A Fugitive Tongue

A modest educational scheme is trying to save the Hungarian language from extinction in eastern Romania. Also in Russian. by Aron Ballo 8 March 2006 CLUJ, Romania | West of the Carpathian arc in Transylvania, Hungarians make up a thriving minority that enjoys local and national political clout. They are also able to choose from a comparatively wide range of Hungarian-language schools.

For their cultural brethren east of the mountains in the Moldavia region of eastern Romania, life is very different. Like many Transylvanian Hungarians, the Csangos are Catholics, and many speak Hungarian, although in forms not often heard in Budapest or Cluj. But Romanian authorities have long barred the teaching of Hungarian for this community of several hundred thousand people. A half-dozen years ago, though, as their language edged toward local extinction, Csango children finally won the right to study Hungarian, if only in the first years of primary school. From two villages, the project to revive Hungarian among this obscure minority has now spread to 13 Moldavian villages.

Increasingly, parents are requesting Hungarian-language classes for their children in the 50 villages where Csangos live, while the region's first Hungarian-language high school is slowly taking shape.

But this is no success story, at least not yet. For down through their history, the Csangos have not been a fortunate people.

DIVIDED BY GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

The very origin of the Csangos is in dispute. Some Romanian historians believe they are the successors of ethnic Romanians from Hungarian-ruled Transylvania who moved east to escape forced conversion to the Hungarians' religion and culture. They migrated over the mountains to Moldavia, where for centuries they have retained their Catholicism and many of their Hungarian names, even if the majority speak Romanian today.

Other Romanian and most historians elsewhere argue that the evidence supports a view that Csangos were originally ethnic Hungarians. They stand out in the Moldavian cultural landscape for their religion – they have always been Catholics among a Romanian Orthodox majority – and their language. A considerable part of the Csangos still speak Hungarian, and scholars have used this to argue for a Hungarian cultural origin, supported by evidence from historical documents, family and geographical names, and linguistic studies. Spoken in three dialectical variants, linguists say their language is an archaic version of Hungarian that predates the linguistic reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries, yet remains easily understood by Hungarians from the Carpathian Basin. Even their name goes back to the old Hungarian verb csáng (to run away). The Csangos are, then, literally fugitives.

What nearly everyone can agree on is that the Csangos have some Catholic Hungarian links and first came to Moldavia from Transylvania in the early Middle Ages. Although they lost their Hungarian-speaking Catholic clergy beginning in the 17th century, they keep up their ties with the numerous Hungarian Catholic community in Transylvania. Today, up to 300,000 people in Moldavia are Catholic. Up to 70,000 of them speak Hungarian, mainly in Bacau county, but also in Neamt, Vrancea, and Iasi counties. Most, though, prefer not to identify themselves as anything other than Romanians: Official census figures from 2002 show that 5,866 people in Moldavia declared themselves as Hungarians, and 815 as Csangos.

A Csango children's poetry recital in Frumoasa (Frumosza).

SPEAKING OUT

As long ago as 1950, the communist organization of ethnic Hungarians in Romania established Hungarian-language elementary schools in several dozen Bacau and Neamt county villages, but they were closed down by the increasingly nationalistic Bucharest regime after just six years. The Csangos had to wait until a new political order came to Romania before the question of Hungarian schooling could be revived. Advocacy groups and isolated intellectuals made a few hesitant attempts in the 1990s, but requests for Hungarian classes were turned down by the new educational authorities.

In 2000, Csango activists succeeding in winning permission to hold extracurricular lessons in Hungarian in a few private houses in the villages of Pustiana and Cleja under the auspices of the Association of Csango-Hungarians in Moldavia (MCSMSZ, an organization associated with the main Hungarian political party in Romania) and the Hungarian Teachers’ Association of Romania (RMPSZ). The Hungarian government contributed financial help.

The resistance of national and local authorities has begun to ease, if slowly. Five more villages were allowed to offer extracurricular Hungarian classes in 2001. That same year, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's main human-rights and cultural watchdog, weighed in with a recommendation to protect the cultural life of the Csangos. Local people recall this event as a turning point for Hungarian language teaching in Csango villages. The parliamentarians called on Romania to ratify and implement the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages, and to ensure the possibility of education in the Csangos' mother tongue "in accordance with the Romanian Constitution and the legislation on education. In the meantime classrooms should be made available in local schools and teachers working in the villages teaching Csango language should be paid."

The year 2002 brought another breakthrough for the Csangos. For the first time, Romanian authorities allowed the teaching of the Hungarian language and literature in Moldavian public schools. The villages of Pustiana and Buda were first to begin offering classes.

In 2004, the European Parliament's report on Romania's progress toward EU membership underlined “the importance of peaceful coexistence with minorities" in Romania and urged the government to "develop education in the mother tongue of the Csango minority.”

Christmas 2005 in Arini (Magyarfalu).

LOOKING FOR GODPARENTS

Encouraged by Bucharest's more open attitude, parents began submitting written requests for Hungarian-language classes: from 37 requests in 2002, the number grew to 462 in 2005. Today, some two dozen groups of children are studying Hungarian in 13 localities, both in state schools and privately. Public schools are allowed only to teach Hungarian language and literature, and only in the first four grades of primary school, while private classes offer a broader range of topics taught in Hungarian to both primary-school and older pupils. In all, about 860 of the estimated 9,500 Hungarian-speaking children in Moldavia are presently taking part in the Csango-Hungarian Association and Hungarian teachers association's Csango education program.

“Children speak Hungarian at home or in the street in an another 30 or more villages in Moldavia, but still lack the possibility to study their mother tongue, not to mention the chance to study in their native language,” says Attila Hegyeli, the program's director.

A Hungarian-language high school is a sorely needed element in the educational system, Hegyeli believes. One is being built as a boarding school in Racaciuni, Bacau county. The idea came from the St. Francis Foundation, a Hungarian Catholic organization from western Transylvania, and the Csango-Hungarian Association. Most subjects will be taught in Hungarian to more than 500 students. When those pupils will actually begin school is another question – the foundation stone was laid last May, but completion of the school depends on private donations and other sources of support – but the need for secondary schools in this area is clear: There are presently no high schools of any kind in the villages inhabited by the Hungarian minority in Moldavia. Less than eight percent of Csango children here ever finish high school, and only one or two percent graduate from university.

Although official impediments are gradually being eliminated, issues of financing and the lack of teachers need to be dealt with if Hungarian-language education is to thrive in Moldavia. Presently there are just 27 trained teachers and volunteers in the Csango education program. Finding new teachers is not easy, Hegyeli says. “Young teachers avoid coming to an area where 95 percent of houses don't have bathrooms."

Laying the foundation stone for the Hungarian high school.

The Hungarian Culture Ministry has funded the teaching programs in Moldavia since 2000, but the present Socialist-led Hungarian cabinet has been less supportive than its predecessor. No money came from Budapest to pay teachers' salaries and other costs between June and December 2005, for example. Looking for alternative sources of support, Hegyeli and his wife, Melinda, joined forces with the Hungarian Teachers’ Association of Romania on a charitable scheme to help finance Csango children's education, inviting symbolic "godparents" to cover the 125-euro yearly cost of children's Hungarian lessons or the 500 euros needed for those attending Hungarian-language schools outside Moldavia. The godparents project is just getting started, and so far nearly all contributions have come from Hungary proper, rather than from the Hungarian communities of Romania. Transylvanian Hungarians seem to be more enthusiastic about the high school in Racaciuni, happy to buy "brick tickets" for construction of the new school.

The goals of the Csango educational project are far from completion. None of the villages currently offering Hungarian classes has been able to get all local children involved. More participation is needed if the project is to be able to reverse or at least curb the linguistic assimilation of local Hungarian speakers, activists say. Their fear is that even the two more widely spoken Csango dialects will go the way of the northern dialect, the most ancient variety of Hungarian spoken in Moldavia. Today, this tongue is known in just seven villages, and all speakers are over 40 years of age.