We returned to the UK for a few weeks to get our affairs in order. When you’ve spent the last few decades tucked away in rural Cambridgeshire, emigrating is a big thing.
I decided I didn’t want to appear the Little Englander, so I’d make a start on learning the language. That will surprise them, when at the press conference on my first day in charge I tell them, ‘It’s a wonderful club and I’m proud to have been given the opportunity to manage here’ in fluent…well, fluent what?
What exactly do they speak?
A little research suggests that according to most people the Moldovans generally speak Romanian. A few would describe the language as Moldovan, but to all intents and purposes that seems to mean nothing other than ‘Romanian when it’s spoken in Moldovan’ – though evidently there’s some political sensitivity around the question.
But a little further digging reveals it’s not quite so straightforward. In the south of the country, which is where FC Saxan is based, many people speak the Gagauz language, a Turkic language with its roots in the Balkans.
Well, I don’t want to spend weeks learning one language only to find I should really have spoken the other. And I certainly don’t want to learn both — unlike my wife, I’m no great linguist.
I decide that my strategy will be to:
- start by speaking English VERY LOUDLY;
- rely on someone – Karen? — as my interpreter
- pick stuff up as I go along.
Sorted.
