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Latvian stands firm against Russian. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6554 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 73 of 91 20 March 2012 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know enough about the Quebec situation to analyze it but my point was that we are protecting Latvian not just for us but also for the world's cultural heritage - because Latvia is the only possible home for the Latvian language. I can sympathize with French people in Quebec but again, it's not the same situation as in Latvia. French people have lived there for generations (I assume) so they deserve their language and customs preserved, while Russians have migrated to Latvia in the last 40-50 years during a time when Latvia was occupied and had no means of preventing this immigration. So I don't think Latvians owe the Russian language anything. It was forced on them. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 74 of 91 20 March 2012 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Russians have lived in Latvia for generations too. Russians have lived in Latvia since the 17 century. The French migrated to Canada too, conquered it and then were conquered by the English. And, in fact, it doesn't matter. Russians are the same people as you. Latvia wasn't occupied. Occupation means it was ruled by military authorities of a foreign state. Latvia was ruled in the same way as the whole Soviet Union. latvia was not more occupied by the Soviet Union than Russia was occupied by the Soviet Union. Russians and others were reqested by the Latvian government, they worked there, built Latvian economy, they produce a large portion of the Latvian GDP and pay taxes. They should be respected. Latvians occupied high posts in the Soviet country from the beginning. They had equal opportunities with everyone else. The membership in the Soviet Union gave Latvians a lot of opportunities. The Latvian language was supported and used as much as it could be. Now Latvia is not independent at all. It obeys the European Union which is being centralized. It has been governed by American puppets from 1991. There were a lot of American and British citizens in its administration Edited by Марк on 20 March 2012 at 7:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6554 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 75 of 91 20 March 2012 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The Soviet Union was a "foreign state" (as you call it) to Latvia and the occupation did happen. If you'd like to know more about the history of Latvia, I'll refer you to this resource. And it's preposterous to claim Russia was occupied by the Soviet Union; Russia created the Soviet Union. Latvia didn't want to join it but was military forced. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 76 of 91 20 March 2012 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I get you except when you say "protect our language on our territory". This is where things get dicey for me since Québec to me has been more than just about people who speak (Canadian) French. Besides since French is pluricentric (rather than an umbrella term for mutually unintelligible lects/languages), this explains why Haitian immigrants to Canada, for example, gravitate to Québec rather than say Alberta, despite the latter having lower taxes and lower unemployment. The idea of French being "owned" by some body of speakers on an arbitrarily fixed piece of land seems odd to me when French is so widely spoken, regardless of the feelings of the respective speech communities (here as you note, French Canadians don't feel much of a connection to France or Belgium even when they all speak French). I'm like you in that I don't fret over my "brethren" in England, Australia, South Africa etc., but I'm unlike you in that I don't find myself protecting "our language on our territory" (it's explained by what follows the next paragraph). As Evita has noted, the comparison with Russo-Latvian relations is a little tough to make because we're looking at Latvian versus Russian rather than French versus English. Namely it's 1 small speech community compared to 3 large ones (with the latter two's wide distribution sometimes invoked in the terms "Francophonie" and "Anglosphere" respectively) Having said all that this is another reason why I've become convinced that using language as a decisive marker of ethnic identity/imagination causes more problems than it solves, and that the whole business should've been squashed at the start (damn you, J. G. Herder! (as an interesting side note, Herder was born in East Prussia but lived for a long time in Riga)) It just leads too often to situations such as this where you have another way to emphasize your difference from "the other" and use it as a smokescreen to express the nastier side of the human condition. Thus in the former USSR, one's view on how to treat the Russian language is taken as a sign of what one thinks of the USSR, Russian people or communists with the last three being distinctly non-linguistic. Thank God that I'm fluent in pluricentric languages that cannot be linked satisfactorily or exclusively with national identity. Trying to do so would ultimately fail because I can see that I what I use fluently/natively is used natively by so many other people whose consciousness, mentality or world-view differs to the point where it's useless (not to mention borderline insulting) to try to group me with these people all because by accident of schooling or immmigration we have the same linguistic profile. Ironically I agree with the Hungarian nationalist, István Széchenyi when he reacted to ideas of imposing Hungarian language as the sole official language in the Hungarian Kingdom: "If one understands and speaks Hungarian, it does not necessarily mean that he is a Hungarian. Knowledge of a language is far from the feeling of being Magyar; the twirl of the tongue is not the beat of the heart." Basically knowing (or conversely not knowing) a certain language doesn't (shouldn't (?)) mean much for your ethnic identity. Even for myself, I don't identify with the Saami (or any other ethnic group) because I've studied Northern Saami (or other languages) quite intensively. I weakly identify with people from my hometown but it's not because of language (or religion, or skin color, or gender, or political orientation, or...). If anything I identify strongly with friends which is not specific to knowledge of a language - as long as we can communicate with each other in A language (i.e. it doesn't matter which one as long as it's understandable to us) Edited by Chung on 20 March 2012 at 11:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5275 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 77 of 91 21 March 2012 at 6:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Funny how much Latvians rant and rave about Russia but have nothing to say about Nazi Germany, which
exterminated Latvia's inhabitants at a far greater rate than did the Soviet Union. But then again, it must have been the certain rather undesirable inhabitants who got offed....ah yes, that's what it was. Edited by Merv on 21 March 2012 at 6:34am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 78 of 91 21 March 2012 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"Having said all that this is another reason why I've become convinced that using
language as a decisive marker of ethnic identity/imagination causes more problems than it solves" I agree. But Russian speakers must be respected in Latvia. Latvian language is not in danger, it won't desappear even if Russian becomes the second official language there. It's obvious. If Irish manages to survive then there is no threat to Latvian. The negative feelings towards everything Russian must be overcome. Russians are not more guilty than anyone else in what happened in the Soviet Union, they mustn't be punished for that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6554 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 79 of 91 21 March 2012 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
And what should we say about Nazi Germany? That they shouldn't have killed those people? Of course they shouldn't have, it's kind of obvious and everyone agrees about it. It was a horrible crime. But the German population is pretty non-existent in Latvia, they are not causing any problems for us, that's why we don't talk about Germans and Germany. The "ranting and raving about Russia", as you call it, is about the present situation and possible future scenarios, not about the past. But if you want to look at the past, please take into account that, first, the Soviet Regime killed and deported more people than the Nazi regime (you can find numbers in that link I provided in the previous post), and second, the Nazis were here for a year but the Soviets were here for 50 years, which means that they not only killed tons of people but made living for the rest difficult. You know, everything Latvians owned - their land, homes - was taken away from them and nationalized. I don't want to go into politics too much here - this is, after all, a language forum - but I would appreciate it if you didn't imply that Latvia supports the holocaust. The current discussion on Russian has nothing to do with it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 80 of 91 21 March 2012 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"is about the present situation
and possible future scenarios, not about the past." And the present situation is that Russian is widely spoken in Latvia, but doesn't have any status and is oppressed, Russians are called occupants, Russian language is called a threat to Latvian and so on which is not true. "You know, everything Latvians owned - their land, homes - was taken away from them and nationalized." That's what happened with allthe people in the Soviet Union, including Russians and including Russians who lived in Latvia before 1940. Everything you described was not done by Russians but by the Soviet authorities which consisted of all the ethnicities including Latvians. Russians were in the same condition and it is simply unfair to blame for them. Edited by Марк on 21 March 2012 at 10:06am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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