The problem of bilingualism in Lituania today

This is an unofficial English translation of "Le problème du bilinguisme en Lituanie aujourd'hui", an article found in a special issue of the OQLF's Revue d'aménagement linguistique published for the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Québec's Charter of the French language in 2002.

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By Jonas Žilinskas, lecturer at University of Šiauliai, in Lithuania.

Throughout its history, the Lithuanian people and its language have gone through periods of greatness and decline. Since the XIXth century, the originality of the Lithuanian language catches the attention of linguists in the whole world. It was codified at the end of XIXth and the beginning of the XXth century.

During the Sovietic period, the Lithuanian language was replaced by Russian little by little. Russianization was even harder than during the rule of the Russian tsars. One proclaimed a policy of bilingualism which was expressed only by the obligation made to Lithuanians to learn Russian while Russians did not bother to learn Lithuanian. If the written Lithuanian language were more or less protected by writers through newspapers and publishers, the spoken Lithuanian language was degraded. Often, in the institutions, it was only a language of oral communication, the greatest part of technical documentation and correspondence being written in Russian.

School was powerless to opposed the propagation of this false bilingualism. The number of hours devoted to the teaching of the Lithuanian fell, one taught Russian even in kindergartens. The remuneration of Russian teachers for the same number of hours was higher than that of the teachers of Lithuanian. The majority of the textbooks for the other subject matters being taught were translated from Russian to a Lithuanian which was not always correct.

Research by Lithuanian linguists was controlled by "the party and the government" which often saw "premises of nationalism" in them. The majority of scientific domains were completely Russianized: exact sciences, natural science, political sciences, diplomacy, military sciences... Researchers in all fields, Lithuanian ones included, were obliged to prepare and defend their doctoral theses in Russian.

The knowledge of Russian had become a social need and, towards the end of 1980s, there were already approximately 90% of young Lithuanians from 16 to 25 years old who usually spoke Russian. The Lithuanian people became bilingual while the Russian speakers in Lithuania spoke only Russian. This "bilingualism" degraded the phonetics, morphology, syntax and especially the vocabulary of Lithuanian.

A great part of the Lithuanian intellectuals were always worried by this problem. This interest became manifest especially during the period of the "Sąjūdis" popular movement, formed in 1988. It is during the same year of 1988, that the Lithuanian language acquired the status of official language, a fact which started the process of reconstitution of democracy which lead to the re-establishment of the independence of Lithuania, on March 11, 1990.

The official language law adopted in 1995 changed the attitude of the population of the ethnic minorities in Lithuania towards Lithuanian. This law regulates the use of the language only in the public life; it obliges institutions to use only the Lithuanian language for their official documentation and their correspondence and guarantees the right of Lithuanian citizens to have access to information in the official language. It does not regulate the usual communication of the inhabitants of the country. Ethnic minorities learn Lithuanian with interest, but they have also enjoy conditions defined by the legislation to have access to education and media in their own languages. The person having all possibilities to express himself in his mother tongue, and at the same time having a command of the official language of the country, will always feel better protected as a citizen and will more easily enjoy the rights and accomplish the duties defined by the Constitution of the country. This is the principal component of the linguistic policy of the Lithuanian State.

It is necessary to distinguish State bilingualism from personal bilingualism. In all democratic countries of the world are created the conditions necessary so that all the ethnic minorities can learn the official language of the country and participate in the social and cultural life. In Lithuania, a unilingual country, it leads to bilingualism by persons. The Lithuanian State continues to create the conditions for the development of this personal bilingualism from primary school where the children of ethnic minorities learn the official language and receive a sociocultural formation. Today, there are in Lithuania 97 schools giving a mixed education of languages (85 bilingual schools and 12 trilingual schools).

On the theoretical and practical levels, one is working out a new conception of the teaching of the official language in these mixed schools. It will be directed not only towards the learning of Lithuanian but specifically towards the formation of bilingualism. That means that the objective of people belonging to ethnic minority groups will be to reach the same level of practical use for the two languages - their mother tongue and the official language of the country.

In the pursuit of this objective, the experience of the old traditions of State bilingualism and personal bilingualism in Quebec is invaluable to us. A new attitude towards bilingualism also appears little by little in certain countries of Europe, for example in England, Ireland and elsewhere.

One sometimes worries about the negative interference of languages, but the positive or negative characteristics of bilingualism generally depend on the formation methods, the sociolinguistic situations as well as the very attitude of the State towards this problem, and the principles of bilingualism it defines.

See also

• Quebec and Catalonia by Miquel Reniu i Tresserras
• Influence of the Charter of the French language in China by Zhou Qingsheng
• Quebec's language planning policy: Israeli perspective by Bernard Spolsky
• The perception of Quebec's "fait français" in the United States by Joshua A. Fishman
• Quebec and Estonia by Mart Rannut
• The influence of Quebec's language planning policy abroad: Wales by Colin H. Williams
• Language policy in Australia - a non-legislative model by Uldis Ozolins
• The Charter of the French language in the Baltic States by Ina Druviete
• The use of languages in Flanders and a comparison with that of Quebec by Jean Dujardin
• The problem of bilingualism in Lituania today by Jonas Žilinskas
• The impact of Quebec's linguistic policy abroad seen from francophone Belgium by Jean-Marie Klinkenberg
• The influence of Quebec's linguistic legislation in the political and cultural life of Porto Rico by Luis Muñiz-Argüelles