Moldova in quest of a lingua comuna: to the problem statement

Abstract

The article presents the preliminary results of the first stage of the research project “Russian-speaking population of the Republic of Moldova and the Romanian language”. By “Russian-speaking” population we mean the ethnic minorities of the country, primarily: Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Gagauz. The first step of the project concentrates on the Bulaestian Ukrainians (the village of Bulaesti (Romanian: Bulăești) is located in the Orhei district; largescale studies of the Bulaestian Ukrainians have been conducted for almost twenty years, the results of which were summarized in a monograph published last year). Nowadays in Bulaesti village people under 40 years old, and especially under 30, can usually either communicate in Romanian or, at worst, understand Romanian speech. That is, they are trilingual to some extent. Despite the noted increase in knowledge of the Romanian language among the Ukrainians of Bulaesti, in general, however, their involvement in Romanian culture has hardly increased. No one in the village watches films or TV in Romanian, or reads books or media. To what extent Bulaesti reflects the Russianspeaking population of the country as a whole requires a special study. But if it accurately reflects the main trend, it turns out that the Russian-speaking and Romanian-speaking populations of the Republic of Moldova, formally communicating quite closely, are increasingly diverging into “parallel worlds” at a deeper level. This is aggravated by the fact that an increasing number of Romanian-speaking youth have little or no knowledge of Russian.