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Leah Davcheva & Richard Fay

Paper for the BAAL ICSIG / Bloomsbury Round TablePaper for the BAAL ICSIG / Bloomsbury Round Table

Language, Identity and Intercultural Language, Identity and Intercultural CommunicationCommunication

June 9June 9thth 2011 2011

Una Pastora ….

Una pastora yo ami A shepherdess I lovedUna ija hermosa A beautiful childDe mi chikes yo l’adori Still so young I adored herMas ke eya no ami More than her I loved no other

Un dia que estavamos One day when we wereEn la huerta asentados Sitting in the gardenLe dishe yo: “por ti mi flor I said to her: “For you

my flowerMe muero de amor”. I will die of love”.

etc

‘Un pastora’, from the album Sentir by Yasmin Levy© 2010, Adama Music and publishing

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Language, identity and intercultural communication

An exploration of some language, identity and intercultural communication insights arising from our ongoing narrative-based ‘Ladino’ study … (i.e. topic-insights)

… but also … some language, identity and intercultural communication aspects of our research collaboration (i.e. methodological resonances)

Leah – vis-à-vis research -> Bulgarian, Sephardic, Ladino-memories from childhood, largely field-based, translation expertise, ‘insider’

Richard – vis-à-vis research -> non-Bulgarian, non-Jewish, no Ladino memories, largely desk-based, research experience, ‘outsider’

Shared – intercultural expertise, narrative and Balkan interests (incl. history, music, culture, politics) and research experiences

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Some methodological aspects

An exploration of the narrativised understandings of middle-aged and elderly Sephardic Jews in Bulgaria regarding the language they tend to call Judesmo (but which is also known as Judæo-Spanish and Ladino)

14 storytellers aged between 43 and 92 (who we will introduce shortly).

Narrative methodology (involving e.g. restorying)

Collaborative , intercultural (involving differing researchers)

Reflexive (reciprocal reflexivity managed through research stories)

Multilingual – research about one language (Ladino), through stories told largely in another (Bulgarian) as analysed and (re)presented in a third (English)

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Meet the stoytellers --- Ivette Anavi

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Elli Anavi

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David Cohen

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Reina Lidgi

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Roni Balli

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Soni Balli

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Sami Frances

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Bulgarian, Sephardic, Ladino contexts – the research/researched contexts

Bulgaria – its history and contemporary scene

The Sephardim – who they are and how they settled in Bulgaria

Ladino – origin and change over time

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Five zones of identity-play

the (intra-)personal --- a zone of internal dialogue;

the domestic --- a zone for the family (especially relevant during childhood, upbringing etc);

the local --- a zone for the Sephardic community in Bulgaria;

the diasporic --- a zone for the wider Sephardic Jewish community (including mediated modes of communication through literature, newspapers, and journals); and

the international --- the international community of Spanish-users.

As set against the historically-, politically-, culturally-, and societally- changing Bulgarian Sephardic Jewish Ladino-oriented context(s)

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a) The (intra-)personal zone (1)

I remember the way I felt exceptional when I realised that I knew a language which was not typically spoken in Bulgaria.[Roni]

My sense of being an heir to this language is special. It enthuses and empowers me with a kind of primary and fundamental force. I think that the significance of being different changes, i.e., from originally being a disadvantage it has now become a huge advantage. We seek our sense of uniqueness and find it in this language. It is a symbol, a token of our otherness. [Andrey]

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a) The (intra-)personal zone (2)

Ladino gives me a sense of belonging to something larger. Every so often, it gives me the freedom of choice – I can choose the culture I want to belong to. Even though it is not the language that I use now it just pops up in certain situations and this makes me realise that there’s this language inside me, lurking there, deep inside. [Gredi]

I sometimes wonder about my [Ladino] accent or my intonation – perhaps they bear some Jewish traces and give me away. [Andrey]

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b) The domestic zone (1)

Judesmo is my mother tongue. At home we spoke Judesmo. I spoke Judesmo with my aunts, grannies, everybody … [Ivette]

We lived with my maternal grandparents, Grandad Gershon and Grandma Rachel. They spoke to me in Spanyol [Ladino] but I didn’t understand much at first. [Gredi]

My grandma would always speak to me in Spanish [Ladino]. [Andrey]

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b) The domestic zone (2)

… my Grandma moved in with us. […] She could not speak Bulgarian and she took it upon herself to teach me Ladino. She must have been a good ‘teacher’ because in less than three months, I was able to communicate with her in Ladino. I don’t think I could fully understand everything she was saying but we somehow managed to talk with each other. [Reina]

Our domestic help were Bulgarian girls and we spoke Bulgarian with them. [Ivette]

In the years when the first socialist government came into power … gradually Judesmo [Ladino]

stopped being the language of my family. During socialism, we did not speak Judesmo. [Ivette]

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b) The domestic zone (3)

And also, when they did not want us, the children, to understand what they were talking about they would say it in Spanyol. [Gredi]

My memories go back to my childhood – I grew up in a Jewish environment … I remember that the first thing I learned was the word pashariko and only later, many years later, I realised that my grandmother had been actually calling me ‘my little chicken’. And this is very pleasant of course. Later on, I learned ijo de azno (son of a donkey) or cavesa di tuch (wooden head). And I knew I was somewhere between the small chicken and the donkey’s son, and it felt the most natural thing in the world. [Soni].

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b) The domestic zone (4)

My Dad knew a lot of funny stories from his grandfather and he was in the habit of saying the introductory sentences in Spanish [Ladino], thus giving them an especially vivid flavor. The Spanish part of the story would also become its leading and central idea, its leitmotif.

For example, he would start like ‘Unos campos longar … distant roads, I could hear neither a dog barking nor a cock singing/ crowing’. I have always connected this saying with what I think is a very Jewish sense of being lost in the physical space of this world. There is a particular family meaning for me in all this. [Andrey]

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c) The local zone (1)

In Plovdiv, my father used to go to the Jewish club on a daily basis. He played cards with his friends. All their jokes, curses and playful bantering was done in Judesmo. [Elli]

When she was young, my paternal Grandma Blanca regarded herself a modern young woman and tended to speak Bulgarian only. In those times, they apparently believed that speaking Ladino was something that only the lower classes did, or just old women anyway. Competence in correctly spoken literary Bulgarian was very highly valued. [Andrey].

If you go to the Jewish cemetery in Sofia you can see some of the older graves written out in Ladino with Hebrew letters. [Sami]

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c) The local zone (2)

A terrible pressure for integration was exerted, both from the inside and from the outside. I grew up in the Jewish neighbourhood where we spoke Bulgarian with a peculiar distinctive accent. …. We did not like sticking out like this and did our best to get rid of the accent - so that nobody could tell. [Roni]

When I started singing in the Dulce Canto choir we sang Ladino songs there and I felt I was able ‘to hear’ this language and identify with it. [Soni]

Ladino is like a live coal hidden among the ashes [Roni]

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c) The local zone (3)

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… he asked me whether I could teach a Judesmo course for several people, who were not very keen to participate in the meetings of the ‘Ladino’ club. Mostly old people attended the club and they [the younger ones] did not find the pace of learning fast enough. … I was willing to get the course started. The arrangement was that they get themselves organised and I take care of the learning materials. … There was a core of 12-15 people who remained faithful to their desire to learn the language of their grandmothers and about the traditions, life and values of the Jewish neighbourhood in the past. [Ivette]

d) The ‘diasporic’ zone (1)

From time to time, I go to Istanbul, in Turkey [and] half of my communication is in Turkish, the other half – in Spanyol. [Rony]

If you think of it, we became ‘Bulgarian Jews’ only 70-80 years ago. Before that we used to be Balkan Jews. Should we find ourselves among Jews from other Balkan countries, there would hardly be anything to make us inherently different from each other – except for the language our passports have been written out in. We behave in very much similar ways. Everywhere on the Balkans I feel at home. [Soni]

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d) The ‘diasporic’ zone (2)

I came across similar Sephardic communities. There, I also met a Jewish guy from Cuba. We spoke and our conversation resonated with something deep inside me and we both felt we belonged together. [Soni]

… set out to see a Holocaust museum. It happened to be on a non-working day and the museum was closed. I wanted to find out about the working hours and came across a man from Egypt who spoke Spanyol. There are people in Egypt who speak that language. When we finished talking he said to me, “If you walk a bit further, you’ll find another guy who can also speak Spanyol.” [Sami]

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d) The ‘diasporic’ zone (3)

At this event, I had the chance to speak Ladino with the ex-president of Israel, Yitzhak Navon. Navon was born in Israel but, in his family, Ladino had been spoken for centuries. He was chairperson of the Sephardic Institute in Israel. We communicated in Ladino and could understand each other perfectly well. There were differences in the way we spoke it but this didn’t surprise me. Over the centuries, Spanyol has absorbed features from many other languages. [Sami]

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d) The ‘diasporic’ zone (4)

If I could speak Ladino [properly], I could easily communicate with people in Greece and Turkey, and elsewhere, especially with the elderly. I would have been very well positioned, exactly because of that. But even as it is, I am being well-positioned and accepted now. [Sony]

… my paternal grandma Lisa – she also had books in Spanyol; she used to buy these books in Plovdiv, but also in Istanbul, and bring them back with her, small books, beautifully bound [Gredi]

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e) The international zone (1)

I remember my first visit to Spain. It was quite an emotional experience. I felt completely comfortable in the Spanish speaking context and was pleasantly excited by listening to the people around me and actually being able to understand. Although I was not at home and in my own country, I still had this amazing sense of being in a linguistically familiar context. It must have all sounded ridiculous and primitive because I had never specially studied Judesmo, but it was very well received. People applauded me. … I felt at home and an insider. [Elli]

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e) The international zone (2)

Have you ever heard Cubans speak Spanish? They tend to swallow their consonants and it’s hard to understand them. For a whole week I kept my mouth shut and did not dare speak. By and by, I gathered courage and would put in a word here and a word there. …

… the response of the Cubans was twofold. First, they thought they heard somebody who had risen from their grave. So obsolete was the language I produced. They were enormously delighted and would make me repeat what I said, time and time again. [Roni]

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e) The international zone (3)

I expressed myself by capturing the root of a word and then attached different things to it. The result was a mongrel-like language, a mixture of everything. But I managed to get around through this approximation of the Spanish language. [Gredi]

I bought myself a Spanish textbook. In Sofia, I became friends with a man from Cuba. He was a musician and I visited him in Cuba. I learned a lot of Spanish words from him. When I write email messages or letters to my friends, I try to write them in Spanish. My Spanish vocabulary has increased and I make efforts to use the correct words. [Itsko]

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e) The international zone (4)

When we first met, I spoke to her in Ladino. I was amazed that Reyes could understand what I was saying and importantly, I could understand her too. [Reina]

[…] was keen to hear the language which he had never heard anybody speak before. The time we spent together made me aware of the special attitude the Spanish have for us, Sephardic Jews: they find it truly amazing that not only have we preserved Ladino for five centuries but we also cherish the warmest sentiments for Spain itself. [Reina]

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e) The international zone (5)

My developing relationship with Reyes and the exaltation that resulted from mutually understanding each other (mind you, my Ladino was far from perfect), inspired me to register on a course to learn Spanish. […] Soon after I completed the course, I was able to speak contemporary Spanish. Ladino helped a lot but surprisingly, it also got in the way to some extent. [Reina]

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Thinking beyond LadinoThis Ladino case study exemplifies the way in

which we, as interculturalists, recognise and value the ever-changing cultural complexity of individuals, contexts, and eras. Whenever we do so, a vast vista of identity–play opens up before us in which language and identity constantly interact. Such identity-play is both individualised and contextualised. Its dynamics reflect and contribute to the situations in which the individuals are located. For example, whilst our storytellers’ Ladino informed identity-play is now quite muted in Bulgaria, it opens up self-affirming possibilities in the international sphere.

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THANK YOUTHANK YOU

Contact: leah.davcheva@gmail.com

richard.fay@manchester.ac.uk

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