Subject: Multilingual business
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 13:51:26 +0200


12th July 2000

Dear Pocos,

I may have crossed verbal swords with Marlene Atleo in the past, but I must
say that I found what she had to say in "transcending categorical
failure..." sensible and interesting, and will myself try to take a leaf out
of her book not to be so provocative in future. I do, unfortunately, have a
provocative streak in my nature.

First let me say categorically that my use of "Aryan" was another of these
provocations. While it is a useful linguistic term (Indo-Aryan, etc.), no
one in their right mind can use the term to describe ethnic origins nowadays
for the more than obvious reason that the Nazis misappropriated it. In sober
discourse I have to call myself something, but "half-Dutch Englishman" or
"half-Dutch Briton" are too long-winded and pedantic, "European" only
vis-a-vis non-Europeans, "goy/gentile" only vis-a-vis Jewish people, etc.
But I too have my ethnic origins (English/Dutch) and have to live with them
just like anybody else.

As for Dariusz Muszer, if I can ever trace him via the e-mail system, I will
ask him about these identity questions. I too am only going by what I can
read on various websites and other internet documents. I agree that he looks
a bit of a "Streber" and that he won't go out of fashion himself. His
love-hate relationship with the German language is one of the things I'd
like to ask him about.

My being able to read Polish is a gift, as is Marlene's ability to read
German. I once had contact with a Finland-Swedish woman of Jewish origin who
told me that her use of the various languages she knew was split between
various areas of vocabulary. Something like this: she went mushroom-picking
with Finland-Swedes - so she knew mushroom/toadstool vocabulary best in
Swedish, the language which she also wrote in; she spoke to some older
members of her family in Yiddish; and she used Finnish in the bank and the
supermarket and other parts of everyday, public life. There used to be lots
such people in Vyborg, Chernovits, Lviv, etc., i.e. in Eastern Central
Europe but the two world wars, the Russian Revolution and various earlier
pogroms put paid to all that. People like Paul Celan and Elias Canetti are
products of such a background, I believe.

1848 is one of those nodal years in European history where things come
together from previously discrete occurrences, like the years around 1917.
The chicken-and-the-egg situation of whether individuals influence events,
or vice-versa, or a dialectic of both, is a moot question. But it is clear
that North America, though ridding itself of too much European interference,
cannot but be tied to that part of its origins. Just heard of a Pole, a
long-term resident of Sweden, who tried living in the United States but has
now returned to Sweden with his family, his wife giving up a lectureship at
the University of Chicago. I am intrigued as to how and why this happened.
One isolated incident, but personal tales are often illuminating. This fits
in with Marlene's paragraph on socio-emotionally bumpy rides, and surgeons
ending up as taxi-drivers, or whatever.

The question as to how much a country should assimilate its immigrants is
another ticklish one. Too much
assimilation, and you end up with a nation of linguistically harmonious, but
culturally frustrated, clones with no historical dimension. Too little
assimilation, and you create an underclass who can't function in the local
language, and have to do jobs far beneath their capabilities and dignity.
What's just right? This question is very relevant to present-day Holland.

Best wishes,

Eric Dickens



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