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Monday, July 19, 2004

Volusia, Flagler area linguistic melting pot

By Andrew Lyons | News-Journal Staff Writer

That unfamiliar chatter in the grocery store line could be Croatian, Armenian or Cambodian.

Or it could be Yiddish in Ormond Beach, where 31 people schmooze in the Jewish language. And don’t discount Polish if you’re browsing the kielbasa in Palm Coast, where 150 people speak the language.

This brief linguistic breakdown has been brought to you by the fine folks at the Modern Language Association, who have toiled over tons of U.S. Census data to weave a tapestry of the many tongues spoken throughout this country.

The association’s new interactive Language Map Data Center has Volusia and Flagler counties looking like a modern-day Ellis Island.

While only 18 people in Flagler speak Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, 63 speak it in Volusia. Daytona Beach physician Gohar Khan is one of them.

Born in India, the 63-year-old said she has met at least 15 families in East Volusia who attend church, meet at each other’s homes and speak the language that is very similar to Hindi.

“I don’t think people realize how diverse this area is,” Khan said.

With just a few clicks of the mouse, marketers searching for speakers of Greek, Chinese and Arabic can find the zip codes for future mass mailings while parents of a specific ethnic background can zero in on cities to live where little Johnny might more easily find friends.

The language association has, so far, mapped the top 30 languages in the country, but with the federal government’s recent release of the country’s top 300 languages, the New York City-based research group has more work ahead.

“Isn’t this a great place where you can go to Polish Mass in one community and then go to a synagogue in another and hear Yiddish or Hebrew?” said Rosemary G. Feal, the association’s executive director. “Just as we are a country that values diversity of religion and ethnicity, we are also a country that values our diversity of language.”

That’s certainly evident in the tiny Flagler community of Korona, a virtual melting pot of ethnic backgrounds who gather at St. Joseph Carmelite Monastery. The only common threads that pull everyone together are faith and Father Joseph Zawada’s famous coffeecake.

“There’s always different languages you can encounter,” said Marie Mayula, a church member and one of 173 Flagler residents who speak Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.

On Thursday morning, 22 Polish speakers gathered in the monastery’s impeccably clean chapel to hear the message on the dangers of stumbling through life without God’s help.

For every hymn, Gregory Czenczelewski sang and did he ever. The 83-year-old never missed a word; in fact, he was the loudest in the sanctuary.

“We’re proud of the Polish language and culture,” he said later in English. “That’s why I’m here.”

Many more church members come from other far-flung locales including Eastern Europe and South America. Mass services for the various languages are scattered throughout the week.

Father Joe has thought of the perfect way to honor church members — the Ten Commandments in 10 different languages. The tablets will be placed on the sprawling monastery grounds along with a marble carving of Moses.

“God is working,” Father Joe said. “I am only his servant.”

South of the monastery in Ormond Beach, Rabbi Pinchas Ezagui studies, thinks and jots down notes in Yiddish. Since the day he was born in Montreal in 1966, the language has engrossed Pinchas.

“All the great teachers and rabbis, when they speak today, they speak Yiddish,” he said. “But the reality is, most people in the temple today don’t speak it.”

That is, except for two elderly women — one of them a Holocaust survivor — whom Rabbi Pinchas has never physically met, yet he receives telephone calls from at least once a month.

The rabbi said they call to gab about life. In Yiddish, it’s called “schmoozing.”

The rabbi is proud of being one of only a handful of locals who speak Yiddish. He hosts a radio program and every week teaches listeners a Yiddish word. But he’s been known to take great liberties.

Once, he wove a few words together and told Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to go to hell. He figures no one noticed.

You could say he acts like a real “meshungina” — a crazy person.

The rabbi said: “Everybody has a little meshungina in them.”

The MLA Language Map Data Center: www.mla.org/census_main

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