No one disputes the existence of the Moldovan dialect, which is widely used in the Republic of Moldova, but the country’s official language, the one used in public affairs, in education, literature, science and so on, is Romanian, stated the political pundit Igor Boțan during the latest installment of IPN’s Political Culture series on Monday.
Boțan, who the series’ standing expert, explained that the role of a language in a developed society is extremely important, as it is a communication tool between citizens and the state. Language is also a tool that scientists and artists use to express their ideas and thoughts.
“A national, official language has three major functions. First, the body and grammar of a language must be so well developed as to allow the government to draft laws and rules that everyone can understand. That is, the level of a language must be appropriate to the degree of a country’s social development domestically and internationally. Second, a language must be so well developed so that writers, poets and artists can use to express their entire range of thoughts, feelings and emotions in their literature and other forms of verbal art. Third, a language must have such a high level of development that scientists can write their history, physics, biology, and other papers. Such a tool can exist when the language is protected by the state”, said Boțan.
He pointed out that the division in the Moldovan society along the linguistic line is “artificial”, as the term “Moldovan language” is used by politicians catering to a certain category of the electorate.
“Nobody doubts that the Moldovan dialect existed and still exists. When we have the dilemma between the Romanian language and the Moldovan dialect, we have to make this important delimitation. What Parliament essentially did is to make this distinction between the Moldovan dialect, in which everyone is free to communicate with their parents at home, and the official language, which is used in the administration. Earlier, even the Communist Party officially recognized that the Romanian language and what they call the Moldovan language are the same thing. Regardless, they said that the Moldovan linguonym must be kept for geopolitical and ethnopolitical reasons. I mean, the Communists themselves acknowledged that this is a purely political matter”, Igor Boțan added.
This was the 314th installment of the Political Culture livecast series, run by IPN with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
