Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Overview:

• Chapter 00: Voices in European poetry – Savina Yannatou

  • Keywords: voices of European poets, Savina Yannatou, ‘human voice’, “phones anthropos”,
  • Editor: Hatto Fischer, Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens

• Chapter 01: Endangered languages and multilingual education – about UNESCO’s language policy

  • Interviewee: Gresiczki Péter, Secretary-General of Hungarian National Commission for UNESCO
  • Keywords: UNESCO, endangered languages, multilingual education, International Mother Language Day, Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing
  • Editor: Gyarmathy Dóra, Hungarian Radio

• Chapter 02: An everyday miracle – learning the mother language

  • Interviewee: Kassai Ilona, linguist of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
  • Keywords: “child directed speech”, protoconversation, canonical babbling
  • Editor: Gyarmathy Dóra, Hungarian Radio

• Chapter 03: The variety of languages is a gift of culture – European Centre of Languages

  • Interviewee: Adrian Butler, executive director of the European Centre of Languages
  • Keywords: a neverending task – teaching and learning languages, European Day of Languages, community languages, dead languages, languages of minorities and immigrants
  • Editor: Oliver Kroening, Radio Lotte Weimar

• Chapter 04: Translators - mediators between languages and cultures

  • Interviewees: Iglika Vasileva, translator, Anders Bodegard, translator
  • Keywords: James Joyce, language enrichment through translation, language self protection, poetry as a different type of translation, “Transatlantic” award
  • Editors: Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio, Katarzyna Fortuna & Marianna Knap, Radio Kraków

• Chapter 05: Language and identity – literature and languages of ex-Yugoslav countries

  • Interviewee: Valeriji Jurešic, founder of “Literary – information system – KIS”
  • Keywords: hybrid Serbo – Croatian language, book markets and translations in the ex-Yugoslav countries,
  • Editor: Vid Mesarić, Croatian Radio

• Chapter 06: Dialects and standard – what is the language of Czech media like?

  • Interviewee: Miroslav Zelinský, Faculty of Multimedia Communication at Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín
  • Keywords: language in media, Literary (Standard) Czech, Moravian and Bohemian dialect
  • Editor: Gabriela Všolková, Český rozhlas Ostrava

• Chapter 07: Defenders of the language – a competition in Hungary

  • Interviewee: Wacha Imre, linguist
  • Keywords: standard, norm, protection of languages, Kazinczy Ferenc, “Szép Magyar Beszéd”
  • Editor: Gyarmathy Dóra, Hungary

• Chapter 08: Linguistic reform in Germany

  • Keywords: translation, nuances of meaning, unification of language, command language, language and silence, linguistic reforms
  • Editor: Hatto Fischer, Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens

Editors-in-chief of this edition of the Heritage Radio Network Magazine: Gyarmathy Dora, Hungarian Radio, & Svetlana Dicheva, Bulgarian National Radio

Chapter 00: Voices in European poetry – Savina Yannatou

Voices in European poetry – Savina Yannatou by Hatto Fischer, Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens 2006

Languages express themselves deeply through poetry. Poets are perceived as a kind of contemporary prophets foreseeing a dim future in the midst of uncertain times. Does the future look brighter when poets get together collecting their works? The Greek singer Savina Yannatou interacted with European poets in a special acoustic work of voices and sounds underlining the existence of different languages in Europe.

The following sample of the Greek singer Savina Yannatou interacting with European poets was part of the contributions to the Fifth Seminar: “Cultural Actions for Europe” held in Athens 1994 during the Greek EU Presidency. The Fifth Seminar was organised by Hatto Fischer on behalf of the Flemish Government requesting that Europe’s cultural diversity would be underlined. Savina Yannatou’s unique piece demonstrates how language and poetry can go together in search of the ‘human voice’ to let people and poets speak in authentic voices.

The poets reading pieces of their works are Katerina Anghelaki Rooke (Athens), Liana Sakelliou-Schultz (Athens), Jean Baptiste Marray (Paris), Olympia Karayiorgo (Athens), Hatto Fischer (Berlin/Athens), Anne Born (Oxford), Maja Panajotova (Antwerp/Bulgaria), Jose L. Rainer Palazon (Seville), Bruno Kartheuser (German minority in Belgium) and Donatella Bisutti (Milano). The full version of Savina Yannatou’s piece begins and ends to the sound of the poetess Katerina Anghelaki Rooke using a type writer – in between phonetic spaces are created to let the meanings of the poems stemming from different voices become audible.

(Audio: Savina Yannatou: “Cultural Actions for Europe”, 1994 (excerpt). If you want to listen to the complete work, visit the HRN article on Savina Yannatou)

CHAPTER 01: Endangered languages and multilingual education – about UNESCO’s language policy

Poetry can rise above languages but the importance of mother tongue is unambiguous. The most important prerequisite is the highly ranked knowledge of the mother tongue because if we have a strong knowledge of the mother tongue we can build the knowledge about the world on it. But what will happen with those bigger or smaller communities which live in a country where the official language is not their mother tongue? That is one important issue why UNESCO finds important the languages of minorities and the diversity of languages.

There are about 6000 languages spoken in the world and close to half of them are doomed or likely to disappear. Diversity represents universal values and strengthens the unity, identity and cohesion of societies so linguistic diversity is an important element of UNESCO’s language policy. That is why the Organization launched the International Mother Language Day in 1999. This Day is held on 21 February every day.

In order to protect the endangered languages UNESCO published the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing which can help to raise the awareness for these languages. As an other project in 1999 UNESCO adopted the term “multilingual education”. Gyarmathy Dóra asked Gresiczki Péter, Secretary-General of the Hungarian National Commission for UNESCO about the multilingualism and about the question why multilingualism is important in UNESCO’s language policy.

(Audio: Interview with Gresiczki Péter, Secretary-General of Hungarian National Commission for UNESCO)

CHAPTER 02: An everyday miracle – learning the mother language

UNESCO’s language policy, diversity of languages, multilingual education… After we heard all about these important issues let’s go back to the basis and talk about the learning procedure.

It is an everyday miracle when a baby is born. From the first minute he starts to communicate with the world. It is also an everyday miracle how the baby learns the language. There are some well-known cases of children who were growing up without hearing any speech. After their age of 3 they could learn only a language with poorer grammar and because of emotional trauma they hardly adapted the rules of social life. So how do we learn the language? Who teaches it? Is necessary to talk to the baby? Is it enough if only the mother talks to him? These are the questions which Kassai Ilona, linguist of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Gyarmathy Dóra, Hungarian Radio, were talking about for HRN.

(Audio: Interview with Kassai Ilona, linguist of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

CHAPTER 03: The variety of languages is a gift of culture – European Centre of Languages

To understand and being understandable… After a strong knowledge of the mother tongue most people of the world have to learn a second or third language to understand themselves with people from other language areas. Unifying Europe has an enormous linguistic wealth. The variety of languages is an invaluable gift for European culture. The challenges of our time however call into question the survival of some languages in Europe, spoken by small groups of people. The efforts to preserve all linguistic treasure of Europe is a sign of a broad vision which looks to the future as an opportunity for culture to blossom on the ground of linguistic diversity.

There are more than 300 languages spoken all over Europe. Only a few dozen of them are spoken by more than a million native speakers. Some languages are even in danger not to be a living language in a few generations. Examples are Cornish in the south-west part of England or Sorbian in the east German area Lausitz.

The European Centre of Languages (ECML) is a project of the Council of Europe and located in Graz, the second biggest city of Austria. It was set up in 1994. 33 member states of the Council of Europe have subscribed into this project to enable studies concerning languages as well as supporting the work of language teachers or to organize platforms to stress the importance of languages. Oliver Kroening, editor of Radio Lotte in Weimar, had the opportunity to talk with Adrian Butler, executive director of the ECML, about the general work of the ECML and the fascination of languages. Listen to the following interview.

For further information: www.ecml.at

(Audio: Interview with Adrian Butler, executive director of the European Centre of Languages)

CHAPTER 04: Translators - mediators between languages and cultures

In recent years Bulgarians made a cult of foreign language learning not only because of the forthcoming accession to the EU and the hopes of many young people to find more lucrative jobs abroad but also because of the so called "small language" complex - Bulgarian language is spoken by less than 8 million people. This cult however doesn't cultivate fear that "purity" of Bulgarian language is in jeopardy. Usage of foreign words in the speech is considered to be a sign of erudition, even nationalistic circles rarely dear to raise the question of removing foreign words from Bulgarian. Some ideas emerge from time to time for the need to pass a bill on protection of the Bulgarian l anguage but language experts oppose it immediately. According to them language is a sufficiently flexible system to be able to protect itself, foreign words do not expel native ones, they just add new synonyms, through communication languages mutually enrich.

National literatures are the field, in which language reaches its utmost depths, while through literary translation languages communicate between themselves, enrich each other with ideas, words and expressions, add new meanings or abolish old ones. The dynamics of this communication between texts resembles the communication between personalities - the more active one dominates the more passive but this doesn't exclude the change of roles. The language one translates from is usually the donor language, the language which stimulates the recipient language to absorb new terms and concepts or to dig out adequate words and expressions from its lexical treasures, already out of use in everyday speech. In this respect every literature and every language needs equally to be both a donor and a recipient, in order to enrich the rest while enriching itself. Translators play a very important role in this enrichment process between languages and literatures. Iglika Vasileva is a noted Bulgarian translator of English language fiction. Having translated more than thirty books in the last fifteen years, she has won the Prize of the Union of Bulgarian Translators for 1993 and 1998 and the Prize of the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture in 1998. 2004 sees the publication of her - and the first ever Bulgarian - translation of the legendary novel by James Joyce "Ulysses", whose action takes place in Dublin one hundred years ago. Svetlana Dicheva from the Bulgarian National Radio took the following interview from Iglika Vasileva.

(Audio: Interview with Iglika Vasileva, translator)

Translators are highly praised all over Europe for their important role in the cultural exchange. Almost every European country has its own annual award for best translation.

The “Transatlantic” is an annual award given in Krakow by the Book Institute for the best popularization of Polish language, culture and literature in the world. The laureates of the Transatlantic award may be translators, publishers, critics, cultural animators, all those for whom language and culture are a priceless treasure. Last year, the Transatlantic award was given to Henryk Berezka, an outstanding translator of Polish literature into German. This year, the award went to Anders Bodegard – a Swedish Slavist and translator of Polish and French literature into Swedish. Report by Katarzyna Fortuna, Marianna Knap, Radio Kraków

(Audio: Interview with Anders Bodegard, translator)

CHAPTER 05: Language and identity – literature and languages of ex-Yugoslav countries

The wounds of history leave serious traces on the attitude towards the language and literature of the "enemy". When the wound heals, however, pragmatism prevails and the similarities overcome the differences. An example from Croatia.

After the break up of Yugoslavia and the subsequent horror of war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first part of 90s, the hybrid Serbo – Croatian language seemed to have died out, while all national languages of ex-Yugoslav countries became important parts of identities. However, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin languages are still considered to be mutually understood. The matter of whether or not to translate then books within the region of so called mutually understood languages today is not a polemic issue. Usually, distributors and publishers stick to the original texts because it is, of course, the most immediate artist’s expression, and, naturally, it is much cheaper. How then does Croatian book market react to works of surrounding countries’ authors, and how Croatian authors position themselves on markets of nearby states, was the topic of conversation that Vid Mesaric from Croatian Radio had with founder of “Literary – information system – KIS” from Zagreb – Valeriji Jurešic.

(Audio: Interview with Valeriji Jurešic, founder of “Literary – information system – KIS”)

CHAPTER 06: Dialects and standard – what is the language of Czech media like?

Usually language in mass media respects the official linguistic norms and serves as a model. In the Czech Republic where many different dialects exist, the use of literary Czech forms in the media is sometimes in contrast with the language used by interlocutors and listeners.

What is the language of Czech media like? New tendencies are given geographically - Moravia versus Bohemia.
Czech language is spoken by approximately ten million people. They keep many dialects alive, enriching the Common Czech language. Dialects in Bohemian part of the land are very similar to each other, more or less the same. Most of Moravia and Czech Silesia is still divided into relatively small dialectal areas. Therefore, the tendency to use Literary (Standard) Czech in everyday speech is stronger there than in Bohemia. The difference between Literary Czech and Common Czech is characterized by variations in morphology, lexicology, syntax and styling. The forms of Literary Czech often sound too bookish for an informal conversation in Bohemia, on the other side their non-Standard speech is not always well accepted by Moravian and Silesian speakers, by teachers, and so on.

School education treats Common Czech as territorially restricted in a way similar to the dialects of Moravia, so that it might be considered unsuitably to penetrate into more general usage. In Bohemia most of the speakers use Co mmon Czech also when addressing people from another part of the country, since the use of Common Czech in the whole of Bohemia is relatively unified. However, bookish (archaic) forms are required by school education and editorial practice, there are speakers who prefer the use of Literary Czech forms. A major problem is connected with dialogues on TV or on radio, in which the professional moderator or editor should speak Literary Czech consistently, whereas the respondents do not.
Gabriela Volková, Český rozhlas Ostrava

(Audio: Interview with Miroslav Zelinský, Faculty of Multimedia Communication at Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín)

CHAPTER 07: Defenders of the language – a competition in Hungary

Young people are among the most active creators and users of the street language, therefore they are often accused of speaking with lower-grade pronunciation and using fewer words than their parents. Very often, unfortunately, these accusations prove to be valid. The reasons are well known - change for the worse of the education system, degradation of language standards in the media, general loss of reading habits. Luckily, there are examples of preservation of the interest among young people toward the proven language standards.

In the last 40 years a special competition is organised year by year in Hungary. The so-called “Szép Magyar Beszéd” competition is named by Kazinczy Ferenc, a Hungarian writer (lived 1759-1831) who initiated the reform of the Hungarian language in the end of the 17th century. Péchy Blanka, actress initiated the competition in 1960. Its goal is to find those students who think the nice speech and pronunciation is still important in our running world.

In the last decades the competition became a movement and an important result of those who think it is important to protect the languages. It is a widespread opinion that the younger generations speak their language with lower-grade pronunciation, use less words than the older ones. After the competition Gyarmathy Dóra from Hungary talked to Wacha Imre, linguist, member of the jury in the competition about this question.

(Audio: Interview with Wacha Imre, linguist)

CHAPTER 08: Linguistic reform in Germany

Language reflects as a mirror the social relations registering to what extent people who use it, are free or not in the political sense. The development of German language between World War I and World War II is a good example. Hatto Fischer from Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens, in the following article presents a historical overview of the development of German language in order to answer the question - is the language reform in Germany relevant today?

Language has always been thought of as common form of understanding even though there are vast differences, even untranslatable ones. Already the Arabic philosopher Al Gahiz of the 9th century remarked although a word like love exists in every language, this word cannot be translated into another language. Of course, he meant the nuances of meaning.

Over the centuries mankind experienced another kind of translation. In Europe the act by Martin Luther to translate the Bible from Latin into German was intended to make this book accessible to all, equally in their own language. Yet the German language as such was anything but unified.

As shown in the beautiful story by Guenter Grass called “The meeting in Telgte” this unity was not so easy to attain. He describes how poets came together to discuss possibilities of unifying the language as a way forward towards peace, for the meeting took place in the midst of the thirty years of religious warfare. It was a time during which anyone traveling from village to village had to switch ‘identity’ so many times in order to just survive (from Protestant to Catholic to Swedish to …). Interestingly enough the story contains a critical side aspect. The opera composer Schuetz chides the German poets for not writing such poetry that it could be put to music when compared to their compatriots in Italy.

There are many qualities to describe linguistic developments. For instance, a major difference in any language is the degree of differentiation. Until recently German farmers would describe colors in all variations by basing their vocabulary on only four basic ones: red, blue, green and yellow. Only later, once imports started to open up the local markets to foreign products, there were added the colors orange and violet to these basic ones in order to enhance the prism of colors.

Differentiation is not the only mark, sophistication in use of language another. Here Goethe was agonized by how his fellow country men were using the language. He wanted desperately that all of them to become more educated. His initiative can be called a top-down educational model. It tried to combine elements of the Enlightenment with romantic notions that only an educated person, indicated by use of a good language, can be a respectable, equally cultivated citizen. Hegel was taken back by the Prussian state demanding of its civil servants to write Ph.D. thesis in Ancient Greek about that cradle of Western Civilization. It was this philosopher who more than anyone else gave shape to German not only as a national but equally state language.

Such language is based on the requirement that each citizen gives recognition to the state. As a matter of fact the compulsion of having to prove oneself to be a loyal citizen of the state became paramount. A speaker had to reveal such loyalty by demonstrating as being capable of negating any local bondage. Hence the immediacy had to be negated for the sake of the mediation made possible only at the abstract level of the state. Consequently even today an immigrant learning to speak German must also learn to speak in sentences which are devoid of any real subject as the state language consists of only abstract concepts. This left the German in dire need of sensuous inputs but which were condemned as neither poetry nor the certainty of the senses should be taken as source of truth. One poet who suffered greatly under this exclusion was Hoelderlin who attempted to create a more humane language. Unfortunately for him and the society which declared him as insane a chance to develop in a different direction was lost.

Compared to the Italian language brought about by Dante or the Russian one which owes a great deal to Pushkin the German language has not been carried forward by poetic inspirations coming from below. It has remained a stiff hierarchical language bounded by a subject-object structure making it impossible to make out in the abstract realms the other as equally free subject. This has consequences to date.

Moreover, the language took a beating once Nationalism brought forth certain developments between the Two World Wars. There was, for one, the glorification of war and hero so that ‘lightening and strength like steel’ became admirable attributes leaving anyone listening to German speaking with the impression this language is only a hard one. Then, Heidegger’s philosophy empowered the language of the small bureaucrats with his distinction between ‘Vorhandenheit’ (potential existence) and ‘Zuhandenheit’ (recognized legal existence because it has been stamped by the official administration – letting Brecht remark a person without passport does not exist) and developed, as Adorno would remark ironically, ‘the Jargon of Actuality’, in order to describe the shuffle of meaning in-between these two very different forms of existence. Then, Peter Weiss in ‘Aesthetics of Resistance’ described how the Fascists succeeded to replace the social language with a command language. As a result people went literally silent as their feelings as human beings were no longer addressed.

Independent of education, the language of the Nazis began to dominate at the expense of any critical reflection. George Steiner in his book ‘Language and Silence’ has commented upon this as if something had gone wrong in culture, or as if something bad – “l’ennui” – would dominate. A very important analysis of this development has also been given by Jean Pierre Faye in “Totalitarian Languages” in which he points out that prior to the linguistic reform movements in the thirties, there sprang up already everywhere in Germany so-called “Tat-Kreise” or “Friendship Circles for the DEED or ACTION”. It reflected a common sentiment of people who had grown tired of hearing politicians just talk; what they wanted was to see finally ‘deeds’. Critical about such totalitarian language is that it prepares people to unload their hatred. Little did this reform movement anticipate the political loss of freedom if actions are no longer reflected upon in respect of others as human beings. In the film ‘Shoah’ soldiers say about Jews not willing to fight that they do not deserve to live. Indeed, once language becomes exclusive, i.e. highly nationalist, it excludes ‘otherness’. That prompted Adorno to remark that ‘foreign words are the Jews of the German language’.

All this should be kept in mind once politicians like Jutta Steinbach and with her the Conservatives in Germany call for a linguistic reform. Getting rid of foreign words in everyday language is but one of their aims; another is that they believe Germans are excluded from a world if their immediate surroundings are filled with words like ‘sandwiches’, ‘networks’, ‘computer’. They forget that the English language has been enriched by words like ‘Kindergarten’. Indeed the development of language requires an epistemological and etymological orientation towards both openness and the future. Without such ‘cultural adaptation’ no language can survive.

The real signal of a living language is the very openness to change. By remaining innovative creative potentials as expressed best sometimes in another language can be perceived as access to new knowledge. But such experiences and ideas can only be communicated if not based a priori on exclusivity. This would be the case if the language has to be both nationalistic and ascribing itself to but one state alone, thereby leaving out regardless of sex, race, religion all human relationships. Such nationalist state language would miss out as well on the fact that language is always subversive. Only what speaks to the imagination regenerates language as if fed by an underground reservoir. Such things cannot be institutionalized. Hence any reform of the German language would fail if people cannot recognize themselves in the real world and this in all freedom i.e. independent of nations and states.

HRN thanks You for Your attention!

 

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