The Typology and dialectology of Romani

THE ROMANI dialect OF THE RHODOPES

BIRGIT IGLA
St Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia

0, Introduction

The dialect considered here is spoken in the Rhodope and the Rila moun-
tains in Bulgaria. 1 The majority of the Roma in this area are Muslims and have
preserved their language, while a great part of the Muslim Roma in Bulgaria
have lost Romani and use Turkish as their mother tongue. The language shift
from Romani to Turkish probably took place during the time of the Ottoman
Empire. Interestingly, it still continues nowadays, long after Turkish has lost its
status as a prestige language in Bulgaria.^

In many towns and villages in the region the percentage of Roma in the
overall population exceeds the general figure of 6-10% given for Bulgaria as a
whole. In the town of Velingrad for example there are 5-6000 Roma, or 18-20%
of the population; Rakitovo has a population of 8000, 3000 of whom are
Gypsies, that is nearly 40%. In the area under consideration several groups of
Roma live. Here we shall deal with a dialect of the Erli group (from Turkish
yerli 'settled'; a Non-Vlach dialect^), which seems to be the most important va-
riety of Romani in this part of the country. Erlis (pi. Erlides) is the self-appella-
tion of the group; the dialect is called Erliski. One should, however, note that
this name may be used for various groups, either as an in-group or as an out-
group designation. It is generally used for groups that had already been living in
a place when another group arrived there. This seems to be true for the whole of
the Balkan area. In Greece, for example, nomadic Roma use Erlides as an (out-
group) name for settled Gypsies who have replaced Romani with Greek. The
self-appellation of this group is yifti (Greek yifti 'Gypsies'). In the town of
Plovdiv Turkish-speaking Gypsies are called Erlides by those who refer to
themselves as Bugurdzi and who speak a dialect of Romani which is very simi-
lar to the dialects of other groups who use the word Erlides as an in-group
name. Most of the Romani-speaking Erlides in Bulgaria share their neighbour-

1 84 VICTOR A. FRffiDMAN

that it was published bilingually in Romani and Macedonian. Similarly, the stan-
dardization conference of November 1992 sponsored by the Board of Education
of the Republic of Macedonia and the University of Skopje, while explicitly
aware of the efforts at creating an international Romani literary language as
specifically mentioned in the resulting document, nevertheless had as its goal a
standardization of Romani as a language of study in schools in the Republic of
Macedonia (see Friedman 1995).

On 17 November 1993 the first issue of a Romani monthly newspaper,
Romani Sumnal/Romski Svet 'Romani World' (hereafter RS), was published in
Skopje under the editorial leadership of Oskar Mamut, who is also employed in
the Romani-language division of Radio-Television Skopje.^ The newspaper is
bilingual, with all material in both Romani and Macedonian. The issue of the
codification of a Romani standard language is explicitly addressed on the first
page of the first number, where the editorial board states that one of the tasks
they have set themselves is contributing to the development and use of literary
Romani. As such, the paper can be taken as a measure of the progress and ongo-
ing concerns of the standardization of Romani in the Republic of Macedonia.
The role of the mass media is potentially of great importance in language stan-
dardization. Taking as its background RG (cf Friedman 1985), the Skopje
Standardization conference of 1992 (cf Friedman 1995), and international ef-
forts such as the standardization conferences of 1971 and 1990 (cf Kenrick
1981, Cortiade et al. 1991), this paper will examine issues of RS's orthography,
phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon as they relate to on-going problems
and discussions in the standardization of Literary Romani in the context of the
Romani dialectal situation in the Republic of Macedonia with passing reference
to other countries, e.g. Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and member
states of the £11.4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Typology and dialectology of Romani / edited by Yaron Matras, Peter Bakker and Hristo
Kyuchukov.

p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series
IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 156)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Romany language-Grammar. 2. Romany language-Dialects. I. Matras, Yaron. 1963- .
II. Bakker, Peter. III. Kichukov, Khristo. IV. Series.
PK2897.T97 1997

491.4'975-dc21 97-42187

ISBN 90 272 3661 5 (Eur.) / 1-55619-872-8 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP

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