Elina Guseva

Transcription

Vienna, Austria 2,300 kilometers from Yoshkar-Ola, as the crow flies. Very few residents of this city know the taste of a good komanmelna, or have even the slightest clue as to what a komanmelna even is. But be that as it may, even here on the faraway shores of the Danube, there are those interested in the Mari language and culture. The Department of Finno-Ugric Studies at the University of Vienna was established in 1974. Timothy Riese experienced the early days. Students at this department spend most of their time studying Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian. For a proper understanding of Finno-Ugric linguistics, one must however deal with the so-called “smaller languages” as well. When I was a student, the traditional way to do this was to use old dusty books containing folklore texts gathered a hundred years ago. Little reference was made to the modern language; modern texts were not read at all. Due to the political situation, it was not possible to visit the smaller nations. Times change. In the 1980s, travel restrictions became less drastic, and eventually, the Iron Curtain fell. All of a sudden, you could just travel to Mari El, a possibility one could previously not even dream of. Viktória Eichinger was part of the first group of Viennese students that attended the Mari Summer School in Yoshkar-Ola. When we started our course, we knew this would be a different type where we would use modern materials and even try to travel to Yoshkar-Ola. We really did go to Yoshkar-Ola in the summer of 2003. It was exciting to meet Maris and to actually use the language in every-day contexts. Currently, the department offers a Mari-language course as often as funding allows it, and continues to organize trips to the Mari summer school every few years. Since 2010, an English-language textbook has been in use. This is a translation and complete revision of the Russian-language textbook “Марийский язык для всех”, published in two volumes in 1990 and 1991 by Emma Yakimova and Galina Krylova. The authors of the original version traveled to Vienna in 2010 to work on the adaptation with Timothy Riese, and Jeremy Bradley. I’m actually originally a programmer. I only started studying Finno-Ugric linguistics after graduating from the Vienna University of Technology. People keep asking me how I ended up working with Mari. The answer’s actually rather banal: I ran into an announcement for this course in 2007, and just thought to myself: “Well why on earth not?” I had been thinking of ways to make the Mari language and culture accessible to the entire world for some time. Later, when working together with my student and now colleague Jeremy Bradley, who shares my goals, we decided to try to make it happen, and started applying for research grants. The website www.mari-language.com was launched in September 2010. The first volume of the textbook mentioned can already be found on this website, as can a range of electronic tools aiming to assist Mari native speakers and non-native students of the language alike. All these materials can be used and multiplied free of charge. Since 1 January 2011, the Austrian Science Fund FWF has been funding the three-year project “Mari-English Dictionary”, carried out at the University of Vienna, with assistance from the native Mari linguist and teacher Elina Guseva at Mari State University in Yoshkar-Ola. Basically, our dictionary will cover all of these materials on this table here, and others. Given that, three years is not a long time at all, there’s a complex workflow which we need to adhere to in order to get everything done in time. I write the first drafts of all the entries: I join all the relevant data from these sources together in one database, translating all the Russian, Finnish and Hungarian into English, bringing everything in line with the newest rules of Mari orthography, and deciding if the entries are adequate as they are, or if additional examples are necessary. Next, Tim works through my drafts, subjecting every one of my entries to ruthless criticism. After his suggestions have been implemented, we send our entries to Yoshkar-Ola, to our native Mari team member, Elina Guseva at Mari State University. This’s a few hundred entries every week. She subjects our entries to a second round of ruthless criticism, answers our questions, and sends her blocks back to us every Sunday. We then go through her edits again in Vienna, and every once in a while, discuss the truly critical ones with her over Skype. Towards the end of the project, we’ll get her to come to Vienna for about a month for the finishing touches. Vienna has its own Mari literature circle. This group, which is entirely extracurricular, meets every few weeks. We meet every few weeks. Coming to the literature circle is fun and prevents us from forgetting the Mari we have already learned. We recently read an entire book - this one, "The Sun Rises in the North" by Yuriy Solovyov - and enjoyed it greatly.