Toward a New Central Europe

SOCIO-LINGUISTICS FOR A JUST PEACE IN THE DANUBIAN BASIN

ADAM MAKKAI

1. Introductory Remarks THE present paper is, by necessity, programmatic and not a report on research in progress. This, however, does not mean that there is no socio-linguistic information available to Western scholars on the Danubian Basin. Quite to the contrary. But in most instances the information is "frozen" on the academic level of dialect descriptions, aspects of regional pronunciations, etc., and the scholars to whom the information is available do not possess the practical power of recommendation to the local governments to correct injustices or to shape the government policy on education. Published data on population concentration of ethnic minorities are subject to doubt as to their accuracy. The Western scholar's main problem approaching the socio-linguistic problem of the Danubian Basin, then, is this: 1.) How should one proceed with the basic field work of gathering correct information on the census of minorities; 2.) and to what practical use can one put this valuable information?

2. Linguistically Diverse Areas versus Linguistically Troubled Areas in the World: A Brief Survey

An important point must be made at the outset: Linguistic diversity need not necessarily mean political unrest, and conversely: Political unrest can frequently be artificially instigated by deliberate exploitation of the language issue. It is the present writer's conviction that multilingual areas, or languages in contact correlated with ethnic diversity do not, by themselves, necessarily result in oppressive antidemocratic societies, whereas the opposite is frequently true: Oppressive, antidemocratic societies can create political issues out of ethnic and linguistic diversity. In order to illustrate this point let us take a look at the following "linguistically diverse" cultures in order to attempt to find some correlation between the ethnic-linguistic composition and the social-political structure of the countries concerned.

2.1 The United States

It is a common joke that in New York City one hears more foreign languages spoken in the streets than English. The USA is

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truly a country of immigrants; there is probably no country in the world whose major languages are not spoken by some group of people in America. Add the large number of indigenous Indian tongues spoken on the reservations and the socio-linguistic problem of the black ghetto areas, and the picture becomes quite bewildering. Nevertheless, the USA has, so far, not had any language-riots. (Race-riots, yes, but that is another matter.) Nor is it likely that foreign accents, dialectically marked accents, or, in certain areas, a total lack of fluency in English should ever add to any "potential disruption" of the United States. I very seriously doubt that black Americans will ever demand that Swahili or Yoruba be set aside for them as their separate official language, just as European immigrants have never demanded that Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Polish, Rumanian, Hungarian, or Czech be given any official status in the United States. The reason: After all is said, English remains the main medium of communication that, eventually, everyone embraces by free will, and not because otherwise they would perish. The unifying force of English, then, is one of seduction via economic and social advantages rather than one of coercion. Because of a definite desire on the part of black-ghetto inhabitants not to identify themselves with the white middle class, Negro dialects of American English are studied and described with considerable scientific rigor and thoroughness, and teachers of English in ghetto areas receive linguistic training in dialectal bilingualism. 1) Far from being oppressive, American universities and the scholarly community make concentrated efforts to accommodate and make known to the public the linguistic behavior and resultant needs of minority groups throughout the country.

2.2 The Soviet Union

Whereas the United States assimilates its immigrants by socialeconomic seduction, i.e., "democratically", the Soviet Union superimposes in a dictatorial way Russian as the official language on a vast number of formerly independent nations ranging from the Baltic States of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, through annexed portions of Finland, Hungary, and Poland, to the ancient Asiatic cultures of Tadzhikistan, Turkestan, and so on. A large number of indigenous tribes also survive in Siberia, the Caucasus range, and around the Ural mountains, some belonging to the Finno-Ugrian family of languages, some to the Altaic, and some still scientifically unclassified. Compulsory education, however, is in Russian, with minor concessions made to local cultures concerning local cultural affairs. The Georgian Stalin and the Ukrainian Khrushchev both ruled the USSR in Russian and showed particular ruthlessness in the political administration of their respective homelands within the Soviet Empire. The Soviet Union, then, is at present, for reasons entirely different than those of the United States, alsoówith the exception of the Ukraineónot a "linguistically

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troubled country", but merely a "linguistically diverse" multinational area where the human cultural tragedy of the annexed nations is legally, at least for the presents a Russian "Soviet internal affair", which nobody (including the United Nations) can do anything about.

2.3 Canada

We tend to think of Canada as rather similar to the United States; i.e., a country of vast territorial expanse and economic affluence. On the other hand, Canada, too, is subject to political upheavals closely connected with "linguistic diversity". The case in point is the French separatist movement of the Province of Quebec which keeps erupting periodically. Montreal is, in fact, a North American micro-Switzerland, one of the most "Europeanized" cities on-the Continent. Canada's particular socio-linguistic problems arise from the fact that it is perhaps the only major country in the world (with the possible exception of India) where linguistic diversity has frequently led to political upheavals on a mass scale precisely because the rebelling minorities had the freedom to do so. This observation forces one to reach the paradoxical conclusion: Active, linguistically instigated uprising may be the symptoms of healthy, vigorous and essentially democratic societies, whereas apparent tranquillity in the face of linguistic diversity without violent conflagrations may be the symptom of an autocracy. Canada in others words, may be a "linguistically troubled area" vis-_-vis the "peaceful" Soviet Union, but it is "healthy" trouble that may eventually be solved by democratic means. The USSR is merely ìlinguistically diverse" and outwardly peaceful, but this is an unnatural state of affairs which must, eventually, lead to an atrophying of the indigenous cultures incorporated in the Soviet Super State. Whether the common sense of Canadians will ultimately prevail or secessionism continues, remains one of the question marks scarring the face of that beautiful land.

2.4 India

A special book could be written on the history of linguistically aggravated racial-religious bloodshed on the entire subcontinent. The separatist movement of the area of Madras (with a much darker, Dravidian Tamil-speaking population) keeps erupting time and again raising the specter of massacres that occurred after the assassination of Gandhi in 1948 when Moslems and Hindus annihilated each other by the hundreds of thousands resulting in the establishment of East and West Pakistan independent of India. The late Prime Minister Nehru consistently spoke English whenever he made a tour of the various states, always with an interpreter at his side. Despite the medieval conditions still prevailing throughout the larger portions of India, it is also the only democracy on the Continent, in the Western sense of the word. All differences in climate, history and character

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notwithstanding, this very fact establishes a major resemblance between Canada and India. Both countries are simultaneously linguistically diverse and troubled, but they both also have a chance to resolve their problems internally (i.e., without foreign intervention) and essentially in accordance with the principles of democracy.

2.5 Ceylon

The island-republic of Ceylon had some serious trouble in the past. The Singhalese majority (all Buddhists) who are fairer in color tend to oppress the darker, mostly Roman Catholic Tamils, who speak a non-Indo-European language of the Dravidian family. The Malaysian model would be the ideal one for them to emulate.

2.6 Malaysia

The present writer lived in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) from September 1963 until September 1964, just when the Federation firs. came into being. The country is racially and linguistically quite complex. Malay and English were joint official languages until September 1967,2) with native Malays barely in the majority.3)

On the Peninsula itself we find Chinese, speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka, Amoy, and Foochoow; Northern Indians speaking Punjabi and Marathi, also some Gujarati speakers; Southern Indians speaking Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam. Peninsular Malay itself comes in several distinct dialects, in addition to which on the Peninsula we find indigenous aboriginal tribes whose languages have not yet been fully described, let alone classified, one of the better known ones being Temiar. Europeans speaking English, Dutch, French, etc., cluster in larger business cities.

On the island of Borneo, in Sarawak and Brunei, the original inhabitants speak related Malayo-Polynesian languages, but Malay has to be learned in school. Riots have been known to occur primarily between the Malays and Chinese both for politico-economic as well as for racial and linguistic reasons.

Even after the loss of Singapore Malaysia has remained a solvent country. The government exerts a mild, but constant pressure on all of its citizens to learn the now sole official language, Malay. Each year they have a "National Language Month" and each morning from 8 A.M. to 9 A.M. Radio Malaysia broadcasts a language lesson both for beginners and for advanced students. The program is called "Learn A New Word A Day". It enjoys great success. The government maintains a special institute called the Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka whose job is the promotion of the Bahasa Kebangsaan (national language) through the capitalist device of the profit-incentive. Government employees can take more and more advanced language examinations in Malay, and receive increases in salary according to their proficiency. In the meantime the Malaysian television broadcasts

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its daily news in four major languages: Malay, English, Chinese, and Tamil. The rights of each minority are rather well respected.

2.7 Africa

This continent alone has produced more new independent nations in our century than the rest of the world produced in the past five hundred years. The linguistic problems of Africa are just now beginning to be realized and will probably become the subject of elaborate future research programs in many a leading university throughout the Western world. But merely to touch the surface: Description, standardization, usage regulation, education, designating of the role of temporary post-European linguae francae are merely the overture to the enormous tasks that lie ahead for scientific linguistics of the twenty-first century.

3. The Paradoxical Situation of Eastern Europe

The foregoing note on "linguistically diverse versus linguistically troubled areas,' serves but one purpose here: To show that most (if not all) linguistically troubled areas of the world are relatively young in terms of independent statehood with a reasonable chance to work out their problems according to the democratic tradition. The student of Eastern European affairs can, therefore, take consolation from the fact that it is not Eastern Europe alone where linguistic-cultural barriers enhance and aggravate the frequently artificial political ones. For example, India has suffered much greater losses fired by religiousracial-linguistic fanaticism than did Rumania, Czechoslovakia, or Hungary.

The problem as I see it, lies elsewhere.

The Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Polish, Bulgarian, Slovenian, and Russian languages can all be traced back via Old Church Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic to Proto-Indo-European, and assigning one thousand years of attestable separate existence to each of these languages on the average is perfectly reasonable. Rumanian, clearly a Romance language with Slavic loan elements in its vocabulary, may be said to be as old as Hungarian, the only non-IndoEuropean language in the area concerned.

Scientifically proven to belong to the Finno-Ugric family of languages, Hungarian (or Magyar} was clearly the intruder between the years 895-896 AD, when the Magyar tribes entered the Carpathian Basin from today's Western Russia, driving a wedge between the Northern and Southern Slavic languages. 4)

Surrounded by German, Slavic, and perhaps Rumanian speakers, Hungarian (as a language) has nevertheless endured for one thousand one hundred and fifty years until today. The point of this article is not either to justify or to condemn the presence of the non-IndoEuropean Hungarian speech island in its Indo-European surroundings.

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It is a fait accompli just as the historical existence of Germany, Austria, or Switzerland. Nor would it be in place here to eulogize Hungarian contributions to Western civilization beginning with the Turkish wars of the 16th century through Louis Kossuth's 19th century concept of a Danubian Federation, the music of Bart6k and Kodaly, and the revolution of 1956. All this is, strictly speaking, irrelevant here, as is the circuitous and never-ending argument as to "who was the oppressor against whom in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy?" Our present endeavor is to examine the East European situation objectively, from without, basing our examination of the area on the scientific methods of socio-linguistics couched in the political tradition of the great Western democracies. Before we proceed, however, with our proposals for a socio-linguistic solution to the minority problem in Eastern Europe, we must take a brief look at the countries concerned one by one.

4. The Problems of the Satellites

4.1 Yugoslavia

East of Austria, Yugoslavia is the least tyrannical state today in Europe. By constitution a Federal Republic, Yugoslavia has been the least unsuccessful in solving its internal minority problems. Yugoslav citizens speak several dialects of Serbian, Croatian, and Macedonian, and have additional minority groups of Italians, Turks, and Greeks. Larger cities in the northern part of the country are heavily populated by Hungarians. Novi Sad, for instance, has a relatively active and viable Hungarian cultural life with magazine and book publishing somewhat freer and more independent of political considerations than the still semi-Stalinist book publishing in Budapest. Works of a novelist such as Lajos Zilahy, who lives in New York, for instance, may be published in Novi Sad, but not in Budapest! (This, of course, does not mean that all classical or modern Hungarian authors, living in the West, could be published in Yugoslavia.) A striking paradox, indeed! And yet the relations of Serbia, later Yugoslavia and Hungary were anything but peaceful during the past one hundred years; World War I started in Sarajevo and border-raids and massacres originating on both sides during both world wars are well-documented and only too well remembered. Why is the linguistic diversity of Yugoslavia nevertheless not of the tragic, but of the more colorful, reassuring type? Because President Tito's leadership is less chauvinist and revanche-minded than that of other Iron Curtain countries: because Yugoslavia is separated geographically from the Soviet Union by other neighboring countries and because it has an extensive seacoast; because the Tito regime keeps an open border, which means that the Yugoslav worker may earn his living in Italy and send his money home, can buy a Fiat in Milan and drive it home to Belgrade. Yet, of course, not everything is well. The multinational country with

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many religions is extremely poor in certain areas and a great deal of economic reform needs to be enacted in connection with further steps toward democracy, before true linguistic equality can exist.

4.2 Czechoslovakia

The end of World War I brought with it the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. 5) As a result hundreds of Slovak and Hungarian villages kept changing masters during the past decades. Most cities and villages, in this area have two, sometimes three names, as, for instance, Kosice-Kassa-Kaschau, Bratislava-Pozsony-Pressburg, etc.

It cannot be the job of a socio-linguistic paper to, argue history. What one inescapably notices, however, is that the linguistic diversity of the Eastern European arena is inextricably interwoven with the politics of the area, where the politics is essentially different from the situation in the Far East. In Asia (outside the Soviet Union and China) it is within essentially democratically organized states that minority rebellions feeding on language grievances occur, whereas in Eastern Europe linguistically troubled areas arise as the residue of border struggles between linguistically and culturally well-established older nations. In the Far East language rebellions are fostered by a search for self-identity, while in Eastern Europe it is revanchism, irredentism, and chauvinism that cause constant friction between neighbors. I don't think any historian or statistician will ever be able to come up with a satisfactory answer as to who is "guiltier", say, between the Czechoslovaks and the Magyars. The answer is that human stupidity and narrow-mindedness are the guilty parties. The Czechs deported thousands of Hungarians after World War II, while due to a temporary benefit derived from the Stalinist "socialist constitution", Hungarians in Rumania actually enjoyed, for a very brief period, a certain amount of "cultural autonomy".

A few months before the writing of this paper Czechoslovakia seemed to be on the move toward a Yugoslav-style reorganization of the national minority problem. The "friendship treaty" between Dubcek and Kadar certainly could have worked for the mutual benefit of both countries. Dubcek, himself a Slovak, and thus the member of a minority group, could certainly have become more tolerant toward Hungarian writers and intellectuals in Bratislava-Pozsony, than his Stalinist predecessor, Novotny. Recent hopes for a genuine reconciliation of the two nations instead of a superficial rubber stamping of meaningless treaties between puppet commissars have been brutally shattered by the August 1968 Soviet intervention in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia. Dubcek's reform-minded leadership understood the need for democratization of the national minority problem and, as far as they were able to, they tried to rise to the occasion. Once again the Soviet tanks that rolled through the streets of Budapest in

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1956 have raped a defenseless country thereby preventing both Hungarians and Czechoslovaks from working out their mutual problems in a spirit of friendship. Nobody can predict at this time how and when these two countries will ever be able to come to a mutual understanding of real issues so long as they are both Soviet satellites.

4.3 Hungary

This former partner of the ill-fated Monarchy has all but completely lost its minorities. 6) There remain-a few villages on the eastern border where there are Rumanians. The Hungarian government is bending backwards doubly and triply to woo and accommodate their every desire. They have high schools, newspapers; they are, in fact, a privileged minority. German-speaking Swabians have dwelt in various parts of Hungary since the early Middle Ages and have never been really oppressed; 2S a matter of fact during Hitler's days of the infamous "Volksbund" they were very much on top either as members of the "Arrow Cross Party", or as German soldiers. They, too, have today their German language newspapers and schools in the appropriate regions. The number of Czechs, Serbians, etc., on the territory of today's Hungary is minute. So we simply cannot realistically speak of a minority problem in Hungary. The impartial Western observer, then, must sadly conclude that in the second half of the twentieth century Hungarians are the major victims of Eastern Europe's politically agitated linguistic diversity which arose in the wake of the First and Second World Wars.

4.4 Rumania

The sorest spot of all in this regard is Rumania (Table I). With approximately 2.5 million Hungarians 7) (Rumanian statistics acknowledge only 1.5 million; they are aided by the fact that many frightened Hungariansóespecially if they happen to be intermarried - would rather rumanianize their names and declare themselves Rumanian; thus many a Bodor became Bodorescu, etc.). Rumania, otherwise a clever, congenial nation with a hospitable Latin temperament, has been the least successful in coping with the minority problem in a democratic and relaxed spirit. There are, of course, the usual "justifications" of fear of Hungarian chauvinism (no wonder that there are Hungarians, even in the United States, who would like to see the borders rearranged between the two countries). Westerners are frequently amused by what goes on between Hungarians and Rumanians: they have engaged in a futile and romantic battle of "who is more ancient than the other?" First, the Rumanians invented the untenable Daco-Roman hypothesis, flatly claiming to be the descendants of Romulus and Remus. Outraged Hungarians retaliated and claimed that being the offspring of Attila the Hun, father of the Szeklers, they are in fact the true heirs of Transylvania. Now that this hotly debated piece of real estate once again is in Rumanian

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hands, 8) more than a fair share of archaeological discoveries is all too rapidly labeled as Rumanian-Latin, whether it belonged to the Avars, Huns, or Scythians. Thus, quite apart from any potential scientific value of this currently fashionable hypothesis, embittered Magyars have anxiously retaliated and are promoting, both in Transylvania, and in the United States, the theory of their Sumerian ancestry. 9) Be this as it may, it is actually irrelevant to the synchronic issues at stake.

NATIONAL COMPOSITION OF RUMANIA 1910-1966 9a)

Census:
in thousands 1910 1920 1930 1948 1956 1966 March 15
Rumanians 10,524 13,186 11,360 13,597 15,080 16,781
Hungarians 1,823 1,362 1,553 1,500 1,654 1,603
Germans 829 593 636 344 395 377
Ukrainians 1,032 576 117 116 113
Bulgarians 340 261 64 13 13
Turks 222 174 43 29 14
Slovaks, Czechs 25 32 47 25 25
Yugoslavians 66 53 47 43 43
Tartars 32 35 43 20 21
Gypsies 126 133 90 80 67
Jews 820 873 452 150 146 0
TOTAL 15,723 17,641 14,218 16,500 17,489 19,105

NATIONAL COMPOSITION OF RUMANIA IN PERCENTAGES 1910-1966

Census: 1910 1920 1930 1948 1956 1966 March 15
Rumanians 67.0 71.9 71.9 85.7 86.2 87.8
Hungarians 11.6 9.1 7.9 9.4 9.4 8.4
Germans 5.3 4.5 4.1 2.2 2.2 2.0
Jews 5.2 4.9 3.1 0.9 0.8 1.8
Others 10.9 9.6 13.0 1.8 1.4
TOTAL 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

LOSS AND GAIN OF THE NATIONALITIES IN RUMANIA BETWEEN 1910-1966

Increase (+) Decrease (-) in their%

Census between 1910-1920 1930-1966 1910-1966
Rumanians +4.9 +15.9 +20.8
Hungarians -2.5 -0.5 -3.2
Germans -0.8 -2.1 -3.3
Jews -0.3 -2.2 -4.4

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The question we must ask is that if Hungarians could have their schools and University under Peter Groza immediately after World War II, why can the same not be done under Maurer and Ceausescu, especially when the latter have so successfully moved away from total Soviet enslavement ? Cluj-Kolozsvar-Klausenburg, one of the most prominent Hungarian cultural centers and far older than Budapest, is certainly entitled to a Hungarian University. Nevertheless in 1962 Hungarians "voluntarily demanded" that their University be taken away from them and named Babes-Bolyai, instead of just Bolyai. Their well-argued "reasons" were, of course, that one could not do much with a Hungarian diploma. But why can a physician not cure pneumonia and polio with a Hungarian diploma? These diseases strike Rumanians and Magyars alike, or do they also talk? A certain misled stratum of Rumanian society still feels it necessary to discriminate against Hungarians due to revanchism 10) and some kind of deep-seated insecurity rooted in the fact that they actually know that Transylvania is merely administered by them due to the changing fortunes of world power politics. Yet on a deeper, human level, there is no reason why the two nations could not get along with one another like the nations in Switzerland. After all, their vital interests are identical: They need industry, education, more money, free elections, better trade and cultural contacts with the West, and increasingly more freedom from the Soviets. The Kremlin, of course, fears these common needs of the two nations very much, and deliberately uses their mutual distrust of one another to its own political ends, based on the Machiavellian concept of "divide and conquer". Should Bucharest go too far in pursuing an independent foreign policy course, Moscow can always blackmail the Rumanian leadership by arousing the Hungarians. Thus, understandably, the Rumanian Communist Party spends most of its newly won "freedom" on gradually erasing the Hungarian minority within Rumania, while it is not too late. Re-districting and internal deportation are the infamous methods used to achieve this end. These are accompanied by the constant, milder pressures of under-employment, failing of students who opt to take a University examination in Hungarian instead of Rumanian, discourtesy in shops toward Hungarian-speaking customers.

5. Outline of a Proposed Solution:
How Can Socio-Linguistics Help?

The "helvetization" of East Central Europe is no idle hypothesis invented by American intellectuals. It is, in fact, the only viable alternative to more bitterness, more injustice, continuing revanchism. The pendulum of irredentism must be Stopped once and for all. In order to achieve lasting peace in the Danubian Basin, the United States and Western influence must help bring democracy to this part of Europe, the Yalta Agreement and the status quo notwithstanding.

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The historian of 2150 may be able to look back upon our century and remark that while four-fifths of mankind emerged from slavery during this century, one fifth, once independent and free, subscribed to being dominated by others. Such a conclusion would be far from cynical and unfounded; it would be all too sadly correct. But it does not have to happen that way. We have thirty-two years to go before the century is out, just enough time for a generation of neo-humanists to grow up and put to practice the principle of tolerance, first advocated by one of the greatest political thinkers of all times, Montesquieu, who in his L'esprit des lois first outlined the current American practice known as "the separation of powers". The responsibility of the United States towards Europe is simply enormous and cannot be overemphasized. In an age of civil rights and interventionary wars in the Far East, Europe, still stunned by the blows of World War II, gradually begins to look towards independence. President Charles De Gaulle's France has successfully emancipated his country from American patronage; the Yugoslavs under Tito have, for all practical purposes, torn themselves away from the clutches of the Kremlin, and Rumania has being pursuing a relatively independent foreign policy course.

Hungary today is no longer the same Stalinist prison it was be1ore the tragic uprising of 1956, and there is reason to hope that Czechoslovakia, too, despite the Soviet military intervention, will not return to hard-line Stalinism..

The American role in Rumania is particularly important. Rumania wants American aid in using nuclear power, and building oil refineries. The science of linguistics has received extraordinary stimulus and growth in the United States in the 20th century, and socio-linguistics, American style, could be one of America's greatest contributions yet to a lasting peace in Europe. We map the ghetto and the slum dialects; write grammars of languages spoken in the Amazon jungle, maintain a Summer Institute of Linguistics, a Linguistic Society of America, the American Bible Society with its manifold linguistic projects. America has made considerable advances in the fields of machine translation and computational linguistics as well as in general linguistic theory, and Indo-European studies. Hundreds of graduate students leave leading American universities each year with advanced degrees in linguistics. An impartial group of American scholars trained in sociolinguistics could found, lead, and supervise specially trained research committees, perhaps backed by UNESCO. In what follows I will present a brief outline of some of the basic steps to be taken by such socio-linguistically trained research committees in the Danubian Basin:

(1) All concerned countries in the Danubian Basin would be invited to send a representative committee of linguists to an international summit conference. Being linguists and not politicians, they would vow total impartiality and would seek to approach the multilingual

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problem of the Danubian Basin from the human angle rather than the political-etatistic one. In other words: They would adopt the ideological platform that their discussions are not about borders, but about life. Thus in a pre-federation stage of "United Central Europe" the "summit" would decide that it will turn its multi-lingual areas into research areas instead of disaster areas.

(2) The summit conference would divide the Danubian Basin into multi-lingual research areas based on accurate and truthful population statistics. Joint committees of the mixed national groups concerned would then conduct socio-linguistic investigations and would proceed to make specific recommendations to each local government concerned, indicating what needs to be done in the sphere of equal opportunity in elementary, high school, and university education in the local language of each specific area; what the needs and resources of teaching personnel and jobs are in relation to the local population statistics. Thus, in Bratislava-Pozsony-Pressburg a joint committee of Slovaks, Hungarians, Austrians, and relatively disinterested Rumanians trained in socio-linguistics, would record the number of speakers of each dialect, outline their educational background, the number of their children; they would indicate the parents' desire as to what language they wish their children to be educated in. Likewise, in Cluj-Kolozsvar-Klausenburg, a committee of Rumanian, Hungarian, Saxon, Czech, Slovak, and Serb, Croat, Slovene ethno-linguists would conduct similar field-work and make concrete recommendations to the Rumanian government. In turn, the Rumanian government would have the right to inspect all Rumanian groups in all other countries concerned, and if it finds the educational and employment facilities lacking may make b i n d i n g c o u n t e r r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s to the Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovak, etc., authorities.