Photo: PEACE by Helga Stentzel / helgastentzel.com
Ana Aleksić
December 29, 2022
VocUp is a free platform for learning Albanian and Serbian, aimed primarily at young people to master basic conversational skills.
Veljko Samardžić from the NGO Center for Social Initiatives, supported by IOM, UNMIK, the British Embassy in Kosovo, and the Office of the Language Commissioner, leads a team of young people who have been developing the concept of language learning through traditional and online courses for five years.
In an interview with our portal, Samardžić emphasizes that VocUp was created as a response by ordinary people who understand that language barriers in Kosovo are both a cause and a consequence. On one hand, life shows you at every step that without communication with your surroundings, you are deprived of many important things. The need to learn the language arose primarily from everyday communication problems in institutions such as the police, banks, municipalities, bus and train stations. The platform is designed to meet the needs of a wide range of people, from students and young professionals aged 25 to 30, to civil servants and representatives of civil society, helping them to master expressions used in women’s activism.
Kosovo is, in many ways, a paradoxical society. It is incomprehensible that a fairly advanced Law on the Use of Languages, which stipulates that Albanian and Serbian are equal official languages, is violated almost everywhere. All relevant international organizations recognize this problem and insist on its resolution.
However, the undeniably important insistence on respecting the Language Law should be separated from the need for communication among citizens and neighbors. Serbs and Albanians communicate in the minority language when Albanians know Serbian (87%), when both interlocutors know English (6%), or when Serbs know Albanian (6%). Thus, paradoxically, the communication of the overwhelming (Albanian) majority is almost exclusively conducted in the language of the (Serbian) minority.
Veljko Samardžić further points out that even though it has been thirty-one years since our children last learned the languages of their neighbors in schools, and there was pessimism when they started, people showed a greater desire to learn languages than anticipated. This is evidenced by the data that over 70,000 people have used the site almost half a million times. “The application provided what policies and institutions did not,” concludes Samardžić and continues:
**Android and IOS application: Voc Up**
“Around 750 people responded to the call to learn Serbian or Albanian in our traditional courses. Albanians, Serbs, and other ethnic communities have thus shown that the need for communication is different from what political elites suggest. There are few good news stories from Kosovo, but I am sure that the news that over 300 young Albanians in Pristina are learning Serbian, at least slightly, breaks media stereotypes. Or the fact that the Department of Albanian Language is the oldest department at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade.”
Insufficient attention has been given to another significant project. After 30 years, a two-way Serbian-Albanian dictionary has been created. Language experts from Belgrade and Pristina, believe it or not, had not met for 30 years. Just imagine how much languages change in that period. Just imagine all that has happened in that period, and we have not moved an inch. Neither we nor our differences.
We try to foster a culture of language learning and tolerance for linguistic differences. If the vast majority of people around you speak Albanian, and on the other hand, almost 20 million people speak Serbian or can understand it, ignoring this need leads to ghettoization.
For a moment, we can reflect on the general benefits that learning foreign languages brings. It opens a window to the world, an escape from narrow-mindedness and isolation. Learning a foreign language and immersing yourself in a completely new culture and worldview is the surest way to become an open, understanding, tolerant person, and that is absolutely priceless. When you are aware that we are all cultural beings, products of our own environments, you are ready to view others in a more favorable light. Seeing the world from a different perspective and understanding where you and others come from is a fantastic experience that opens your eyes.
Although we see signs of cooperation among neighbors on the ground, Samardžić points out the gap between the needs of both sides and the public narrative: “Research we conducted in 2018 showed that a small percentage of Albanians are willing to learn Serbian, while a slightly larger percentage of Serbs want to learn the language of their neighbors. In that research, you have an equally large number of respondents from the Serbian community who say that their language rights are not respected, and respondents from the Albanian community who say those rights are significant. Such a disproportion is because we live in two parallel realities. When you talk to people on a rational level, you won’t find much difference between Serbs and Albanians. When you ask them if they need it, if it would make employment easier… you get one kind of answer. But when you ask to introduce the language in schools as an elective, you get very specific answers like: ‘Yes, but it’s not the time.’ I always ask: ‘And when is that time?’ Language is not just communication; it is understanding, so we can better understand each other’s fears, know the myths, the songs, the culture, and maybe resolve our conflicts more easily.”
No matter how much we avoid communication and wait for the law to “command” us in which language to communicate, only mutual respect can solve everyday problems. Stable, deep peace does not come from apathy and neutrality. Eliminating every opportunity for conflict is equally necessary for both Serbs and Albanians, and mutual courteous, fluent communication in everyday life is the path to achieving stable living. As Veton Surroi, a well-known Albanian journalist and writer, wrote in his book: “…we exist only in the language in which we describe our lives and dreams… everything we think, speak or do not, inevitably reaches the world, living on in our thoughts and souls without any prior announcement…” applies to all people in the world.
With the author’s permission, we are pleased to publish Helga Stentzel’s photograph from the website (www.helgastentzel.com) and Instagram account: helga.stentzel. In describing her artwork, she wrote: “I love giving my artworks funky creative names, but this time it seems only one name is right: Peace. Peace among countries, among people, and between different parts of our personalities that wage brutal battles in our heads and souls.”
Helga’s artworks can be purchased on the shop page of the site. All proceeds go to charities working in Ukraine.