Abstract
The poem contains, in alphabetical order: Arabic, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Buryat, Chechen, Chinese, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Kalmyk, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Mari, Mongolian, Mordvinian (Moksha and Erzä), Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Serbi- an, Swedish, Russian, Tatar (also Mishar Tatar), Turkish (also Turkic), Udmurt, Ukrainian, Uygur and Uzbek. As structure for this poem, I used Johanna Domokos’ theory of degrees of code-switching, from an apparently monolingual text to the high- est degree where the matrix language is impossible to discern. My language choices, grammar play and mixing of alphabets are not random. Several of the languages are those that the persons mentioned in the poem spoke or studied. Others were chosen to create references to or reflections about specific political events or states, such as the Great Purge in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Chinese concentration camps for Uygurs and other minorities, and totalitarian North Korea and Russia. Some languages were spoken by neighbors to the speakers mentioned: for instance, Mari, Mordvinian, and Chuvash are spoken in the same region as Mishar and Kazan Tatar around the Volga River. Other languages were chosen because of the rhythm or sound they could contribute to the poem or because they are spoken in places where the persons visited or stayed for some time. The end is simply a play on words and rhymes to have fun and wreak havoc upon the most widespread imperial language of today, English.
