people from this
country will be called Moldovan-Russians, not Moldovan Romanian-Russians.
3
Romanian is the language of the majority population in Romania, but in the Republic of
Moldova the majority population is Moldovan (Romanian), whereas the dominant language is
Russian.
The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan -Russian bilinguals 11

A. Attitude of the Romanian monolinguals towards the Hungarian-Romanian
and Moldovan-Russian bilinguals

a) attitude expressed openly by the Romanian monolinguals

I shall start the study by presenting first the attitudes expressed by the monolingual
Romanians toward both groups of bilinguals and toward their mother tongues. The
messages posted on the Moldovan chat forums reveal mixed feelings of the Romanians
with respect to this group of people. Some feel sympathetic toward both the Moldovans
and their language (Romanian), which due to the confinement within the borders of the
former USSR, remained in a state of decay as compared to the language spoken in the
homeland. A forum visitor, inginerum (Sep 2 2003, 12:43), posted the following
message:
4


It is the same language only that the Moldovans across the Prut speak
the Moldavian dialect we have here, only with another accent and with
many archaisms. Believe me I live in Iassy and I have faculty mates
from Chisinau, Balti a.s.o. and they are Romanians indoctrinated by
communism, and their language remained for most of them at the level it
was in the 50s and the 60s because of the lack of introduction of neologisms
as was our case, and because of many other reasons.

The most sympathetic attitude seemed that of the late G. Pruteanu, former vice-
president of the Commission for education and science in Romania, expressed in
the daily newspaper Cotidianul on July 30
th
, 2003:

It is not another language, but a language that has been maimed, jeered at.
It is as if the Romanian language had come out, after a number of years, of
an Auschwitz of the language. A man who spent some years in Auschwitz is
not like he used to be. He is like a shipwreck, he looks awful. Well, this is
the deplorable situation of Romanian over there, a situation that inspires
pity.

Some other Romanian monolinguals have a neutral attitude: people simply express
their puzzlement at not understanding what they are told, without making any
comments. One such person is Iulia who recounts her experience with a fellow
Moldovan student.
5
Most of her story below has been translated into English, but
some sentences have been preserved in Romanian (and translated in brackets) in
order to show the cause of puzzlement.

Once she was waiting for her boyfriend and seeing that he was not coming,
she said: offf, creca s-o prapadit Gheorghe (oh, I think that Gheorghe
has died). She meant to say that he had got lost. Another time she asked
me: "cand ai venit mai era piteoarca aia afara?" (when you came, was that

4
http://forum.softpedia.com/lofiversion/index.php/t15538.html
5
ttp://forum.desprecopii.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=64540
Elena BUJA 12
piteoarca still outside?) Realizing that I did not understand, she confused
me even more: piteoarca, adica jigulie (piteoarca, that is a jigulie).
What do you think she was talking about? A car, an old Russian-made Lada.

There are, nevertheless people who take pleasure in making fun of the old-
fashioned, archaic faade of the Romanian spoken in Moldova. Thus, there is a site
called overheard in Iasi which posts a lot of jokes related to the archaic speech of
the Moldovans. The same ridiculing attitude is expressed by Billy who makes fun
of the TV news he accidentally came across:
6
I couldnt help laughing at them.
Long-unheard archaisms made me laugh my eyes out! () The Moldovans call a
24-hour shop an everlasting shop. Fortunately, such messages are rare.
With respect to the attitude expressed by the Romanians toward the
Hungarian language and its speakers, again the feelings are mixed. Questions such
as: Do you think that the Romanian authorities should produce official
documents/notes/forms/brochures both in Romanian and in the Hungarian (in
Transylvania?)? Would it be appropriate to have more doctors, teachers and public
servants speak Hungarian in the areas with a high percentage of Hungarian
population? Should the Romanian population be encouraged to learn Hungarian?,
revealed various attitudes of the Romanian respondents:

Yes, in those areas where this would be efficient (B.M.)
No, the Hungarians have the moral duty to learn the official language of the
state and to use it in relationship with the state (B.S.)
No, any inhabitant of Romania should learn and use the official language to
an acceptable extent. (S.)

All three Romanian monolinguals admitted that Romanian people should be
encouraged to learn the language of the minorities, especially those who work with
Hungarians. Otherwise, Romanians could learn Hungarian to broaden their
cultural knowledge (B.M.). They were also of the opinion that in order for the
Hungarians to preserve their mother tongue as part of their cultural heritage, the
Romanian government should help them in his respect. One respondent stated that
even if the Hungarian minority asks for help from Hungary or from the Soros
Foundation, it is nevertheless the task of the government to organize properly this
activity (B.M).


b) attitude perceived by the bilinguals

The attitude of the Romanians towards Hungarians and the Hungarian bilinguals is
somewhat different, due to the fact that Hungarian is completely different from
Romanian; it is not a variant of it, as is the case of Moldovan. I wonder whether the
natives of Hungary may have the same mixed feelings towards the Hungarian
variant spoken on the territory of Romania and implicitly toward the population as

6
http://forum.softpedia.com/lofiversion/index.php/t15538.html.
The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan -Russian bilinguals 13
the Romanians have toward the Romanian spoken across the Prut. But let us now
see how the Hungarian minority in Romania perceives the attitude of the
monolingual Romanians.
Some of the questions in the questionnaire meant to illustrate this aspect
were the following: Have you felt a positive/negative attitude on behalf of the
Romanians when they realized you were a Romanian Hungarian? If it was a
negative one, could you find a possible explanation? Have you ever been laughed at
by a Romanian on grounds of incorrect use of the Romanian language?
All the Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals confessed having perceived both
positive and negative attitudes from the Romanian monolinguals, the reasons they
mentioned for the negative attitude being the education the Romanians received in
their families and the superiority adopted by the latter due to the fact that they
speak the official language of the country (S 4). Four out of seven bilingual
respondents said that they had been laughed at by the Romanians due to the
mistakes they made, but they did not perceive this as a negative attitude, as
illustrated by their comments below:

Yes. It was something funny. We laughed together. (S5)
Yes, they did [laugh], but not in an evil way. We laughed together. (S4)

The fact that they did not feel offended by the attitude of the Romanians is
illustrated by the answers they provided to a further question: Do you have hard
feelings toward to Romanians or the Romanian language?

No, I dont hate either the Romanians or the Romanian language. Actually, it is a
beautiful language. (S5)
No, I dont bear them grudge. You cannot generalize: I know there are people who
laugh at us, but there are also people who admit we are as good as they are. (S3)
No, no hard feelings because I knew I made a mistake. Anyway, its not a good
feeling to be laughed at because of your attempt to use Romanian, because they are
not perfect either when they use Hungarian (or any other foreign language). (S2)

Only one student (S1) felt badly at being ridiculed due to his/her imperfect use of
Romanian, stating that this automatically causes repulsion towards both the
language and the speakers.
Similar questions appeared in the interviews with the Moldovan students
who admitted a state of unease when they saw the smiles on the faces of their
Romanian interlocutors. Vadim reported feeling uncomfortable when realizing that
he spoke with a different accent and that he used archaic/regional words. He
recounted a talk with his university mates in which he used the expression amu ia
which is both archaic and regional, its present-day form being acum (now). Due to
a certain connotation attached to the string of sounds in Romanian, his male fellows
started laughing, which embarrassed Vadim terribly. Viorica, another interviewee,
mentioned the puzzlement caused among her Romanian room-mates by her use of
the regionalisms prostire (Standard Romanian cearsaf bed sheet) and iorgan
(ST.Rom plapuma quilt). Despite the embarrassment experienced, none of them
Elena BUJA 14
started hating the Romanians or the Romanian language. On the contrary, these
incidents motivated them to do their best to improve their accent and they freely
admit that, as the following quotes reveal:

I have tried to get rid of my accent, but, still, I am very proud of the language I
speak and it feels good when I use it with my compatriots. (Vadim)
I am trying hard to speak without a Moldovan accent, but I am able to switch back
to it any time I feel like it. (Veronica)

I have encountered similar attitudes among the forum participants, some of them
being very keen on improving not only their accent, but also their grammar and
lexicon. Thus, on the forum suggestively entitled lataifas
7
(chatting), a topic
suggested in 2003 was Reper grammatical (grammar yardstick). Someone launched
the following question: Do you think you need to improve your Romanian? Out of a
total of 45 participants, 17 (37%) answered Yes, definitely, 23 (51%) answered
Yes; although I know it well, repetitio est mater studiorum.


B. Attitude of the two bilingual groups toward the dominant language
(Romanian and Russian)

In a community where different language groups coexist, language attitudes play an
important role in the lives of users of these languages. Haugen (1956) (quoted in
Grosjean, 1982:117-118) is of the opinion that whenever languages are in contact,
one is likely to find certain prevalent attitudes of favour or disfavour towards
languages involved. These can have profound effects on the psychology of the
individuals and on their use of the languages.
What is important to realize is that attitudes towards a language are often
confounded with attitudes towards the users of that language. One of the premises
of the study was that due to the conflicts between the Russians and the Moldovans,
the latter might not have a positive attitude either toward the language or its
speakers. To a very small extent this was confirmed by some messages posted on
forums. Thus, sushlik-luna, a participant in a forum of the Moldovans
8
states the
following:

I am Moldovan, but the first language I learned was Russian. Those were the
times the Russians (and Ukrainians) were imported here incessantly and they did
not learn Romanian! I now many who have lived here for generations and not only
dont they speak Romanian, but they dont even want to learn it! The people here
have been discriminated. Even nowadays it may happen that you enter a shop and
hear the shop-assistant telling you in Russian speak properly (meaning Speak
Russian because I dont understand). Can you imagine? To feel a foreigner in
your own country!

7
http://www/lataifas.net.
8
http://forum.softpedia.com/lofiversion/index.php/t15538.html.
The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan -Russian bilinguals 15

Another participant in the same forum, who signs his /her message rz, recounts
another event:

Subjectively, it seems that Russian is more popular because when speaking to
Russians, the Moldovans use Russian, while the Russians addressing Moldovans
dont speak Romanian. Here is an example that demonstrates that the minority
dictates especially because in many institutions the civil servants are Russian.
Once I saw how a woman (Russian) was almost shouting at an elderly woman who
did not speak Russian and who could not understand a mistake that appeared in
her bill

Similar events were recalled by some of my Moldovan students. Viorica, who is
from Cahul, said that 50% of the population in her home-town are of Russian
origin. In shops, customers have to speak Russian, otherwise they are not served.
Carolina who comes from Balti confirms this.
Despite the reluctance at being imposed the Russian language in certain
circumstances, all my interviewees and most of the forum participants seem to like
this language and use it frequently. Vadim told me that in some places in Moldova
the Moldovan people speak Russian because they like it better than Romanian. Both
the elderly people and the youngsters prefer Russian to Romanian. He is of the
opinion that culture affected their attitude towards the language. In their everyday
speech, when Moldovans want to emphasize something, they say: as the Russian
says. Veronica, another respondent in the interview, told me that she has no
negative feelings either towards the Russians or their language. Once she heard
some tourists speaking Russian in Brasov and this made her homesick. Carolina,
another interviewed student said that, despite the fact that she hated being imposed
the Russian language, she likes it and uses it frequently when she goes on holiday.
Similar positive attitudes toward the Russian language were encountered
among the messages posted on internet forums
9
. Iuliu states: I am in favour of
writing in Romanian and then in Russian. Creatza highlights the advantages of
being bilingual, irrespective of the languages someone speaks:

Indeed, we have to pay more attention to the language spoken in our country ()
do you want to say that you suffer because you can speak two languages? .. I will
tell you that you have an extraordinary advantage; the Romanians who try to speak
Russian do not succeed so well; I am pleased that I can speak Russian without any
accent and Romanian impeccably.

A somewhat different attitude has been sensed with respect to the Romanian
Hungarians and the Romanian language and its speakers. Unlike the Moldovans,
who frequently use the Russian language for everyday encounters and activities, the
Romanian Hungarians never use Romanian in a similar fashion: they prefer to use
Hungarian among themselves: with family members, friends, neighbours, at the

9
http://forum.md/Discuss.aspx?id=85.9437&page=1#rep127
Elena BUJA 16
office, or in church. They speak Romanian only if they have no choice or if they are
in a group in which someone is not familiar with Hungarian. One respondent (I.)
stated that in certain circumstances (at the Town Hall or Finance Department),
nevertheless, he feels more confident using Romanian than Hungarian and he
accounts for this tendency on the basis of lack of education/training in this respect
in his mother tongue.
Whereas in the Republic of Moldova no Russian speaks Romanian (even if
they know the language), in Romania the situation is different: there are Romanians
who speak a little Hungarian and who try to use this language in communicating
with the minority members. Some of my respondents appreciate this thing:

My room-mate is Romanian but she learned Hungarian as a child. She learned
Hungarian from friends. Sometimes she speaks Hungarian, but she switches to
Romanian when she cant find the appropriate Hungarian words. I admire her for
trying to speak my mother tongue (my emphasis) (S4).
I appreciate the fact that he tried to communicate with me in Hungarian. This is a
sign of respect (C.)

There was, nevertheless, one subject (S1) who considered that those Romanians
who can speak Hungarian use the language only to make fun/for fun and not for
serious reasons.
Asked whether the Romanians should be encouraged to learn Hungarian,
my bilingual subjects gave me very surprising answers. Most of them agreed that
this is not necessary. One even stated that it would be too much for them. They are
not happy with us, so if they were obliged to learn our mother tongue, they would
hate us even more (S3). I assume that their reluctance at the majority population
learning Hungarian may stem from their need of protecting their identity from
Romanians.
The older respondents (my IT friends), on the other hand, consider that
especially in those areas where the Hungarians and Romanians live together, the
Romanians should try to learn a bit of Hungarian, just as the Hungarians should
learn Romanian. Its for the sake of a friendly cohabitation (S5) and it would give
the Romanians the chance to learn more about our history, culture, our way of
being. In this way many of the dissensions might disappear and we might all
succeed in forming a genuine multinational state (I.)
To conclude this part, I believe that in those areas where two or more
ethnical groups live together, it is good and polite to try to learn the language of the
other groups. This will reinforce mutual respect and trust.


C. Attitude of the native Hungarians toward the Romanian Hungarian
minority members

As mentioned earlier in the paper, after the events in 1989, many Hungarians went
to work or study in Hungary. But very often, they did not receive the warm
The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan -Russian bilinguals 17
welcome they had expected. All my Romanian Hungarian respondents have visited
Hungary at least once. Contrary to my prediction, they all reported that the official
language of Hungary is different from that spoken by the Hungarian minority in
Romania in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary. Just like with the Moldovan
students in Romania, it is the language that betrayed the Romanian Hungarians as
coming from another country and judged/evaluated accordingly.
All my respondents mentioned both a positive and a negative attitude they
felt from the Hungarians in the mother country:

I experienced both a positive and a negative attitude, depending on the level of
education of the people there (S1)
There were people who treated us well, helped us tremendously, but there were
also people who did not treat us well. People in Hungary are more rigid, they are
not hospitable. When they found out we came from Romania, they were even ruder
to us. (S2)
Some treated us well; some others told me I am Romanian. (S4)
I experienced both a positive and a negative attitude. Many native Hungarians
cannot understand the notion of a Hungarian minority in another country. (S5)

The negative attitude was accounted for on the basis of the degree of education of
the people my respondents came in touch with, the attitude of superiority of the
people from the homeland. My talks with friends and relatives living in Hungary
brought to light a grimmer image than the one depicted by my students. Some
friends of mine, a Romanian Hungarian couple from Trgu-Mures, have been living
in Budapest since 1990. I often stayed with them during my studies in Budapest and
there were times when they complained that the Hungarians from the mother
country treat them as second class Hungarians. Immigrants from Romania don't feel
at home in Hungary, where they get to meet socially only other Hungarians from
Romania. A relative of mine born in a mixed family in Trgu-Mures also emigrated
to Hungary. She told me that she does not know any longer where she belongs: In
Romania I was called bozgor. Once I arrived here I had the feeling that they
would accept me, but I was perplexed when my daughter came home from school
crying because her class mates called her hulye roman [crazy Romanian]. A
similar sad feeling stemmed from one of the questionnaires:

I simply dont get it: the Romanians say we are homeless (we dont have a country)
and that we should go to Hungary. And in Hungary we are called Romanians.
(S4)

This seems to echo the opinion of another Transylvanian quoted by Mungiu
(1999:40) who stated:

We, Transylvanians, sometimes feel like second-rank Hungarians when compared
to Hungarians from Hungary and second-rank Romanian citizens when compared
to Romanians. We sometimes feel betrayed by both (Hungarian intellectuals, Tg.
Mures).
Elena BUJA 18

The same bitterness emerges in connection with the Moldovan Romanians. In an
article entitled Despre naravurile moldovenilor (On the Bad Habits of the
Moldovans), by Puiu
10
, the writer presents the feelings experienced by a famous
Moldovan poet (Grigore Vieru) when he first visited Romania.

Recently, in a Basserabian daily, a young poet from Chisinau was sharing his
impressions on how he felt in Romania. The comparison he made was based on a
general truth, namely that we, the immigrants, are regarded in the mother country
as some kind of panda bears. Indeed, no matter how much we strive to look
Romanian, in Romania we are regarded as something exotic, picturesque, even
unnatural : as some kind of Russian-Moldovan hybrids (my translation).

Even sadder is the remark of one of my Moldovan students who said:

What am I after all? At home my parents told me I am Romanian, at school we
were taught that we are Moldovans, and when we came to Romania, people here
called us Russians!

The feeling that I got by reading these statements is that it is not the comparison
with Romanians or the treatment theyre subjected to by Romanians, which make
Romanian Hungarians feel inferior. I think it is their relationship with Hungarians
from Hungary, which seems to upset them. The same holds true for the Moldovans:
they are not that much upset by the attitudes of the Russians as they are by those of
the people they consider their brothers. Both groups of bilinguals feel rejected by
the people in the mother countries, and both seem to feel alien in their country of
birth.


IV. Conclusions

What I hoped to find was that neither the Moldovans nor the Romanian Hungarians
see themselves linguistically or culturally inferior to either the Russians/Hungarians
or the Romanians and that they perceive the language they speak accepted and
respected on both sides of their geographical borders. But in many cases my hopes
were contradicted by my findings. Thus, some of the Moldovan-Russian bilinguals
and also a number of Romanian Hungarians feel stigmatized due to their
speech/language. But this stigmatization seems to have, nevertheless, a positive
effect in that it reinforces the loyalty and solidarity of the group toward their
language and the people. Grosjean (1982:126) states that even though the use of a
stigmatized language may be associated with a less prestigious group at least in
the eyes of the majority group it may reinforce the groups positive values and
symbolize solidarity for them.

10
http://www.stiri.romanism.net/?p=674.
The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan -Russian bilinguals 19
Despite the negative attitudes some of the Romanian and Russian
monolinguals have towards the Moldovan-Russian bilinguals, most of the latter
seem to have positive feelings towards both Romanian and Russian. This is
reflected on the one hand in their efforts to brush up their Romanian and in the
delight they take in speaking Russian among themselves, even in those cases where
there is no Russian native among them. Possible reasons why the people I
investigated do not seem to dislike Russian are: a) the fact that they learned it while
still children and that most of them were born shortly before or after the events that
led to the independence of the Republic of Moldova; b) Russian is the language of a
vast culture.
As far as the Romanian Hungarians are concerned, they seem to differ from
the other group of bilinguals in that they never use the Romanian language when
speaking among themselves, but Hungarian. Romanian is employed by them only in
those circumstances in which there are Romanian monolinguals around. One other
difference between the Romanian Hungarians and the Moldovan-Russian bilingual
people is reflected in the lack of any desire on the part of the former to make their
Hungarian sound similar to the official language of Hungary. Though they admit
that there are phonological differences between the two variants of the language,
they consider that the Hungarian spoken in Transylvania is actually superior to
that spoken across the borders, and that there is no need for them to try and adopt
another way of speaking. Finally, one other dissimilarity between the two groups of
bilinguals under consideration refers to the attitude they have towards the
monolinguals who could speak their mother tongue. While the Moldovans would be
pleased to hear the Russians in their country speak Romanian, the Hungarians
appreciate the efforts of the Romanians to speak Hungarian, but would not
encourage others to learn it. All this makes me conclude that the Romanian
Hungarians try to defend their ethnic group from intruders and that the feeling of
solidarity is much stronger among them than among the Moldovans.
The diversity of languages and cultures should be regarded as a good and
beautiful thing in itself. Each language has its own way of seeing the world and is
the product of its own history. All languages have their individual identity and
value, and all are equally appropriate as modes of expression for the people who use
them. To devalue a language or to presume that one language is better, ultimately
devalues individuals and cultures. In order to live peacefully in a multilingual
Europe, there is a need to generate a greater interest in and curiosity about
languages. And above all, there is a need to enhance linguistic tolerance both within
and between nations.


Editors note:
This article is the authors contribution to the Proceedings of the Exploratory
Workshop Linguistic and Intercultural Education in the Process of Europeanisation
of Higher Education CLIE-2009, Popescu, T & Pioariu R. (Eds.). Aeternitas: Alba-
Iulia, pp. 107-120 (reproduced with permission).

Elena BUJA 20
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