This letter to the editor of the Financial Times points out Moldova’s strong linguistic connection to Romania – and the hangover of a Stalinist myth that the country belonged in the Soviet sphere of influence at least from a cultural perspective.
According to the report “Tensions grow over Moldova clashes” (April 9), “most Moldovans speak Moldovan, a language closely linked to Romanian, but a big minority speak Russian and other Slav languages”. Moldovan is, in fact, Romanian.
The news broadcasts on Romanian andMoldovan television are, linguistically, identical. The CIA and theInternational Organisation for Migration describe Moldovan as”virtually the same as the Romanian language”. This insidiousmisrepresentation, begun by Stalin in order to pave the way for theincorporation of Moldova into the Soviet Union, seeks to widen the gulfpolitically between Romania and Moldova and to draw Moldova furtherinto the Russian sphere of influence.
The article did not say,after all, that “a big minority speak a language closely linked toRussian”. A big minority speak Russian, just as most Moldovans speakRomanian.
It is, of course, up to the citizens of Moldova todetermine the nature of their relationship with Romania, Russia, andthe European Union. But the cultural and political realities in Moldovamust at least be accurately represented.
Adriana Fotino,
Boulder, CO, US
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3 Comments
There is no difference between Romanian and so called Moldavian. Just the accent but that is understandable. Voronin’s campaign on this subject is simply put stupid.
Well, if you want to get REALLY technical, there are a few differences in vocabulary. After all, several decades of Soviet rule can not but have left their imprint on the language, specifically as relates to various bureaucratic terms that simply had no parallel in Ceausescu’s Romania (and vice-versa). It’s the same phenomenon as can be seen between Americans and Canadians or Flemish speakers in northern Belgium and their linguistic brothers and sisters in the Netherlands. Also, the language spoken in Moldova has a number of Russian loan words (just like the languages of Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, etc.) that did not creep into the language spoken in Romania. Other than these small differences, however, I fully agree that the language spoken in Chisinau and the language spoken in Bucharest are one and the same, despite any efforts of the Moldovan political elite to pretend otherwise (there were reports that the Moldovan president actually brought an interpreter on a state visit to Bucharest shortly after independence just to prove this point).
I am Moldovan myself and like most of the Moldovans I have two mother tongues: Romanian and Russian.Russian in the capital city is more powerful, 60% of the population speak it on the street,although only 15% are Russians.As for Moldovan language,it doesn’t exist. It is RomanianThe situation is just like in most of the ex USSR countries. IN Kazahstan,for example,the Kazah language is spoken by no one , Russian is the mother tongue of most of the Population,