…try moving to Moldova! Due to its history as a region of Romania, and then part of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Moldova is home to native speakers of both Russian and Romanian. As Sarah and I prepared to move there in January 2024, we felt more than a little daunted by this prospect!
The bilingual nature of the country became clear to Sarah on her first visit to Moldova, back in 2018. Her short-term team were taught some useful phrases in Romanian, but then ended up going round Russian-speaking villages.
I studied Russian at University and so our plans to move to Moldova were oriented around a Russian-speaking church. However, when we visited Logos Church (where we are now serving) in September 2022, we discovered that songs were sung in both languages, and that the sermon was preached in Russian and then translated live into Romanian. And these languages aren’t particularly similar! Russian is a Slavonic language (like Ukrainian, Polish and Croatian) and Romanian is a Romance language (more similar to Spanish and Italian).
It is very much a dual-language culture. Vocabulary from one language is mixed in with the other. Presidential addresses are given in Romanian with Russian subtitles.
And one Moldovan lady told us that she will sometimes switch language mid-conversation with her friends. Russia’s war in Ukraine has only made this more complicated. The government is pro-European and wants to step closer to the Romanian side of things, but there’s been an influx of Ukrainian refugees who can’t speak Romanian but can speak Russian.
English is of limited usefulness, but it does provide some means of communication. Our pastor – a Russian-speaking Moldovan – can understand English but can’t speak it, so we can speak to him in our native tongue, and he’ll reply in his. As fellow mission partners, Graeme and Bequi Innes have discovered, English also provides a great outreach opportunity as young people will often jump at the chance to come to an English-speaking club, especially if it’s run by native speakers.
However, most Moldovans do not speak English, so we’ve been spending the past year chipping away at these two foreign languages – Sarah’s been focussing on Russian, and I’ve been making a start with Romanian (I would argue I have the far easier job here!).
We’ve found various ways to practice the two languages over the past year, including Duolingo, podcasts, grammar books, and phone calls with native speakers. I’ve been enjoying helping Sarah practice Russian, including by playing ‘Я вижу’ or ‘I spy’.
It’s not been easy, but the work has made our arrival in Moldova a bit less bumpy than it could have been. Learning a language is hard, but knowing we’d soon be inescapably immersed in the language(s) proved a good carrot – and stick! We’d love your prayers/молитвы/rugaciune that our language abilities would continue to improve.
And as our Moldovan pastor has said to us ‘It’s possible for people not to understand each other well when they speak the same language. And it’s possible for people speaking different languages to understand each other perfectly!’
By Matt Gurtler