I’ve long been a fan of Gasan Guseinov (e.g., 2014, 2020), so I’m delighted he’s been showing up again in my RSS feed after a long absence. Today I read his RFI essay “Сладость и горечь языков, которых мы не знаем” [The Sweetness and Bitterness of Languages We Don’t Know] (and listened to him read it in his wonderful gravelly voice), and I thought I’d bring a few paragraphs of it here and translate them; those who find them attractive can go to the link and use their favorite translation software if they don’t know Russian. He starts off talking about the pull of foreign languages, and continues:
I’m writing about this now for a particular reason: I’ve just gotten back from Parma, from a conference on the Russian language to which Maria Candida Ghidini and her colleagues gather hundreds of participants from dozens of countries where Russian speakers live. I thought I’d easily be able to make myself understood—at least in a trattoria. I somehow managed to do it, but it wasn’t easy. How can that be? I love Italian so much! I read it almost fluently, and I understand quite a bit. So why can’t I speak it as freely as I sense its sweetness?
I’m talking about languages that are clearly foreign, but it can happen with native languages as well. Today I want to fulfill a promise I made not long ago to tell the story of how my father and I failed to make Azerbaijani—his first native language—at least a second language for me.
[…]I’ve touched on just one aspect—the linguistic one—of the tragic personal trajectory of the Dzhemal family, touched on it as someone who happened to witness conversations between our fathers—mine and Geydar’s—regarding their unsuccessful attempts to instill in their sons a command of their fathers’ native tongues. One complained that his son, having swallowed the bait of a foreign tongue, had contracted the virus of Islamism and rebellion. The other lamented that his son would be unable to appreciate his poems and novellas in Azerbaijani, having—as so often happens with cosmopolitans—succumbed to nostalgia for the foreign.
The original:
Пишу сейчас об этом не просто так: только что вернулся из Пармы, с конференции о русском языке, на которую Мария Кандида Гидини и ее коллеги собирают сотни участниц из десятков стран, где живут говорящие по-русски люди. Мне казалось, что я легко смогу объясниться хотя бы в траттории. Кое-как смог, но не легко. Как же так? Я ведь так люблю итальянский. Я почти свободно на нем читаю и кое-что понимаю. Почему же я не могу говорить на нем так же свободно, как я ощущаю его сладость?
Но то — языки заведомо иностранные, а ведь бывает такое и с родными языками. Сегодня я хочу исполнить данное не так давно обещание рассказать о том, как у меня самого и у моего отца не получилось сделать азербайджанский — первый родной язык моего отца — и моим хотя бы вторым языком.
[…]А я коснулся сейчас только одного — языкового — аспекта трагической личной траектории семьи Джемалей, коснулся как человек, случайно бывший свидетелем разговоров наших с Гейдаром отцов о неудачном опыте приобщения сыновей к родному языку этих самых отцов. Один жаловался, что сын с наживкой языка проглотил вирус исламизма и бунтарства. Другой сокрушался, что сын не сможет оценить его стихов и новелл на азербайджанском языке, поскольку, как свойственно космополитам, предался ксенальгии.
I thought about translating the last word, ксенальгия, as “xenalgia,” but I think that’s even less a word in English than in Russian, so I expanded it. And the bit about speaking Italian resonated strongly with me: that’s exactly my experience with Russian. I read it so well, why can’t I speak it other than haltingly?
…but where’s the link!?
I wonder why участниц (“[female] participants”).
I think it was the bait of Azeri.
“xenalgia,” but I think that’s even less a word in English than in Russian,
Yes, it’s new to me. I guessed before looking it up xeno- foreign(ers) + algia pain/emotional distress as in neuralgia.
The interwebs seem to be all over the place with its meaning, from extreme nostalgia to the opposite:
Hemingway had something to say, apparently.
Is Guseinov suggesting this is a fake nostalgia? A fading ‘memory’/longing for something the sons had never actually lived through? Language they’d never spoken?
https://www.unipr.it/notizie/12-14-marzo-9deg-forum-internazionale-sul-bilinguismo-e-plurilinguismo
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La sessione plenaria del mattino (in lingua inglese e russa), moderata da Nicoletta Cabassi, Maria Candida Ghidini, Polina Guelfreikh e Marina Niznik, riunirà relatori e relatrici attorno al valore educativo e culturale del plurilinguismo.
Marco Mezzadri rifletterà sul ruolo della mediazione nell’epoca dell’Intelligenza Artificiale, mentre Gasan Gusejnov (Germania/Lettonia) proporrà una lettura del multilinguismo come pratica di libertà e scelta identitaria.
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Moderators all women; Marco Mezzadri and Hassan are presumably not.
In some way it is logical: in the Russian-speaking world “philology” is what girls study and hard sciences and engineering is what boys study.
I once befriended a girl who was raised this way and who was making an U-turn because what she likes is soldering, spaceships and things like that:)
She partly succeeded (she was 20, now she’s 30-something, a programmer and an [amateur] pilot).
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Also I think Гейдар is H if transcribed or transliterated from Azeri (and G if Russian). I don’t know which option is better here. (Though, if we already have Gasan Gusejnov – somehow I forgot about that – then maybe Geydar is logical)
I can’t say that I much like the coinage “xenalgia.” It looks like it should mean “finding the foreign painful”, presumably a promonitory symptom of full-blown malignant xenophobia.
“Premonitory”, even. “Promonitory” would be “in favour of surveillance”, or something. Peter Thiel.
…but where’s the link!?
Oops! Sorry about that; link added.
I find it weird that premonitory and minatory are so close in meaning, although they are unrelated. The former shares a root with mental, because a warning is something to think about. The latter is cognate to mountain, conceiving the warning as something that stands out.
That’s a matter of practice – the 习 xí part of 学习 xuéxí (“learn”, composed of “learn” and “practice”).
(I have the same experience with Russian, just on a level low enough that I can tell speaking about three sentences already helps.)
I know that, of course; my question was not informational but existential (“Why does the sun go on shining? Why does the sea rush to shore?”).
Dammit, Hat, now that song plays in my head…
Rhetorical?
Cosmic, man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_is_there_anything_at_all%3F
Reminds me of the Ayer/Copleston debate on this theme (a highly unenlightening one on both sides, if you ask me. Not that anybody ever has.)
EDIT: It was Russell, not Ayer. Still unedifying. (Copleston comes off worse, I reckon.) But I think it’s that kind of question.
http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/cosmological_radio.htm
It’s a comet… it’s a spaceship… it’s Cosmic Man!
@DE, reminds me Russian “а зачем вообще всё?” with зачем “what for?”
“I’m working on a Kusaal grammar”
“but зачем?!”
“а зачем вообще всё?” (what-for at-all all?)
and of course the link can’t be accessed from Russia without VPN and I don’t know who’s blocking access: Russia (believing that it will strenghten her) or France (believing that it will weaken Russia) or both.
that’s exactly my experience with Russian. I read it so well, why can’t I speak it other than haltingly?
That’s a matter of practice – the 习 xí part of 学习 xuéxí (“learn”, composed of “learn” and “practice”).
But it’s not just practice. Speaking is simply a separate skill from reading. There are four “macro skills” of language, right? Listening, speaking, reading, writing. Each of them needs to be learned specifically. And it is entirely possible to learn any one of them without developing competence in any of the others (although it would admittedly be difficult – though not impossible – to learn to speak or write competently without also learning to listen/read competently).
It’s like translation and bilingual writing, or interpreting and bilingual speaking, or indeed translation and interpreting. They’re different skills. Just because you’re competent at one doesn’t mean you’ll be capable of the other.
But I speak French and Spanish easily, even though I haven’t used them in conversation for years, so I don’t think it’s a matter of abstract capability. I just haven’t had anyone to practice Russian with. (And yes, I know I could do so online if it was important to me.)
…or for fun.
Though I think my personal experience with practicioners of language exchange was much, much better than that of many such practicioners.
But is there contradiction between “skill” and “practice”?
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Also I read the essay and loved it. Thank you for sharing!
Guseinov has at least three recent essays in East-West Literary Forum, most recently this one.
Some might be interested in that journal in general. Also, it’s looking for translators between Russian and English.
Also I read the essay and loved it. Thank you for sharing!
You’re welcome — I’m glad you liked it!