The option to gain stability in Moldova can work under a multilingual compromise, American professor says

The option to gain stability in Moldova can work under a multilingual compromise, The Recorder Online quoted Dr. Matthew Ciscel as saying at the presentation of his book “The Language of the Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and Identity in an ex-Soviet republic” to the Central Connecticut State University. The author says that the Moldovan language is somewhat of an artificial creation, which is largely based on a dialect of Romanian. The American professor considers that the distinctions in titles between Moldovan and Romanian are purely for political reasons. He says the situation is due to a cultural and social disconnect between the Romanian of Bucharest and the Romanian of Moldova, especially when the Moldovan government makes severe attempts to convert the name of the language. In his daily observations while he lived in Moldova, Ciscel said that the Moldovan language is regarded by many Romanians especially as “dirtied,” “broken” or tarnished by Russian. The book examines how in certain social settings, Russian is preferred over Moldovan but in others, Romanian is praised. “You speak Russian if you want to be associated with the Soviet times, speak Romanian of Bucharest if you want to be associated with pro-Romanian ideals,” Ciscel said, “and you speak the Romanian of Moldova if you want to be associated with the bureaucratic, intellectual Moldovan elite.” During interviews with couples of Moldovan newlyweds, Ciscel found that some were willing to raise a bilingual family maintaining Russian and Romanian because they recognized both as having something to contribute to the Moldovan identity. In researching the book, Matthew Ciscel surveyed 200 Moldovans who were mostly university students and asked them about their attitudes towards the different languages spoken in Moldova, including Romanian, Moldovan and Russian. Dr. Matthew Ciscel, currently an Associate Professor at the Central Connecticut State University, was a visiting instructor for the Moldovan State University in the fall of 2001. Besides “The Language of the Moldovans”, Ciscel’s other publications on Moldova include “A separate Moldovan language? The sociolinguistics of Moldova’s Limba de Stat”, “Language and Identity in Post-Soviet Moldova”, etc.