Miss Nonna - Professor NV Stankevich

In the tradition room of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities - Vietnam National University, Hanoi, among the portraits of the school's honored teachers, there is a picture of a foreign female professor. Visitors from outside the school, new students, when visiting this room, often find it strange, but it is not strange for alumni like us. That is Russian linguistics professor Nonna Vladimirovna Stankevich of the Faculty of Philology, Hanoi National University.That's the professor's full name, but we don't need to add any other formal terms, we usually just call her "Miss Nonna" (There are two lettersnin the middle). I mentioned two wordsnIt was for a funny reason. Three years ago, Mr. Nguyen Tai Can sent me a letter, and through me, asked the University of Social Sciences and Humanities to certify the number of years of work at the school so that the teachers could send it to the retirement management agency. At the end of the letter, he added: "T/B: N. remember to write her name: Nonna - two letters e n in the middle. Many times we didn't pay attention, writing one letter n as Nona, when doing paperwork, especially going to the police, household registration... it was very troublesome". She was one of the "Four Gentlemen" of the Literature Department of Hanoi University in the past. The nicknameFour SeasonsThis name was invented and passed down by us students at that time to call the four teachers whom we loved and respected very much: Ms. Dang Thi Hanh, Ms. Le Hong Sam, Ms. Hoang Thi Chau and Ms. Nonna. Each one has her own style, but the depth and respectable elegance in academics are the same. Now,Four SeasonsOur teachers have retired for a long time. Even us, the rural, provincial students of those teachers back then, nineteen or twenty, are now "gradually aging". Ms. Hanh, Ms. Sam, Ms. Chau are still in Hanoi, and Ms. Nonna retired in the Russian Federation, her hometown. When we were students of the Faculty of Literature, the country was still at war and divided. Life was very poor. Everything was lacking. But strangely, why was the atmosphere back thenlearnandaskThere was no shortage of foreigners in school. Back then, in our country, normally, meeting a foreigner was a rare thing. Yet we had a genuine Russian teacher, dressed in Vietnamese style, wearing a conical hat, coming to class to teach attentively like other Vietnamese teachers. The first time we met and listened to her lecture, it felt strange. In Vietnamese. Very gentle. Observant people could easily hear a little "Nghe accent". Concise, no sentence was redundant or repetitive. The names of famous scientists in the world in the field she taught such as Skalichka, Kasnelson, Iakhontov, Uspenskji, Greenberg... along with their thoughts, methods... came to us through her lectures onTypes of languagesfrom those days. Later, after finishing school, staying to train as a lecturer, working together in the department, I gradually understood more about her. Her hometown is St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), where the blue Neva River reflects purple sunsets and casts shadows of castles, palaces, golden, magnificent, withwhite nights of JuneThe magical and the festival of “Scarlet Sails”, there is the famous Leningrad University, now renamed St. Petersburg University. There, in 1964, she defended her doctoral thesis on “The category of adjectives in modern Vietnamese” under the guidance of Professor SE Jakhontov, a very familiar name in the international linguists. At first, she studied Chinese language and literature, with the second foreign language being Tibetan. Because the teacher was sick, Tibetan was no longer taught. Vietnamese was taught instead. At the end of the course, she took the graduation exam in Chinese language and Chinese literature, but wrote her graduation thesis on Vietnamese studies. She should have continued to research and teach Vietnamese studies there, along with those who laid the foundation for Vietnamese studies at St. Petersburg University at that time, such as ND Andreev, Nguyen Tai Can, IS Bystrov, MV Gordina, VS Panfilov, IP Zimonina, D. Letjagin; But fate brought her to marry the Nguyen Tai family in Thuong Tho village, Thanh Chuong, Nghe An; and her life partner was the talented linguist - Professor Nguyen Tai Can. Returning to her husband's hometown, Vietnam, she was recruited as a lecturer at Hanoi University, Faculty of Literature; and from then on, she devoted herself to the Linguistics Department of the University (now the Linguistics Department of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, under the Vietnam National University, Hanoi) until her retirement. So she started her scientific career in Leningrad, but during her time doing research and teaching, she was completely in Vietnam, and most of the time during the difficult, arduous, and war-torn times of the country. At that time, the Linguistics and Vietnamese Linguistics Department at Hanoi University was just beginning to be established. She and her colleagues worked hard to develop the department. She compiled textbooks and taught subjects on translation theory and methods, on types of languages, and also taught Russian practice, researched Vietnamese grammar, and then she researched Nom script (with Mr. Can), Vietnamese Chinese literature, especially on the linguistic exchange between Van Ngu and Vietnamese, researched Vietnamese prose language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... In every field, she achieved remarkable results. Two books:Types of languages(written separately),Vietnamese Grammar(written with Bystrov, Nguyen Tai Can), along with over hundreds of her articles published in scientific journals and research books at home and abroad. ParticularlyTypes of languagesis the only book in this field, so far, in Vietnam, compiled and used as an official textbook for students majoring in Linguistics. It is thought that this work should be proposed to receive a worthy award. The bookVietnamese Grammarby three authors presents a system and descriptive method that, at the time of publication, was considered quite new and practical. Her contribution to Vietnamese studies is not limited to that. During the war, when international exchange was difficult, she was like a bridge, promptly introducing new achievements and research trends in world linguistics and Soviet linguistics to Vietnam, and introducing Vietnamese culture, literature, and Vietnamese linguistics abroad through many translated works and research articles. In 2005, Editor-in-Chief of the magazineLanguage- Professor Nguyen Duc Ton - asked me to write a short article to introduce and celebrate Professor Stankevich's 70th birthday. It was difficult, but I tried. And after finishing writing, I immediately thought of asking Mr. Can to check again. Luckily, he was in Hanoi at that time. I remember asking him something like: Did you introduce or translate and introduce many modern Vietnamese literary works into Russian, is that right? He paused for a moment and then said: "Yes. You translated and introduced works by Ngo Tat To, Nguyen Cong Hoan, Anh Duc, Nguyen Minh Chau"... Then he slowly stood up and went to look through the bookshelf. I followed him in and gave him a hand. A stack of works, quite a lot, by Ngo Tat To, Nguyen Cong Hoan, Anh Duc, Nguyen Minh Chau... and also by Huy Can, Nguyen Tuan, Hoang Trung Thong... with very respectful dedications and thanks. All were printed on straw paper of melon watercolor or dull yellow, gray, products marking a time of hardship and deprivation. Before and after 1970, she was the first person to introduce the language and script of ancient Nom texts.Only the Jade Sound of the South explains the meaning,Zen Buddhist sayings...to the world of linguistics and Soviet Vietnamese studies; and these documents have received a lot of attention. In particular, she was also the first person to discover and introduce Catholic texts.Distinguishing between right and wrongWritten in Vietnamese, extremely rare, in Leningrad, causing a great stir in the Vietnamese studies research community, especially in the Soviet Union at that time. Besides such professional work, up to now, few people know that many important documents of the Party and State, many documents of high-ranking delegations on business trips were translated into Russian by her. Once, when talking about this, I asked Teacher Can, half-jokingly, half-seriously: "It seems that back then, there was probably no money or remuneration, Teacher." He just smiled and said: "When the superiors assign it, you have to try to do it. It's also a task. But in our country, there are many things that are very funny. Especially the working documents of delegations of this ministry or that branch, this association, that association... It's like dropping a bomb. Tomorrow or a few days from now, you'll leave, but today you bring it to me to ask for my help." So she had to try again. Staying up all night and day. It's really hard." She also translated many articles of high-ranking leaders into Russian, and was a member of the team that first translated President Ho Chi Minh's will into Russian. The late Prime Minister Pham Van Dong often requested that his articles published in Pravda newspaper be translated by her. Just like that, she quietly did and contributed to the "famous" and many "unknown" things. The way she and Mr. Nguyen Tai Can worked was surprisingly persistent and patient. Back when there were no photocopiers,Vietnamese - Portuguese - Latin DictionaryA. De Rhodes's work had not been translated and printed, but in order to have documents for work, she and partly Mr. Can took the trouble to copy the whole thing in Leningrad. Then, before and after 1975, at a research institute, a Nom dictionary was compiled, but it had not been printed yet, so she and Mr. Can asked to copy the whole thing. Later, when talking to us about this, she and Mr. Can both said: "For precious and rare documents that have not been printed for use, we have to try to take the trouble to copy them. To have something to work with. That kind of thing is often difficult to print. Who knows when it will take. If we try to copy them, we will have documents to work with a few years sooner"... In reality, that was true. One time, Mr. Can laughed and said: "N., do you see that's right? I have had documents for work for two or three years now, but the book has not been printed yet. It's difficult." Going with Mr. Can to work at the University of Paris 7 for a while, she and Mr. Can asked Mr. Ph. Langlet, Mr. Y. Hervouet introduced to Mr. LMJ Verinaud and LMCI. Lange let these two men introduce her to the archives of the Foreign Missions Center (Séminaire des Missions étrangères - built in 1663 at 128 Rue du Bac, Paris today) to exploit ancient archives. Then she discovered and described quite thoroughly, published and introduced a series of very valuable documents written in Vietnamese in the 17th - 18th century: how many volumes, the symbol of each volume, what each volume includes, the current state of the text, content, specific date... (Article printed in the magazineScience- Hanoi University and in the bookSome evidence of language, writing and cultureby Mr. Nguyen Tai Can in 2001). In 1984, she was recognized and appointed as Professor of Linguistics. In 1992, she retired. But her professional work remained the same. Articles for international conferences, articles for scientific journals... were still written. Research again.Vietnamese linguistic tradition and its contact with Chinese linguistic tradition(book:History of language sciences, published in Berlin and New York, 2000), writes for the magazineLanguage(Vietnam) on function words and grammar in ancient Nom textsLegendary Romance, introducing new achievements and methods of Russian lexicography... In 2010, I had the opportunity to visit her and Mr. Can in Moscow. She still asked her brothers at home who had researched and published what. And she also told me: "If you have the chance, please send it to us to read."

Going back to the old story, it is known that when they first returned from the Soviet Union, the teachers were assigned by their superiors to live in a part of a rather beautiful villa on a central street in Hanoi. Then, at the University of Hanoi at that time, a "cultural revolution" suddenly broke out, almost like a foreign country. It was only a "laboratory" scale, but it was enough to cause harm. A number of scientists from the natural sciences and then the literature department were targeted first. Mr. Nguyen Tai Can was among them. That villa was also abandoned, no longer lived in. The teachers managed to buy a house near the flea market. On the opposite side of the street was a temporary detention camp of the police. At that time, the distance from the city center to the flea market was still considered remote. That was a story from the past, I heard from my elders, but when we got to know the teachers, the scene had changed completely, that camp no longer existed. Behind two iron gates at the height of a person, a bit dilapidated, is the entrance to the Teacher's house, which is also a small, narrow yard, clinging to the length of the house wall. Inside, there is a rather large magnolia tree standing next to a small bamboo clump planted for decoration but bushy and rarely trimmed. Under the magnolia tree is an old toad, who knows how long it has been lying there, its eyes staring at everyone, not knowing how afraid of anyone. A long time ago, when I was sitting drinking tea and chatting with Teacher Can, I mischievously poured tea on his head, but he just raised his hand to wipe the water away and then lay still with wide eyes, saying nothing. The wooden table (it seems he made it himself, not like a professional craftsman), Teacher Can often placed under the magnolia tree to work and receive guests in the summer. Her gifts for many friends, colleagues, and students were magnolia flowers she picked, placed in a small envelope that she cut and pasted herself from newspaper. Elegant and fragrant... Many of her and her students came to study at that house. There was a time, around 1985-1990, when Mr. Can organized at his house a series of talks on each issue of linguistics and Vietnamese linguistics ("speaking words" are seminars) in which a number of teachers, students, and brothers enthusiastically volunteered to participate, present, and discuss. The teacher and Ms. Can were pleased, self-deprecatingly calling itscientific cooperatives. I kept thinking: the so-called research groups that we are discussing today, perhaps were also formed and formed in such a way? The subsidy period. Then the destructive war of the US Air Force. Bombs. Evacuation. Hardship, struggle, lack of everything. The superiors worried about her, advised her to temporarily evacuate to the Soviet Union. She thanked them, and then the whole family evacuated with the school to Dai Tu - Thai Nguyen. When they had to evacuate for the second time to avoid enemy bombs, it was the same, returning to the countryside, without any hesitation. Just think: suppose (onlysuppose(That's it), that day, she evacuated to her hometown to avoid the bombs, while Teacher Can was facing difficulties in the background and working atmosphere, what was it like?... The day he was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Prize for Science, and was conferred the noble title of People's Teacher... everyone who knew him and was close to him was happy and congratulated him. But it seemed like they could still hear it somewhere... "I only see people smiling now”... - a sentence from a translation of an ancient poem from far away in the North, used as an introduction to a period drama series, which has been occasionally shown on TV every evening. A while ago, I went to work at a university far away from home. She also went with Teacher Can to work there for a few months. One day I visited her. We talked about work, then she advised me to take care of my health when I had to be away from my family. She also taught me how to cook and take care of children (my first son was only three years old at that time). She said: “You know, during the evacuation, Viet and Nam [her two sons] were still young. At night, of course, there was only oil lamps. She sat working, putting him to sleep next to her. When a child cries, the first thing you have to do is check to see if he or she is bitten by ants or insects, if not, he or she might be wetting the bed, if not, he or she might be hungry, or in winter, he or she might be cold”... I listened, not only saw and learned the experience of taking care of children, but also saw the teacher and other teachers and students with books and oil lamps on a winter night in the evacuation area..., saw my hometown again, a rural area near the sea, the gateway for American planes at that time. The sound of alarm bells. The sound of anti-aircraft guns. The sound of bombs exploding in the city or somewhere else, sometimes near, sometimes far. Some nights, I even heard the sound of artillery fire from American warships at sea. We were children, growing up, but hunger was always rumbling in our stomachs. At night, two or three siblings, each in a corner of a rickety wooden bed in the house, huddled together to study, yawning around the oil lamp in the middle, with a small speaker made from the cover of an old notebook blocking the light. The light shone out, afraid that American planes would detect her... In today's terms, she had integrated with us. Returning to Vietnam, a strange country, at a time when it was still very poor and difficult, having just emerged from the resistance war against colonialism, she quickly overcame the initial confusion and calmly and confidently joined the fight. When the American air force bombed, she also evacuated to the forest to avoid bombs and bullets, working and raising a small child, when she returned to Hanoi, she still had ration cards for everything, the monthly standard was to buy 13 kilos of food mixed with noodles and corn... but she still focused on research and teaching... I could not know if she and the teacher were "poor" and "poor", but "lost their way" was clear. If they were not "lost their way", then in that situation, how could they have dug up such research results. Life was so deprived, but in teaching and research, she always set the highest requirements under possible conditions. The day I first stayed at the school, it was she and Mr. Can in One time, sitting down and talking opened my mind to what a research paper is, what are the criteria for evaluating a research paper, what are the standards required for a research paper, how does it differ from a newspaper article... what requirements must a student majoring in the field meet, what do they know how to do... More than ten years later, when I was at Cornell University in the United States, one day I introduced two of my friends to her, including P., a Thai, pretty, cheerful and energetic person who spoke Vietnamese fluently with a strong Hanoi accent, who was a graduate student at the time and had worked for a number of international organizations. After meeting her a few times, she really liked P. and told me: "We must try to train students like that." Returning to her hometown to retire, she, like other teachers, left the School and Faculty all of her research and teaching achievements. When she retired, among the "family heirlooms" she brought with her, were a steel helmet given to her during the war, destroyed by the American air force, and a medal.Medal of Resistance War against America for National Salvation(A medal, for sure, but I don't remember which rank. I'm afraid to ask. Because if I send a letter now, I know she's also afraid to talk about commendations, so... never mind). I keep thinking: It turns out that her entire time, her most energetic scientific work, teaching, and training, until her retirement, was always in a state of "when here, I miss the other side, when over there, I miss this place". But normally, "... at both ends of the longing, the affection is more profound..." like the lyrics of a song, which people still sing recently. When she was in Hanoi, that far away place was her hometown. When she was in St. Petersburg or Moscow now, Hanoi with its wet streets and alleys, the harsh summer days and a few cool autumn days, then the last month of the year, bustling with peach and kumquat trees, because... Tet is here; Hanoi, with her research and teaching work on linguistics and Vietnamese studies, had a hot summer afternoon with golden sunshine, teaching in class where the cicadas on the old tree next to the classroom drowned out the voices of the teachers, we scooped water and splashed it on the tree to chase the cicadas away... perhaps it had become indelible. That's why every time Teacher Can returned to Hanoi, he brought his camera to take a series of photos: the alley leading to her house before, the small tea shop on the side of the road near her house, the stairs in the apartment building, the electric pole at the beginning of the alley, someone's window in the distance, the tangled electric wires in the sky... To dispel my probably curious look about taking photos like that, Teacher explained: "Teacher told me to take photos to bring to her so she wouldn't miss me so much." And I was silent. In August 2010, I had the opportunity to visit the Teacher in Moscow. I asked the Teacher many things, then said: "You and the Teacher try to take care of your health, and when you have the opportunity, you can come to Hanoi again. Hanoi has changed a lot now." She looked out the window for a moment, her eyes seemed distant, then turned back and said: "I really want to, but the doctor won't let me." I knew she had health problems when traveling by plane. That day, I was taken to the Teacher's house by Mr. Hoang (a new, sincere friend, who, together with his wife, Ms. Hanh, took care of the business trip of Ms. Thu Ha, Mr. Pham Ngoc Thanh and me). By chance, she learned that Ms. Hanh's house in Nghe An was right next to Teacher Can's house before, and Mr. Hoang knew many relatives on the Teacher's side. She mentioned and asked him about which uncles, aunts, aunts, nieces... are they still doing anything, where are they... I heard and understood why the Teacher's relatives loved her, as I had heard and seen. Vietnamese life, the Vietnamese soul was very profound and seemed to have merged with the Russian soul in her. That's why I can tell another small story below. In February 2011, Teacher Nguyen Tai Can passed away. His remains were brought back to his hometown. Before returning to Nghe An, he stopped in Hanoi. After welcoming him from the airport to his home, his family, relatives, and students set up a coffin to pay their respects. While everyone was starting to burn incense and prepare to put it in the incense bowl, I suddenly saw Mr. Nguyen Tai Viet, the eldest son of the Teacher and his wife, hurried from outside into the room, while walking he quickly opened a small roll of newspaper, wrapped it carefully, took out three incense sticks brought from Russia, put them in the incense bowl first, then the burning of incense continued. A strange feeling suddenly passed through my mind, I couldn't identify it, I didn't know how to describe it... There is a saying "good fortune comes from the mother". I vaguely saw behind him, behind his actions, the shadow of his mother - Professor Nonna Vladimirovna Stankevich./.