Donald DYER (The University of Mississippi)
“With our head and your hands”
A sociolinguistic study of contemporary Moldova since its independence from the
Soviet Union
The ethnic and linguistic demographics of the Republic of Moldova continue to
evolve in what represents one of the more intriguing language-contact venues in the
world. For the latter two-thirds of the twentieth century, this land, populated by 65%
ethnic Romanians, was a republic of the Soviet Union. During that time, the people of
this republic, who spoke an eastern dialect of Romanian characterized as a separate
language and called “Moldavian” by Soviet linguists, also learned Russian, their national
language.
This paper examines what has taken place socio-linguistically in Moldova in the
past five years. While the last half of the twentieth century showed us what happened as
the Moldovan supra-language was fabricated and came in contact with Russian, the last
few years have shown us what happens when Russian somewhat recedes from
prominence, holes up in various strata of Moldovan society and has had its power
challenged by Romanian, an equally dominant language, as well as a number of
indigenous minority languages such as Bulgarian, Gagauz and Ukrainian. Moldovan
independence has essentially been good to minority languages in this land. They have
achieved things, including important instructional status in schools, not possible during
Soviet times despite the ostensible tenets of Leninist language policy.
National Moldovan borders have melted away over the past ten years allowing for
the smooth, natural mixing of different languages and the inevitable linguistic changes
that thusly result. Languages from contiguous states, such as Romanian and Ukrainian,
have reasserted themselves in Moldovan society. Yet internal borders – around
Transnistria and Gagauzia – have been constructed in Moldova, and these appear to be
impediments, even detriments, to natural language mixing. These internal borders are
forced mechanisms for isolationism and the unnatural partitionings of language that
under other circumstances would naturally be in contact with each other, resulting in
reciprocal linguistic effects. In a somewhat overdue reassessment of language and
identity in this part of the world, this article offers new information on the languages of
Moldova (Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Gagauz and Bulgarian) and the peoples who
speak them, as well as their sociolinguistic and, where relevant, minority status since
Moldovan independence.