Interview: Estonia's Top Linguistic Official
On Estonian Language Day, the director general of the Language Inspectorate, Ilmar Tomusk, spoke to ETV about his work, what's really behind the institution with the somewhat draconian name, and the future of Estonian.
The following is an abridged translation.
The name Language Inspectorate sometimes seems to have 1930s ideological overtones. I know what the inspectorate actually does under law, but how would you justify the necessity of the Inspectorate for a layman?
We do only what the law says, and the law says we have to make sure that public use of language conforms to the Language Act. Public use of language must be in Estonian and must meet good practices.
Public use of language with regard to the rules of orthography is also checked. Documents and websites must be in grammatically correct Estonian.
We also check on the language proficiency of employees, officials, police, professionals and teachers. We do this if they don't have Estonian-language education.
But not all countries have such a body?
Not all countries need such a body. If we look at how the population developed in the 20th century, we see that in the 1950s and 1960s, the percentage of non-Estonians increased and was close to 40 percent. Many walks of life were Russian-language by the end of the Soviet Union: industry, governance, research and education in large part, transport, too. In commerce and customer service, Russian was predominant.
When Estonia became free, one key goal was that Estonian was to be the only official language. We were able to preserve our national language quite well compared with other Soviet republics. Estonian schools survived at the basic education and general educational level.
But Russian was still very favored. There was even a Party decision that it was to be the second mother tongue. The Russification process ended in the end of the 1980s but Estonian was still very vulnerable.
So your agency is basically a re-Estonianization department?
We have to make sure that Estonian has a strong footing in all walks of life and that people in Estonia could get by in Estonian everywhere in Estonia.
That doesn't mean that other languages should not be allowed. All other languages are fine, but Estonian is a must. It must be there in all walks of life and, as needed, other languages can be added.
MP Yana Toom called Estonian a moribund, dying language. What to make of that?
I would say that's something that's on Toom's conscience. Estonian is not going away. If you go to a bookstore, just look at how much literature, fiction has been published in 2012 in Estonian. A hundred new children's books alone. How much is translated into Estonian! It is certainly not a dying language.
But it doesn't mean that there aren't foreign influences or problems to be combated.
Personally, I'm concerned by the same thing that Germans or the Spanish or Italians are worried about - English is making strong inroads and starting to affect Estonian sentence structure. We use expressions that are direct, word-for-word translations from English.
How do you fight it? People in Ida-Viru County are in the Russian-language information sphere, but 1.3 million Estonian inhabitants are in an English sphere, all the time. How can you combat something that seems to affect people on a subconscious level?
That's exactly how it is, and in this field we have to cooperate with people in home, schools, people who compile Estonian dictionaries and who produce media content.
But really, there is nothing that can't be expressed in Estonian!
We have often argued with business people. In Tallinn's Old Town, a company puts up an advertising slogan and says it can't be put into Estonian. To such a claim, I would just say, heaven help us. I don't know what else to say.
You can even translate Eugene Onegin into Estonian, keeping the right meter. Shakespeare's works have been translated brilliantly into Estonian. Is a slogan or name of a type of business establishment more complicated than Pushkin or the Bard? No way!
We've just gone the path of least resistance. We think that English sells better.
We went to Lasnamäe and saw a cafe with English ads and we asked, why? They say, but we serve only tourists who make their way to that specific district. I don't believe that of course, they just assume English sells and Estonian doesn't.
At the same time, we had many encounters with tourists from Finland and other countries who asked, "Why are you ashamed of your language? We came here just for that, to experience a language that we can't experience elsewhere!"
And it doesn't mean that there can be no foreign text. It just means the Estonian has to be there.
You've been doing battle with businesses for years. Are things getting better?
We're standing in place. No sooner do we address issues than new storekeepers with new foreign language signs appear.
So are you Don Quixote, basically?
I think our work has an effect. Things are better in Tartu than they are in Tallinn. Tartu business people are more compliant. We don't usually issue injunctions there, a friendly note is enough. In Tallinn, we have disputes and the idea that English sells better, which isn't borne out by the evidence, I should note.
A completely separate area is Ida-Viru County where Estonian is actually in a suppressed position, even though it is still the official language. How is it going there? Your staff have been called inquisitors even.
Yes, there was even a case in Tallinn where someone went into a store and the seller answered in Russian: "I don't speak Estonian. I'm from Narva and I don't have to." But everyone is equal before the law, actually.
Things have gotten a little better in the northeast. After the latest round of inspections in December 2012 there are no more policemen in that county who are completely non-functional in Estonian. It's not clear sailing, of course. Policemen are expected to have C1 proficiency as opposed to the B1 needed to become naturalized as a citizen.
Often people say, why not lower the standards to B1 in Narva? That would allow them to keep quality men and women on the force.
The reason for the proficiency requirement is that every document that the police officer issues can be contested in a court. The document must be in as good Estonian as possible. Anything, like a wrong case ending, can mean a lost case for the state. Naturally there are situations where a policeman can get by with lower proficiency.
It's similar with teachers in Russian school. They have to have B2. This is lower and it is this way because they have to understand the curriculum, be able to teach subjects in Estonian, and be aware of what is going on in society and convey it to students. B2 is sufficient.
Customer service people have B1, and that is completely sufficient. Ticket takers and messengers have A2, the lowest possible. Their language usage scenarios are very elementary.
Sometimes it seems taxi drivers also are proficient only at A2. Local Tallinn officials (Deputy Mayor Kalle Klandorf) have suggested that they will make no bones about drivers who know the very basic courtesy words and that's all.
They're expected to have B1. The law applies to all authorities. So I don't think that any Tallinn official can say that or not enforce the rule.
If we get complaints about taxi drivers not being able to communicate, we will of course issue a precept.
Coming back to the future of Estonian, there are 40,500 fewer Estonians than there were 12 years ago. Where is the critical point for keeping alive the vernacular culture and literature?
The boundary line is generally put at about 1 million. I don't really believe in such thresholds. In any case, the 40,500 have not disappeared, they have just left Estonia geographically, perhaps temporarily.
They are out there somewhere and we know that there are great, strong Estonian language islands in Finland, London and many other places. Estonian has a greater range than it did 50 years ago. There's no reason for concern in this regard.
The other reason there's no reason for concern is that vitality is not measured by number of speakers but by what the language can be used for. Many say the fact that there is IT support for the language shows its staying power. Microsoft has support for 40 languages and Estonian is one of them. We can say that Estonia is in the top percentile of the world's 7,000 languages.
Estonia's integration policy has never been about making anyone Estonian-speaking. The goal is for the people who have found themselves in Estonia - Russians, Ukrainians, Finns - to learn Estonian but retain their own cultural and ethnic identity. That is the one of the most important provisions of the Constitution.
Tens of thousands of Estonian-speakers - speakers as a second language - have accrued since the early 1990s. Policemen who didn't speak Estonian back then are now at C1. The Russian schools' teachers who spoke no Estonian - 70 percent in the past, now just 30-40 percent.
But Estonian's fate does not ultimately depend on the non-Estonians, but how we cherish and use the language.