“I heard you say that the Kalmyk language is being lost, but this is a very superficial view indeed. Is it not the same with any language in our epoch? Where do you hear good literary language, be it Kalmyk or Russian?”, our Kalmyk translator argues. “There are almost no new names in literature, and even in Russian there is not a single book whose entire print run is sold out in a few days, as it used to be in earlier times”.
“But look here”, she continues, “Two years ago there was a process of audio recording of the Kalmyk New Testament, and many people from different professions, but predominantly actors in our theatres, journalists and other prominent people were invited to take part in it. What a beautiful audio recording we got as a result! But what I want to tell you now is that when I visited the studio to hear them reading the texts, I heard plenty of exclamations of delight. It was their first acquaintance with the biblical text, and it was in their native language, and they found it extremely interesting and incredibly beautiful. When I came to the studio, five copies of the New Testament were distributed among them, so that they could read the texts, and when the recording was over, alas, we looked for these copies, but none of them remained. All five copies were gone! I had four more copies with me and I had to present them all…”
“Some sayings in the Book of Proverbs are very close to our Kalmyk folk wisdom.”
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