Small is Sometimes Beautiful: Studying 'minor' Languages at University with Particular Reference to Belarus

Abstract

Does size matter? And is small sometimes beautiful? Such existential questions, though not entirely usual in presidential addresses, are relevant to what I have to say today. Small is, of course, not always beautiful, particularly in a university context where the number of languages and other cultural subjects offered nowadays is diminishing rapidly, making way for more popular and lucrative courses, especially of the so-called vocational variety, of which leisure and sports administration are among the most respectable. In the field of modern languages, the Association is justly famous for its admirable and, indeed, almost unique support for subjects such as Welsh and Dutch, not to mention Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and even Belarusian. The latter is indeed a special case, but in many supposedly academic establishments its 'big brother', Russian, has itself been cut from the programme, with German and Italian following not far behind. It seems, then, that in British higher education foreign languages are in danger of becoming the exclusive and often abstract domain of theoretical linguists, people who, it used to be said, know all about languages without necessarily knowing any of them. Living in an anglophone environment, though convenient in some respects, certainly has its downside. There are, of course, many educational and other reasons why so-called small or minor subjects should be supported. Perhaps we could learn from Germany, for it seems to me that they do these things better there or, at any rate, in the part of their universities with which I am familiar, namely the Slavistics departments. German universities demand from teachers and pupils a greater breadth of knowledge than is usually required or, indeed, available in Britain, so that, for example, a 'minor' language is routinely taught and studied alongside the 'major' discipline, greatly benefiting the latter by providing a context and point of comparison. In this country Russian studies, for instance, would undoubtedly be enhanced by knowledge of not only French, German, or Italian, but also Polish, Serbian, and Czech, to name but three prominent Slav cultures. This applies to both students and academics, helping them to avoid becoming channelled into narrow grooves of expertise. As it is, even in Russian studies, one occasionally hears that there is nothing left to write about, although Dickens or Dante are, of course, clearly in a different league of reploughing well trodden ground (as we were reminded in a previous presidential address). None the less, diversification is not nearly so popular as might have been expected. Perhaps part of the trouble is that we have long lived in the world of 'publish or