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Contested Counting? What the Census and Schools Reveal About Võro in Southeastern Estonia

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Multilingualism in the Baltic States

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Abstract

In this chapter we analyse societal discourses about the Võro language as a recognizable skill and measurable entity, but principally as a capacity and a resource. We argue that the endangerment of the Võro language has, in part, helped to propel it into particular spaces—the 2011 national census and public schools—where it is publicly defined and in some cases positioned as an asset. In both sites—the census and the schools—the language had historically been overlooked, ignored or disregarded. By drawing on 2014 qualitative interview data with Võro-language teachers and discourse analysis of pre- and post-2011 census-related texts from newspapers, we find that the twenty-first century marks the first time Võro has broadly been named, constructed and categorized into an official category. This public categorization has neither sharply defined the language in the mindsets of the local population nor the educational community that continues to try and find its appropriate space in schools and in future language surveys.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From personal communication with Liivi Aarma.

  2. 2.

    For the purpose of comparison, non-Estonians (i.e., Baltic Germans or those in Russia proper) for centuries called Estonian (both the language and people) as Undeutsch (literally non-German ). Moreover, from the time of the Old Russian Chronicles or earlier, Chudian designated Estonian or in fact any Finnic language as neither Russian nor German .

  3. 3.

    Except for Narva , which was included in the St Petersburg Governorate (1708) during Russian rule.

  4. 4.

    Excluding the residents of Narva and Valga, 881,455 were counted (Tiit 2011: 18).

  5. 5.

    The language was Yiddish , but the census category was labelled as ‘juudi’/‘Jewish’.

  6. 6.

    Isikuleht. 8. Jaanuar 2008. Eesti Statistika. Available at http://www.stat.ee/20371.

  7. 7.

    The census guidelines explained there was only one option when it came to recording one’s mother tongue—the language acquired in early childhood as a first language and which, as a rule, is known the best had to be chosen. It was also added that if parents had difficulties determining their child’s mother tongue then the common language used in the household had to be recorded. It was possible that one’s mother tongue did not coincide with one’s ethnic category. For example: when (s)he (1) speaks fluently, but cannot write, or (2) can read foreign-language texts, but cannot speak, or (3) understands foreign-language TV or radio broadcasts, but is unable to speak or write. Additionally, ‘one’s own ethnic language’ (not to be confused with mother tongue) was marked as ‘other’. Loenduseeskiri. 10. jaanuar 2008. Eesti Statistika. Available at http://www.stat.ee/20362.

  8. 8.

    Note that another new term ‘dialectal language’ (a compound word: Gen. murre + Nom. keel) was adopted in the new Language Act in 2011. Meiorg (2012: 93) maintains that the Language Act equates the term ‘regional form’ of Estonian with the term ‘dialectal language’, which itself is a compromise.

  9. 9.

    Kohaliku keelekuju või murde all mõeldakse eesti kirjakeelest erinevat koha-likku keelepruuki, mitte võõrkeeli.

  10. 10.

    Computer Assisted Self-Interviewing (CASI) vs. Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).

  11. 11.

    Italics is ours. Niisugust kõnepruuki võidakse nimetada kohalikuks keeleks, murdeks või murrakuks. Kohaliku keele-kuju või murde oskajaks loetakse isik, kes saab sellest keelest aru ja suudab ka end väljendada.

  12. 12.

    http://www.stat.ee/public/files/aruandevormid/2011/30001140811.pdf.

  13. 13.

    Latgalian was banned in schools, public functions and from printing between 1934 and 1991 (though not in Catholic churches).

  14. 14.

    Ajalooline Võrumaa (or Old Võrumaa) refers to the administrative borders that existed from 1783 to 1920, which differ from the borders of the contemporary county borders of Võrumaa.

  15. 15.

    Media attention culminated for the third time in about 2014 (but there was discussion as early as 2009) when the smoke sauna tradition in Võrumaa was included to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. However, language issues received minor attention at this time.

  16. 16.

    At least three kindergarten teachers stated that they try to use Võro throughout the week, but these are individual decisions and not in line with the formal, institutional commitment to regional-language immersion once or twice a week. Additionally, one kindergarten offered a five-day-a-week Võro immersion class from 2011 to 2014.

  17. 17.

    A one-time in-service teacher preparation course was offered through Tartu University for Estonian literature teachers of Võro .

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Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Institutional Research Funding project “Sustainability of Estonian in the Era of Globalisation” (PI Professor Martin Ehala), which helped to make this research possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Kara D. Brown

  2. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Kadri Koreinik

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  1. Kara D. Brown
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Correspondence to Kara D. Brown .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Languages and Design, Rēzekne Academy of Technologies, Rēzekne, Latvia

    Sanita Lazdiņa

  2. DAAD Information Centre Riga, Riga, Latvia

    Heiko F. Marten

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Brown, K.D., Koreinik, K. (2019). Contested Counting? What the Census and Schools Reveal About Võro in Southeastern Estonia. In: Lazdiņa, S., Marten, H. (eds) Multilingualism in the Baltic States. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56914-1_4

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