11 MIN READ
Three long, turbulent years later, I am back in my hometown Vilnius. Its cupcake cream color and its scent of humid air and vaporating asphalt are precisely the way I remember. What is different this time is the way the city sounds. For centuries Vilnius has been a place of multiple languages – Lithuanian, Polish, Yiddish, Russian, Karaim. The capital of Lithuania, with its complex history and home to different ethnicities, has long been looking for its linguistic identity, especially after the Soviet Union’s demise, having had a severe attempt to become pure Lithuanian-speaking. This is the city that endlessly disputes bilingual street names. This is the capital of the country having two prescriptivist* language police institutions. It seems once again the city is undergoing a change in its face and sound.
The sense of change makes my memory go back in time and through my personal language-related journey. Growing up in communist Vilnius in the 1980s, my home, school, and friends in the backyard were all Lithuanian-speaking. The requirement to learn Russian at school was not something one could defy, and thus it turned into my second language. The television spoke and read the news to us in both languages, while much-adored Soviet cartoons and films seemed best to watch in the original Russian. In general, the Soviet pop culture we knew was predominantly Russian, and the most effective punchlines of the jokes were best told in Russian, too.
Then the 1990s happened. We were now living in the spirit of freedom and turning our heads westwards. All I remember from that time language-wise was a growing conflict and deepening rift between the two ethnicities and languages. Lithuanian became the country’s official language in 1988, and soon after it gained its independence from the USSR in 1991, the only official one. In the aftermath of bewildering political and social changes, some ethnic Russians left the country, and others who stayed were offered Lithuanian nationality. Russian-speaking schools, though in a lesser number, remained open. Not everyone who stayed could speak Lithuanian, possibly due to the difficulty of learning the local language or denial of change and willingness to maintain the status quo. At least, this is how some Lithuanians (including me) viewed it and argued that Russians of Lithuania, those born and raised there, made too little effort to learn the language of local people during the Soviet era. Russian was, after all, the dominating official language in the whole of the union of 15 different Soviet republics. Some of them have kept Russian as their official language to the present day. Kazakhstan is one example.
In 1985, ethnic Lithuanians for the first time dominated the population of seven-hundred-year-old Vilnius, and the number has been growing since increasingly becoming mainly Lithuanian speaking. Today, after more than 30 years of language purification efforts, the city once again lives through the fusion of languages due to the European political unrest and demographic changes of the past two years. I must admit I am slightly confused each time I buy my groceries and ask for help and, in return, receive an answer in either English or Russian, Russian speakers adding Я не понимаю (I don’t understand). If this were Vilnius in the 90s this would possibly make raise some eyebrows. This was the time when language tensions were strongly felt, especially in the service sector. Even though, clearly ,Lithuanians, old and young, could understand and answer back in Russian, their pride or principle spoke for themselves. Even someone speaking Lithuanian with a Russian accent could potentially cause irritation. Today, we may argue, the situation is different. Lithuania is located between one complex former Soviet republic on one side and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the other. When many Belarusians were forced to flee their country, they moved particularly to Vilnius which lies about 35 kilometers from the Belarus border. After Putin’s army invaded Ukraine, there are said to have come around 50 thousand Ukrainian refugees, and also a number of Russian dissidents. The sound of Slavic languages that has quietened over the past three decades is now back on the streets and into the institutions of Vilnius. Welcoming the refugees from Belarus and Ukraine has resulted in employment, particularly in the service sector. A voice message is played in the shopping malls constantly asking people to be patient and understanding if the staff does not speak Lithuanian. Today’s older generation of Vilnius may very well remember how to speak Russian, and some even become nostalgic about it, while the youngsters claim not to have learned it and therefore have difficulties understanding, let alone speaking it, but seem to be having a nonchalant attitude toward it.
It is about time I mention that Lithuanian and Russian are less similar languages as many may think. Lithuanian language is simply not a Slavic language but together with Latvian and the extinct Old Prussian belongs to the Baltic language family spoken by the Balts located by the eastern Baltic sea. Slavic language family group consists of East Slavic, i.e., Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, West Slavic, i.e., Polish, Sorbian, Czech, Slovak, and South Slavic, i.e., Bulgarian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian. Though still in dispute, many linguists point to the common Baltic-Slavic ancestor. The languages are indeed genetically related as they both are Indo-European and have a number of shared morphological, phonological, and lexicon features. It makes it a plausible theory just by looking at the shared etymology** that points to similarities rather than differences compared to, for instance, Germanic languages. In other words, there is a greater chance for a Lithuanian to learn Russian or Polish than German or French. However, Slavic and Baltic also differ in, for example, the verbal system. Baltic languages did not develop directly from any Slavic language. Instead, together with Slavic languages, they derived from one Balto-Slavic proto***-language before splitting into two separate language branches, Baltic and Slavic, at some point some thousands of years ago.
“Lithuanian language is simply not a Slavic language but together with Latvian and the extinct Old Prussian belongs to the Baltic language family spoken by the Balts located by the eastern Baltic sea“.
I have lived abroad for many years now, and people in my circle are convinced Lithuanian must be almost like Russian. To a foreign ear, it sounds like Russian. Who can blame them? Yes, the languages indeed share many similar sounds like sh, zh, tch. A unique characteristic feature of both Baltic and Slavic languages appears to be a rising and falling so-called pitch accent to pronounce stressed syllables. This explains the similarities in the way the languages sound or their prosody – the sound patterns of stress and intonation in a language. The close proximity, constant language contact, migrations, and mixing with Slavic people for ages must be a factor of impact on how people speak. The not-so-distant history shows exactly that: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which lasted from 1362 to 1569, stretched through parts of Russia and Ukraine all the way to the Black Sea, then later from 1795 to 1918 Lithuania was a part of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1990. Today’s Lithuanian youth may not learn Russian at school any longer, but I hear them use Russian cursing and slang as well as other loan and filler **** words in their daily speech. When at school in the 90s, a big portion of Lithuanian language lessons was dedicated to weeding out so-called Russisms. Believe me, those kids from the larger multiethnic cities like me had the biggest challenge in memorizing right from wrong because our daily language use was so intermixed and influenced by the street, television, and home where kids potentially had mixed or parents who spoke two different Lithuanian dialects one of which much harder influenced by Russian, Polish or Belarusian than the other. Again, as in my case. The new generation of Vilnius proves that Russisms, Polishisms, or Belarusisms are still very much around.
“Today’s Lithuanian youth may not learn Russian at school any longer, but I hear them use Russian cursing and slang as well as other loan and filler **** words in their daily speech.”
Today’s new realities cause imminent changes, some confusion at times, and bring back certain memories. Russian language could seem unwelcome in my hometown. However, Lithuanian people, their language, and their identity are not questioned and under attack as Ukrainians now are. At least, not yet. Thanks to the knowledge of Russian language, Lithuanians are able to host people in need who share common knowledge, both historical and linguistic. The similarities in languages could eventually help learn each other’s languages and overcome the difficulties in them. Language serves as a tool to communicate, understand each other and for a greater purpose when in need.
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*Prescriptivism – the ideology and practices in which the correct and incorrect uses of a language or specific linguistic items are laid down by explicit rules that are externally imposed on the users of that language. Opposite of descriptivism – the doctrine that the meanings of ethical or aesthetic terms and statements are purely descriptive rather than prescriptive, evaluative, or emotive
**Etymology – the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.
***Proto – original or primitive, first, earliest
**** Filler word or filler sound—used when speaking to fill in time and prepare our next words, to show reluctance or hesitation e.g. um, yeah, ok, well. In Russian called “parasite words”, the most common are вот (vot, “here it is”), (ну) такое ((nu) takoye, “some kind [of this]”), ну (nu, “well, so”).
Sources: Indo-European Language and Culture. An Introduction by Benjamin W. Fortson IV (2010)
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