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DO BELARUSIANS SPEAK BELARUSIAN IN THE STREET?
Ivan Burlyka
This is the question that can be heard very often in various situations. Mildly speaking, for a civilized ear it sounds a bit strange. „What century are we talking about?” – would be the logical continuation of a dialog. The answer is not pleasant for the Belarusians, i.e. the 21st century AD. Would that be OK to ask Germans or Italians about the same kind of things? You can imagine what reaction to this sort of inquiry one can expect.
But emotional beginning of this story does not deprive it from being objective and, therefore, additional comments on this issue would be useful. Before we decide on „who of Belarusians speaks and who keeps silence”, it is worth identifying the essence of the term Belarusian within its broad and narrow context. In a broad sense of this word the Belarusian language (as any other languages in the world) is known to comprise several layers, i.e. literary Belarusian, language of national accents and dialects and what we call „trasianka”, i.e. unavailing efforts of certain layers of the society to „sound Russian”. In a narrow sense, this term comprises only one aspect: literary variant of the national language. This term is usually applied in this respect when questions, specified in the title of the article, are touched upon. Those, who ask them, mean primarily literary Belarusian that is used on the radio, television, in the spheres of education and such.
To answer this monumental question, let us, first of all, evaluate the structural composition of the population of Belarus from the point of view of the degree of their language expertise and eagerness to apply it in their daily life. There exist several categories of urban and rural population in this country. Representatives of Category A can and speak Belarusian: some five per cent of the indigenous population mastered its literary variant and use it both in their professional activities and everyday life. The bulk of them comprise writers, poets, people employed in various spheres of education, radio, TV etc. As a rule, most of them in addition can speak one or more foreign languages. For example, in the Hrodna province the majority of the local population, along with Belarusian, can speak Polish and Lithuanian. Another 95 per cent of this category of people, residing in Belarus, can and speak their local dialects. The author of this article spent more than ten years going on numerous dialectological expeditions and studying phonetic peculiarities of the Belarusian dialects; that study ended up in defending the doctor paper in dialectology. Multiple contacts with the actual native speakers enable me to say that the majority of the rural population speaks wonderful Belarusian dialects, which will never die and will always serve as an inevitable source of support and development of the literary national language. Within the frame of this category of speakers we can single out Category B, the reps of which want to speak Belarusian but „can not” because of their heightened sensitivity that they can not speak „proper, literary” variant of the language and, therefore, they prefer to speak the so-called Russian (which is, definitely, far from being the natural Russian language; very often it becomes the target for numerous offensive jokes on the part of the Russian stand-up comedians). They, obviously, need some kind of additional support, which could help them to get rid of their language „incompetence” and prove the simple fact: a mother tongue always sounds splendid. Category C unites the people who can but do not want to speak Belarusian. These are the young people who originate from the rural areas and when they move to towns and cities they apply all their efforts to forget about their provincial roots; it makes them speak a „trasianka”, which has never been appreciated by speakers of both literary Russian and Belarusian. Through proper promotion of the national language these people can change their attitude to their mother tongue and return to the form of the language they are accustomed to from their childhood. This will mean a shorter way for them to switch to the literary form of the language and join category A of speakers of Belarusian. Category D of the inhabitants of Belarus cannot and does not want to speak Belarusian. Most of such persons comprise former military men (high rank retired Russian-speaking officers) who chose Belarus as the most suitable place for them to spend the rest of their lives in the country with tolerant and pliable (pamiarkouniya) people. In most of the cases their unwillingness to learn the local language is explained by the overall nature of a human being: they have a choice not to speak it because of the bilingual situation in this country. And in the majority of cases they avoid hard work of mastering one more „foreign” language (Russians are like Englishmen: why should they bother about learning any other language if the people around them can always understand their grand mother tongues) and do everything possible not to get involved in it. Mainly this category of people presented the strongest opposition to former attempts of democrats to introduce Belarusian as the only state language in this country.
The above specification of categories of inhabitants of Belarus enables us to answer one more question: Who of them has a real choice of what language to speak? To have a choice in Belarus means to be bilingual. And it appears that only category D deprived itself from being linguistically treated as an equal one within the territory of Belarus (hopefully, on the temporary basis). And, can we expect that such category of people will wake up next morning and will start conversing in Belarusian? Do they have a real choice?
It is worth analyzing the way in which categories A through C use their knowledge of Belarusian in everyday life. The majority of intellectuals of category A seem to treat the literary language as a means of their self-expression and making money. It means that they use it 100 per cent at their places of work and among their colleagues, mates as well as in the situations when they need to protect their professional image. Many of them switch to the local Russian in their everyday life while socializing with their neighbors, in the street and such. However, there are a growing number of people who use Belarusian both at work and in everyday life, no matter what linguistic environment they happen to be. People, residing in rural areas of this country, speak Belarusian on the everyday basis, no matter whether they do it in their villages or come to visit their children in towns and city and or to sell their agricultural goods at the town markets. Representatives of Category B speak their mother tongue presumably when they happen to be in their natural environment, i.e. go back to their rural settlements and smaller provincial towns where the majority of people also speak Belarusian. The same idea can be attributed to speakers of category C who, in the majority of cases, have to switch to their native dialects as in their home environment they undergo different kind of pressure, i.e. the rural inhabitants do not appreciate those people who moved to towns and, when occasionally coming back, try to speak the „perverted” language. They are forced to simply speak pa-liudsku (in a human, civilized way).
Being a representative of category A (the whole family of ours speak Belarusian in any linguistic environment, be it at home or in public places), I would like to share my personal impressions on how the Belarusian word is percepted by the inhabitants of Hrodna. In 90s of the past century those people who spoke Belarusian in the streets were associated with nationalists and in the majority of cases they were treated with a definite precaution. Later on, when the opposition weakened its efforts, it seamed to have become „unstylish” for most of the „democrats” to use the language in the streets and they reduced its application to narrow circles of their associates, clubs, organizations etc. The people, who continue nowadays to speak literary Belarusian in the streets, in spite of any current conditions, are treated with respect and in most of the cases the regular men in the street try to use the advantage of the situation, join short conversations and also speak a pretty good Belarusian. We haven’t experienced any more cases of disrespectful attitude on the part of the local people because of us speaking our mother tongue. On the contrary, very many people try to „secretly confess” that they adore Belarusian and would love to also speak the same pure literary language but they cannot and, therefore, prefer to use „trasianka” in everyday life. Some of the people are honest enough to say that someone needs to „make them speak the language” and in this case they will do it with pleasure. In this case I recollect a well-known story about the guy who came back home from the wedding party and was asked about how good it was there. In response to all questions of his wife and children he responded: Usio bylo dobra, ale prymusu nie bylo (Everything was cool but for one thing: nobody forced anyone to eat, to drink and to have fun). This is one of the traits of Belarusian national character, but this is already another story…
So, if we apply a narrow sense of the term Belarusian and use it in the initial question, it will sound as logical as it would be asked in any other country of Europe. In Great Britain, for example, the cradle of English, only no more than 5 per cent of the population speaks Received Pronunciation (Queen’s English). Again, these are not the people, whom you can meet in the street every minute and enjoy their intellectual discussions. The rest of the native speakers are known for their speaking multiple smaller and bigger local accents and dialects. Sometimes they sound so different that even the inhabitants of the British Isles, originating from different corners of the country, find it difficult to understand each other. Forget about Scottish, Irish or Welsh English that are far from being identical to RP. If that is true, then Do the British speak English in the street?
Another issue, which arises out of the above logic, is the following: let us consider such a trivial situation that could happen in any large family. Nine out of eleven children are happy about everything what is going on in their family and only two children keep complaining about policy of their parents, the way they are brought up and taken care of. Question: who is „abnormal” in such a family? On analogy: some eight million of Belarusians out of eleven of them are happy about the present day life, in general, and the linguistic situation, in particular. They speak the variety of the language that is current in their environment and they are happy about it. And only about two million of intellectuals keep raising the issues of their mother tongue, its status, ways to support it, etc… So, who is right and who is wrong in Belarus?
I guess failure to have answered this question led the former Belarusian democrats of 90s to inability to have achieved their goals, in general, and to have changed the linguistic situation, in particular. They wanted to do everything at once and on the highest level. In other words, they expected every single citizen of the country to have mastered literary Belarusian (within a short period of time) and use it in everyday life. Not to mention about their constant inner struggle between good Belarusian (Tarashkevitsa) and the sovietized one (Krapiunitsa)…
Last but not least, we need to clarify one more idea: who is interested nowadays in posing the question in the way it has been specified in the title of this article? It is easy to assume that someone is real interested in the existence of the situation when the Belarusians would admit that they don’t speak their native language in everyday life. It would enable those, who are striving for „Slavonic brotherhood”, to proclaim in a loud voice:” See, we even speak the same language!” Educated Belarusians do realize, that whatever language one can speak (i.e. other than the native one), he/she will still be treated as an outsider in the eyes of another nation. Similar story happened about the inhabitants of the Belarusian lands who became the part of Lithuania and Poland. No matter how hard the population tried to get rid of their „national burden” and assimilate with the indigenous population of those countries, they were and still are treated as „ushodniya or zahodniya kresy” (eastern or western „appendices”).
To sum it up, there are some brighter thoughts to share with the reader: as for the future of Belarusian in Belarus, it is encouraging. One day the time will definitely come when the knowledge of Belarusian will not only mean an instrument of making money or expressing one’s own political posture and ambitions, or whatever. Changes in governmental policy (and they will definitely come one day (!), but they need to definitely be wise, well-balanced, not straightforward and destructive) towards the status of the national language will enable the latter to serve as an indicator of patriotism, high standard of education and national consciousness. Government should serve as a guarantor of security for the national language and not close the educational institutions that have enough courage to teach the Belarusian children in Belarusian. When all political leaders of this country will become really bilingual and will use the national language as a routine tool in their daily activities, this will signify the new era for the Belarusians and their mother tongue.
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