Language planning and media: the case of Romani

Abstract

Romani media and language planning gained importance as a consequence of the political emancipation of the Roma, which is mainly based on the idea of a European Roma nation with its own culture and language. Meanwhile the study of Romani has developed from an exotic into a more or less established scientific field. However, with respect to media there are only a few descriptions of the situation. Romani media have not really received serious academic attention. This paper does not offer an exhaustive analysis of Romani media either, but aims to provide an overview of the background of language planning using examples from the media. Beyond this, it tries to outline the linguistic aspects of the expansion of Romani into formal, media-related domains by analysing example text excerpts from bilingual journals. The linguistic strategies used in this expansion process are rooted in the socio-linguistic situation of Romani (which is discussed in the introductory chapter of this paper) and the resulting implications for language planning initiatives, which are presented in the main part of the paper. The concluding chapter deals with Inter-Romani on the basis of the concept of ‘linguistic pluralism in Romani’.

Keywords:

• Romani
• language planning
• media

Notes

Matras (2005b) is the printed version of an electronically published paper from 2004. This original paper is available on the Manchester Romani project website: http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/downloads/2/Matras_Pluralism.pdf

Vlax derives from Romanian Valahia, indicating that Vlax Roma originate from Walachia and adjacent Moldavia.

For a detailed discussion of the functions of Romani, see Matras (1999). An overview of the functions and the status of Romani is outlined in Halwachs (2003).

This has, among other things, to be seen in connection with the plurality of Romani: Educational authorities are used to dealing with ‘homogeneous’ languages which dispose of a standard that serves as a teaching norm.

To the author's knowledge, there is no single case of Romani teaching that complies with the main pedagogical reason for its use in education, that is to teach literacy to children who have been socialised with Romani. This would be in line with a recommendation by UNESCO (1953).

For more information on this approach, see Courthiade (1989), the declaration I Alfabèta e Standardone Rromane Ćhibaqiri was published as Resolucia N. 7/1990 on pages seven and eight of the Informaciaqo Lil e Rromane Uniaqoro' N° 1-2, Źulaj – Augùsto 1991.

The slightly modified standard variety generally used in Romani classes is often criticised as artificial by local Roma activists and teachers; first of all, because neither pupils nor their parents are able to identify with this variety. In these accounts, the standard is described as distant to local varieties and – as it has almost no functions outside the classrooms – it is also valued as useless for the future life of the pupils. But there is no reliable evaluation of Romani teaching in Romania which proves these impressions as generally valid.

Sweden's Roma population consists of at least five different groups: The Resande ‘travellers’ (< Swedish resande) immigrated to Scandinavia in the early sixteenth century, shortly after the Kaale ‘blacks’ (< Romani kalo ‘black’) reached northern Europe. At the end of the nineteenth century, Vlax Roma, mainly Kalderaš ‘kettle smiths’ (< Romanian căldáre ‘kettle’) came via Russia. From the 1960s, Roma from eastern and south-eastern Europe migrated to Sweden. Owing to their active participation in the emancipation process, Lovara, ‘horse dealers’ (< Hungarian lo ‘horse’) mainly from Slovakia, and Arlije (< Turkish yerli ‘local’) from the southern Balkans are the most prominent among these ‘late’ migrants.

Bugurdži ‘drill makers’ < Turkish burgu ‘drill’.

For a detailed description of Romani dialectology, see Matras (2005a, 2002, pp. 214–237).

Džambazi ‘horse dealers’ < Turkish cambaz ‘dealer, horse dealer’, Gurbet ‘strangers’ < Turkish gurbet ‘stranger’.

The codification process is described in Hübschmannová and Neustupný (1996), the codification product is presented in Hübschmannová, Šebková, and Žigová (1991).

Burgenland, a region which was part of Hungary until 1921, is the easternmost federal state of Austria.

Because the region is a Hungarian enclave, toponyms are trilingual: Felsőőr, Hungarian/Erba, Romani. On topographical signs in the region, only the Hungarian name accompanies the German one.

Roman is the self-designation of the Burgenland Roma for their Romani variety.

The codification grammar is summarised in Halwachs and Wogg (2002).

In the succeeding years, this model has only been expanded to the lower secondary school in Oberwart and to the primary school in the neighbouring village of Unterwart.

The RomBus is presented in the journal dROMa (6/2006: 16–19). Back issues of the journal are offered for download on the website of RomaService: http://www.roma-service.at.

A further precondition for the acceptance and consequently success and usability of a codified variety has become obvious in the codification of Burgenland Romani. Only the principle of plurality on all linguistic levels, from lexicon via phonology, morphology and syntax to pragmatics, guarantees the highest possible number of speakers' identification with the codified variety.

For ‘trial and error in written Romani’ see Hübschmannová (1995).

To the author's knowledge, only the few issues of the Informaciaqo Lil ‘information bulletin’ of the IRU have been published according to the norm set up by the declaration cited in footnote 5.

Source of the Romani text and the English translation: United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad (2009) Roma Historical and Cultural Heritage Sites in Poland, Washington DC: 11f.

As in Croatian, the Latin writing conventions of Serbo-Croatian are used. The Cyrillic ones are used in Serbian. The author refers only to Croatian in this context.

For the concept of replication in contact linguistics, see Matras (2009).

As most other integration morphemes this suffix is derived from (Byzantine) Greek. For details, see Bakker (1997).

Hungarian and Croatian are the two other minority languages of Burgenland. For details about the graphisation of Burgenland Romani, see Halwachs (1996).

This differentiation in writing with respect to the registers of German reflects the socio-linguistic change Burgenland Romani has undergone as a consequence of the political self-organisation of its speakers. This change has triggered the expansion of Romani into formal domains which has been paralleled by an expansion of contact varieties from informal dialectal and regiolectal varieties of German to formal standard varieties.

In the European history of the first millennium, literate monks started to map lexemes and grammatical morphemes of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and other European languages on Latin and/or Greek models and triggered the development of those into today's European national standard languages.

For the situation of Roma and Romani in Austria, see Halwachs (2005).

The journal also regularly presents stories, fairy tales and poems in other Romani varieties.

Sâncel is a municipality in Transylvania of approximately 2800 inhabitants, approximately 10% of whom are Roma.

The particle pe is a reflexive pronoun which is used to form an analytic passive in Kalderaš Romani. As the verb šunel (s)he hears' is functionally impersonal, it is translated in its neuter form in English.

The texts of the journal Romano Centro are part of the sample used in one of the sub-projects of ROMIDENT/The Role of Language in the Transnational Formation of Romani Identity; a project funded in the framework of HERA/Humanities in the European Research Area. The sub-project investigates inter alia the strategies used in expanding Romani into formal written domains.

At least to the author's knowledge.

It would lead too far to demonstrate that the Romani use in electronic media structurally corresponds to its use in print media. Regarding Burgenland Romani, the website of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF gives an impression of this phenomenon; see: http://volksgruppen.orf.at/romani/aktujeli/. Written texts as well as the written versions of oral news texts fully resemble the strategies 1–3 as described earlier.

See in this context http://volksgruppen.orf.at/romani/aktujeli/ for Radio Kaktus and http://sverigesradio.se/ for Radio Romano in Sweden which could serve as another example to demonstrate that the Romani use in electronic media more or less follows the same structural rules as its use in print media.

This widely unresearched field of spontaneous use of written Romani is currently also under investigation in one of the sub-projects of ROMIDENT (see footnote 35).

These broadcasts are also accessible on the Internet: http://www.mundiromani.com/

The concept of Inter-Romani was first introduced in September 2008 by the author's presentation The Sociolinguistics of ‘Inter-Romani’ at the 8th International Conference on Romani Linguistics in Saint Petersburg.

A first tentative description of written Inter-Romani is planned in one of the part projects of the ROMIDENT project mentioned in note 33.