My trip to Western Europe

[uss]

Originally posted by Arledrian: Yeah, but no income either. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Oh shut up [img]tongue.gif[/img]

By the way, what's the name of the song that you once recommended to me? Something about saturday night. I lost it somehow.

Originally posted by Sir Degrader: Look at Marseilles in France, and you can see why Estonians are tough on immigration. Seems like every day I lived in Belgium the news was always on about how racial tensions were on borderline open war, it wasn't exactly a very nice evening news report on TV5.

Yeah, I know.. There already kind of is such a thing in Estonia, with the Russians. The Russians came when Estonia was occupied in the 20-th century and while in 1920, less than 3 percent were Russians, today the Russians form about 20%-30% of the population. There have been heats about not being able to speak Estonian - since the Estonian language is and always will be the only official language in Estonia, every citizen *should* be able to speak Estonian to gain citizenship but there's too many of them, so the law remains unenforced. It has had improvement in the last few years though, as Russian schools are dying out and more and more Russian children go to Estonian schools.

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by uss: It has had improvement in the last few years though, as Russian schools are dying out and more and more Russian children go to Estonian schools.

Ah yes, obviously quite an improvement. I'm sure you would agree it's always a good thing when cultures different to your own die out... Makes life much simpler for you, no?

[Sir Degrader]

"Ah yes, obviously quite an improvement. I'm sure you would agree it's always a good thing when cultures different to your own die out... Makes life much simpler for you, no?"

Either the culture dies out or they conform or you have the noncomformists getting into gangs and trying to take on the police. I haven't seen the multiculturalism in Europe that I've seen in the USA and Canada,which allows for all cultures to "thrive" except for maybe in England.

[dplax]

Originally posted by uss: Yeah, I know.. There already kind of is such a thing in Estonia, with the Russians. The Russians came when Estonia was occupied in the 20-th century and while in 1920, less than 3 percent were Russians, today the Russians form about 20%-30% of the population. There have been heats about not being able to speak Estonian - since the Estonian language is and always will be the only official language in Estonia, every citizen *should* be able to speak Estonian to gain citizenship but there's too many of them, so the law remains unenforced. It has had improvement in the last few years though, as Russian schools are dying out and more and more Russian children go to Estonian schools.

I'd call that suppression of minorities. I think that minorities, especially if they reach 20-30% should be allowed to have their own language.

[uss]

Originally posted by The Hierophant: quote: Originally posted by uss: It has had improvement in the last few years though, as Russian schools are dying out and more and more Russian children go to Estonian schools.

Ah yes, obviously quite an improvement. I'm sure you would agree it's always a good thing when cultures different to your own die out... Makes life much simpler for you, no? [/QUOTE]Cultures different to my own dying out..? No, Russia and the whole of it's culture is still just east to us and the Russian-Estonians' beginning to learn Estonian won't change that.

Russian schools were created when Estonia was occupied by Russia. The Russian government's plans were to make Estonia completely Russian, so they banned the Estonian language so just speaking in it was punishable.

I believe that if one goes to another country to live, one should respect the country enough to learn it's language. This has some exceptions, but not in the current case.

If you want to talk about a culture DYING, I'd much rather talk about the Estonian people. There is barely a million of Estonians left in the world, and the birth-to-death rate is negative, so I'd say we're pretty close to extinction.

[Dreamer128]

Originally posted by Arledrian: Cool one, Pets. Glad you had a good time. Not so sure I approve of you calling Holland "weird" but you know, each to his own. Hope you're takin' care of yourself [img]smile.gif[/img]

Holland isn't weird, the rest of the world is..

[Vaskez]

Originally posted by The Hierophant: quote: Originally posted by uss: It has had improvement in the last few years though, as Russian schools are dying out and more and more Russian children go to Estonian schools.

Ah yes, obviously quite an improvement. I'm sure you would agree it's always a good thing when cultures different to your own die out... Makes life much simpler for you, no? [/QUOTE]Yeah in this case I agree with uss. The Russian culture is hardly going to die out because there are no Russian schools in Estonia! LOL! I'd be much more worried about the Estonian culture as uss said. However, to be fair I think Russian students should have the chance to study in both languages. A similar situation exists in Romania with the large Hungarian minority. More and more hungarian schools got shut down and the hungarians were treated like dirt there. However, now the Romanians have to kiss ass if they wanna get into the EU

[Spelca]

They could become bilingual. It would be better for the Russian minority (to be able to function better) and also Estonia, since they would have citizens proficient in two languages. So I don't see what the problem is with Russian schools, as long as they learn some basic Estonian also. [img]smile.gif[/img] But to prevent them from having their own culture and language is just... cruel.

[uss]

Originally posted by Spelca: They could become bilingual. It would be better for the Russian minority (to be able to function better) and also Estonia, since they would have citizens proficient in two languages. So I don't see what the problem is with Russian schools, as long as they learn some basic Estonian also. [img]smile.gif[/img] But to prevent them from having their own culture and language is just... cruel.

No-no, people do study Russian here. It is the third language in schools(right after Estonian and English) and people study it from 5th to 12th grade. The Russians can have their culture, whatever that means, and many Estonians can speak Russian, or are striving to speak it.

So instead of Russian schools that teach basic Estonian, we have Estonian schools that teach more-than basic Russian. [img]smile.gif[/img]

By the way, there is sort of a struggle going on between the Estonian and Russian goverments. They still have their general plan to make Estonia more similar to Russia. The Russian government has on many occasions sent politicians to Estonia, even in recent years, proposing that we should immedeately make Russian the only official language, thus banning the use of the Estonian language completely. This proposition, while practical, obviously does not sit well for the Estonians.

[ 04-05-2004, 05:23 AM: Message edited by: uss ]

[uss]

Originally posted by Vaskez: However, to be fair I think Russian students should have the chance to study in both languages. A similar situation exists in Romania with the large Hungarian minority. More and more hungarian schools got shut down and the hungarians were treated like dirt there. However, now the Romanians have to kiss ass if they wanna get into the EU

Well, as I said, Russian students do have the chance to study Russian, and is widely studied by just about everybody living here. They can interact with eachother in Russian, but still, studying Estonian is a must if you wish to stay here.

Hungarians were treated like dirt? How? In Estonia, the discrimination problems are quite seldom, considering the past and everything. I think that making Estonian the only official language had good effects on the discrimination part, since the crowd will less and less likely be formed into 2 in different societies.


Quite coincidentially, a Russian woman asked something from me. I didn't understand what she said, so I asked 'In English, please?' She shook her head and said one Russian word, slowly. Unfortunatelly, that particular word wasn't in my Russian vocabulary(3 years of studying and still nothing ), so I said "I'm sorry, I don't speak Russian" in Russian. She smiled and walked on.