The director of the Office for Roma Inclusion of the AP Vojvodina Ljiljana Mihajlović, together with provincial deputy Jelena Jovanović, visited the Vršac College of Education and Medicine with the aim of supporting the enrolment of a new generation of students for the preschool teacher program in the Romani language.
President Andrzej Duda has signed the amendment to the Act on National and Ethnic Minorities and on Regional Language, his office announced on Friday.
The purpose of the amendment to the Act on National and Ethnic Minorities and on Regional Language is for the Chancellery of the Sejm to provide substantive and administrative support to representatives of minorities and communities whose members speak a regional language on the Joint Committee of the Government and National and Ethnic Minorities (Joint Committee). The costs will be covered by the state budget – funds at the disposal of the Head of the Chancellery of the Sejm.
Two more articles on the concerns of the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe warnings that Romanes is still not part of formal education, although there is a dictionary and several projects. It also states that there is no strategy for training Romanes teachers and that the lack of qualified personnel remains an obstacle. It also warned that it has not been introduced into official use in any municipality, despite previous recommendations.
The Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages has welcomed some policy measures implemented by Montenegro in the field of the protection of minority languages, but expresses serious concern about the lack of progress when it comes to Romanes, in particular in the areas of education, institutional use and teacher training.
Last week, a number of prominent Roma personalities came to Prague thanks to the Khamoro festival. Among the guests was linguistics professor Hristo Kjučukov, who comes from Bulgaria. He has struggled with discrimination since childhood, not only as a Rom, but also as a Muslim. And this is what he tried to overcome with education and success.
A very nice video on the Zargari Romanes dialect. Zargari are Roma who went back eastwards at some point in history and settled in Iran. This is underlined by the number of Greek words in their dialect, which is on par with other Balkan Romanes variants.
We hope to hear more about them!
Roma music is a melting pot of all genres, it is diverse and fascinating, says linguist and musician. Ondřej Skovajsa, a literary historian, ethnomusicologist and chairman of the Giľora association, which records and makes contemporary Roma songs accessible in audiovisual form, as well as linguist and musician Martin Gális speak about music and Romanes. The end of May belongs to the Khamoro World Festival, which is a traditional celebration of Roma culture. But do young Roma still speak Romanes in everyday communication?
Serbian is the mother tongue of most Belgraders, and next to it, the most common are Romanes and Russian, according to the study “Population and Households of the City of Belgrade”, published by the Serbian Statistical Office.
The article unfortunately, classifies “Romanes” as a migrant language … No comments…
An article that totally misses the point. A project, that aims to “help” people with a different mother tongue (read Roma and Turks). What they miss is that Roma always grow up with several mother tongues, local and Romanes, and in the Balkan, Ottoman Turkish.
No further comments …
In 1996, UNESCO developed the Atlas of Endangered Languages, which included as many as nine languages from our country. These include Kashubian, Lower Saxon, Belarusian, Polesian, Romanes, Rusyn, Slovinian, Yiddish, Wymysorys. The fight to preserve the last of them, which is already used by a small group of older residents of Wilamowice near Bielsko-Biała, is still ongoing.
Many Polish Roma have left the country and now live in the UK.
The Romano suno (Roma Dream) competition has been organized by the non-profit organization Nová škola since 1996. It is open to everyone who knows Romanes and wants to write their own text in that language, make a video, or compete live in Romanes. The purpose of the competition is to encourage people to take an interest in Romanes, to create in it, and to use Romanes publicly.
The Centre for Research and Preservation of Roma Culture from Novi Romanes Romani language. The project was funded by the Provincial Secretariat for Education and the RTV Roma Program Editorial Office, while the author and director is Dr. Marija Aleksandrovic.
Živorad Ajdačić, a Serbian politician, said in a statement at the session of the Committee for Culture and Information of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia held on January 23, 2025 questionned whether it is possible for us to have a program in the Romani language and at 7 p.m.?
Opre Roma says that “this statement represents an unacceptable act of belittling the Romani language and culture, as well as open disrespect for the Romani community, which has been an integral part of Serbian society for centuries.
The Roma Association of Slovenia, in cooperation with the Embassy of India, organized a unique event, where they explored the connections between the Hindi and Romani languages.
The Slovak Act on the Use of Languages of National Minorities permits the use of the minority language in official relations and at council meetings. In practise, this is not the case.
One example is the meeting of the city council in Veľké Kapušany, a town which, according to the 2021 census, has 8,799 inhabitants, of which 32.9% of Slovaks, 53% of Hungarians, and 4.4% of Roma. There are probably more Roma, but they often declare themselves as Hungarians.
Last December the council decided to increase kindergarten fees. The debate was partly in Slovak, and partly in Hungarian. No translations provided…
Almost 200 Romani texts were submitted to the Romano Suno competition this year and sent entries to the literary and audiovisual. The quality of the submission was greatly improved and even children were better than adults this year. The competition is organized by the organization Nová škola, which also offers seminars on Romani and Romani literature, creative writing workshops in Romani, Romani language courses and much more.
Since 2012, the Roma Adult Education Center Burgenland has been publishing the “RomaCajtung” twice a year. The main person responsible for the existence of the newspaper is the ORF journalist Erich Schneller, who died in 2021. He always set himself the goal of raising public awareness of the Roma and was editor-in-chief of the “RomaCajtung” until his death. “Erich Schneller’s commitment was tireless, we still miss him very much today,” says Horst Horvath.
A very small number of Roma speak their mother tongue. The question is why this is so. Are the Roma additionally exposed to discrimination due to the use of the Romani language, or is it not being given enough attention? And the activities so far have not produced concrete results.
Ago and Beko from Kakanj speak the Romany language every day, thereby emphasizing their tradition, and the language is passed down from generation to generation in their family. “It’s important for us, it’s part of our tradition. The first language is Romanes, and then it gradually goes to Bosnian.”
With a part of this musical opus, the International Day of Roma Language and Culture was marked by the ensemble “Egnatia”. The program included poetry in the Romani language as the chosen form for its promotion.
The Swiss online shop and portal Galaxus launched a new advertising campaign in Switzerland with their usual slogan of “almost everything for everyone”.
What is different this time, is that each of these posters which can be seen everywhere in Switzerland, is in languages spoken in Switzerland. And that goes way beyond French, German, Italian and Romantsch. As far as having one of these advertisements in Romanes …
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