Antons Benjamiņš varbūt balsos PAR!


A Moment For Remembering the First Latvian Woman Playright. Ramava.

Harmony centre (Saskaņās centrs) has issued a call http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/259012 for all Latvians to participate in the Referendum on the “”language issue—ragardless of what one’s conviction is, whether it is FOR or AGAINST enabling Russian to become the 2^nd official language of Latvia.

In effect, this writer is considering the possibility of voting AGAINST Latvian as the only official language in Latvia, and FOR Russian as a 2^nd language.

Considering how one may vote in a Referendum (before the Referendum takes place by discussing it) there is NO HEDGING the discussion, especially if a date for the vote is not yet set., But it does cause one to pause, the PAUSE coinciding with giving thought to the possibility of voting FOR, demands arguments that support doing so, thinking things through not necessarily in a linear fashion only.

Therefore, the following is a list of some of this writer’s reasons for imagining that the Latvian language has not served Latvians in a way that it is supposed to serve in the public spheres of politics, business, economic development, education, video, and so forth. The following is an informative blog on the state of NATO: http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/nato-banking-mess-creates-global-insurrections-and-wars/#more-13582

In effect: This blogger, Antons Benjamiņš aka Jaņdžs, varbūt balsos (may vote FOR) PAR!

NoHedge, re: The ‘Varbūt’ (maybe will) stands for "will ponder for sure".

I In fact, there are two Latvian languages. The first is the one assured ‘eternal’ existence by the Latvian Constitution. This language is the Latvian that evolved in Riga, Latvia’s capital city. The centre of most Latvian urbanism, starting on the cusp of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Riga contained all the elements of a society slated to become consumers consuming everything (newspapers including).

When the Latvian localisms were smoothed out of the-Latvian-language-at-large this Latvian (along with its own mannerisms) became what we know as the Latvian language today. The one region in Latvia that had a very noted idiomatic manner of expressing itself was Latgale. It was not long, before Latgalian Latvian was begun to be looked down on, a presumption of Latvian lawgivers in the Saeima to this day. The second Latvian language is the one spoken at home, whether in Latgale, or anywhere else. What distinguishes this second Latvian language from the first, is its informality and frequent use of the ‘endearing word’ (John=Johnny). The latter inflections almost never appears in documents or the public media in Latvia.

II The call FOR but one language in Latvian schools, does not free one of the yoke of pretentions projected by the first Latvian language (see above; which this writer speaks before he turns to English) against the second Latvian language. Indeed, the Chairwoman of the Latvian Saeima recently denigrated Latgalian on a very official occasion, when she rejected the Latgalian idiom of a Saeima deputy during his swearing-in ceremony.

III The attitude of the Latvian government with regard to  above I & II points, has not improved or come to greater self-consciousness, but appears to preserve the class prejudice that was at the basis of the discrimination between the two Latvian languages during the first half of Latvia’s existence (1918-1939). While many today dismiss class prejudice as a matter of another day, in Latvia the prejudice has continued to progress in a number of ways.

Students and teachers; a Moment For Remembering the First Latvian Woman Playright,
Marija Pekšēna, Ramava, 2011.

IV The consequences of snobbism in Latvia have been disastrous to Latvia in numbers of ways.

a)     The Latvian political and bureaucratic circles, the media including, reject all matters relating to populism as unmentionables. There is—to this writer’s experience—not one Latvia of the above mentioned stripes, who will acknowledge populism as a valid political orientation.

b)    Though accusing Latvians of intra-ethnic conflict may not be very nice with regard to all who hold the prejudice, the “not so nice” tag has its roots in related mindset, re ‘prestige’ http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/prestige/articles/  The ‘prestige comes with being an urbanite vs one from the countryside.This (let me say) ‘stupid’ polarization of society is mostly the doing of urbanites.

c)     This intra-ethnic polarization has cost Latvia at least 200,000 citizens to economic emigration. Whatever the accurate figure may be, the consequences are not only loss of labor force, but is a matter of profound demoralization to the people in the countryside. My neighbour recently responded to the above mentioned figure of 200,000 with: “It feels like a million have left”.

d)    In short, the consequences of snobbism in Latvia on the part of some Latvians who consider themselves to be more Latvian than Latvian Latgalians who do not speak 1^st Latvian without an accent. Thus, just imagine, if so-and-so Latvians who do not speak either 1^st or 2^nd version Latvian, insist that they have a right to continue studying in schools that teach in Russian or when teachers in Latvian schools should begin to teach Latvian speaking Latvian-Latgalian.

e)     The snobbism may also come in reverse. Thus, students in a countryside school may gang up on one who is from Riga. And I have heard quite a few Latvians complain that Russians call Latvian a fascist  language, as the gentleman in the following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXKQxcqjMPQ appears to do  (I do not understand Russian, except on inspired osmosis of-the-moments as here) , though apparently for the interviewed person  the word ‘fascist’ is equitable with ‘nationalist’. Here we may be seeing and hearing a Russian liberal of the ‘a Russian-of-Riga’ mind set and its meme.

First Latvian Woman Playright, Marija Pekšēna. Ramava. 2011.

V  For a  Latvian to consider a vote FOR Russian, with which vote goes (in his mind) an automatic AGAINST Latvian there is much to do and think about. One of the questions is, of course, would this question have arisen if the economy was or is doing well?

A large crowd of populists is waiting at the door of the Latvian Saeima, everyone in it wanting to know if the Saeima knows that to the populist Latvians the country feels as if  a million people have gone?

How a photographer makes friends with a pile of wood 1.

November 29, 2111

The subjection of the Latvian language over the past twenty years to an increasingly brutal secularization, has been gaining increasing attention lately.

The attention is a byproduct of a successful signature gathering campaign by members of the Russian population for a petition to hold a referendum (the current amount of signatures 137,500; the necessary amount 154,379) to change the Latvian Constitution so it will allow the Russian language in Latvia to acquire equal rights to the Latvian language, in effect to make such constitutional changes as are necessary to allow Russian to become the second language in Latvia.

The issue was first raised by certain Latvian jingoists parties (re Unity and All for Latvia; Vienotība and Visu Latvjai). The intent to bolster the political popularity of said parties has resulted in a counter movement by the Russian segment of the Latvia’s population.

In the face of many years of Latvian “do-nothingn politics” to reform corrupt politics or improve the country’s economic prospects, the language issue has proven itself exceedingly popular among the Russian speaking segment of the Latvian population.

Though one can sympathize with the point of view of the Latvian jingoists to some degree, such sympathy soon comes up against the fact that the ultra nationalist viewpoint turns the Latvianlanguage itself into no more than an advertising tool for the above mentioned parties.

Once one perceives the divide that forms between a secularized language and its earlier spiritualized and emotive equivalent, one (whether one is born to the Latvian or Russian language) understands that the present use of one’s language may add up to little more than that of  an advertising tool. This is when one makes the conclusion that one’s language has become a tool for advertising as such. In other words, the issue that the Latvian ultra nationalists have unintentionally raised is to focus attention on their use of the Latvian language. Needless to say, the jingoist effect of promoting themselves highlights a misuse of the language of their forebears.



How a photographer makes friends with a pile of wood 2.

 The misuse suffered by the Latvian and Russian languages is the dismissal (in toto) of their innate spiritual values.

It is not often that one hears in our day a discussion of the spiritual values imbedded within the language one speaks. An attack against such values has been a long and ongoing process, which runs parallel to the secularization and commercialization  of all Western languages and the communal values imbedded in same since their ancient past.

One may go so far as to say that the spiritual values embedded in the language one speaks goes back to the days, when implicitly and communally shared values were replaced with overt “religions”. The first such overt religion to impose itself over a native people was Western Roman Catholic Christianity. Instead of allowing the “endearing word”, which is imbedded in the use of one’s language to play an active role in community life, “religion(s)” began to deny such values as “pagan”, stressing the canonical values of “religion” instead.

It is interesting that both the Latvian and Russian languages are rich and bountiful in “endearing words”. The “endearing words” of both languages have suffered many centuries of open and surreptitious denial.

What is an “endearing word”? The academic world to this day knows these words as “diminutives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive ”. Essentially a misnomer by gramaticians, the diminutive does not diminism anything. What it does is to inflect just about any word [(it depends on the language) English being poor in such; whereas Latvian, Russian, and German languages are exceedingly rich in same].

For example, the Latvian name for “stone” is “akmens”. By adding to the word the inflection “(t)inshs”, re “akmentinsh”, one endears it. The adding of the inflection is often an involuntary and learned act of mimesis, whereby one ‘gets into’, so to say, the word. A similar effect in English is achieved when one readdresses “John” with an affectionate inflection, by which process “John” becomes “Johnny”; another trick of the English language (probably left over from days of yore) is to end the name by adding to it the inflection “-kins.” Thus, the word for  “baby” or "daddy"(arguably “endearments” and a “diminutives”, both) is sometimes heard pronounced “baby-kins” and "daddy-kins"..

By insisting that Russian is given official recognition in the Latvian Constitution, the Russian speaking public in Latvia necessarily reminds itself that Russian, too, has deeply imbedded spiritual values, which become manifest, first, in the language, second, in the behavior of those who use the language through yet further projection of mimesis.

Arguably, the root of mimetic projection is to be sought in the use of language by a mother when she is addressing or for that matter feeding her child. It is, thus, that a language acquires the meaning of being one’s “mother tongue”’. And surely there is no Constitution, written law, political party, or advertisement company  that can take from us the language that comes to us first through mother's milk and hearing.



How through a self-portrait a photographer makes friends with a pile of wood 3.