JoLIE 2:1 (2009)

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THE HUNGARIAN-ROMANIAN AND THE MOLDOVAN -RUSSIAN BILINGUALS: A COMMON OR A DIFFERENT FATE?

 

 

Elena Buja

Transilvania University of Braşov, Romania

 

 

 

Abstract

 

After the fall of communism in 1989, many members of the Hungarian minority in Romania and of the Romanians from Moldova started moving westwards, to Hungary and to Romania, respectively. They all hoped for a better life among what they thought of as their ‘brothers’. But it seems that many of them were disappointed by the attitudes of the people in the mother countries. The present paper aims to investigate attitudes toward linguistic diversity among nationals and immigrants. To this aim, I shall basically use two tools, namely interviews conducted with Moldovan-Russian students enrolled in the programmes of the Transylvania University of Brasov, and questionnaires administered to both monolingual Romanians and Romanian-Hungarian bilinguals. I expect the findings of the analysis to reveal many similarities between the two groups of bilingual people, but also some differences.

Hopefully, this small-scale research will raise people’s awareness of the need for certain linguistic policies and strategies.

 

Keywords: Bilingualism; Language attitudes; Linguistic chauvinism; Ethnic solidarity; Identity.

 

 

Editors’ note:

This article is the author’s contribution to the Proceedings of the Exploratory Workshop Linguistic and Intercultural Education in the Process of Europeanisation of Higher Education CLIE-2009, Popescu, T, & Pioariu R. (Eds.) (pp. 107-120). Aeternitas: Alba-Iulia, (reproduced with permission).

 

 

References

 

Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston.

 

Buja, E. (2009). Sociolinguistic aspects of bilingualism among the Moldovan students studying in Romania (in print). Proceedings of the 23rd Conference of Scandinavian Linguistics (pp. 143–158). Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.  Retrieved from: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:275878/FULLTEXT03.pdf

 

Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with two languages: An introduction to bilingualism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

 

Holmes, J. (2008). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (3rd ed.). London: Pearson Education.

 

Mungiu Pippidi, A. (1999). Subjective Transylvania: A case study of post communist nationalism. Retrieved from http://www.osi.hu/ipf/publications/AlinaPP-nation.pdf.

 

Owens, R. E. Jr. (2008). Language development. An introduction (7th ed.). London: Pearson Education.

 

Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

 

Wardhaugh, R. (2002). An introduction to sociolinguistics (4th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

 

Internet sources

 

Forumul Softpedia. (2006). Retrieved from: http://forum.softpedia.com/lofiversion/index.php/t15538.html

 

Forum Desprecopii. (2005). Regionalisme hazlii (sau enervante). Retrieved from: http://forum.desprecopii.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=64540

 

http://www.lataifas.ro.

 

 

How to cite this article: Buja, E. (2009). The Hungarian-Romanian and the Moldovan - Russian bilinguals: A common or a different fate? Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 2(1), 7–20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2009.2.1.1

 

 

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