The Typology and dialectology of Romani

/. Orthography and phonology

1.1 Orthography

Choice of orthography is often connected with ethnic and political symbol-
ism. The choice among the Arabic, Greek, and Latin alphabets was a key issue
in the quest for Albanian unity at the beginning of this century (cf. Skendi
1967:366-90). In Croatia, Franjo Tudjman's decree that bialphabetical
Latin-Cyrillic signs be replaced by monoalphabetical Latin ones helped alienate
the Serbian population of Croatia on the road to subsequent war (Glenny
1992:14). In Macedonia, the specification of the Macedonian language and its

ROMANI-LANGUAGE PRESS 185

Cyrillic alphabet as official at the federal level in article 7 of the constitution has
led to conflicts over public signs, particularly with the Albanian minority (Nova
Makedonija 94.07.28, Rilindja 94.08.03, Flaka e vellazerimit 94.08.13).

In the case of Romani, there are at present a variety of competing trends in
those publications utilizing Romani and aimed at whole or in part at Romani au-
diences (cf. Friedman 1985, §1.0). The international orthography approved at
the Fourth World Romani Congress held in Warsaw in 1990 (Cortiade et al.
1991), which uses the IPA yogh (3) for the voiced dental affricate and the acute
for the strident palatals, is currently in use in publications funded by organiza-
tions such as the Commission of European Communities (e.g., Hill 1994, and
the newsletter Interface).^ The magazine Patrin resembles the Fourth World
Romani Congress in its use of the acute accent where most Latin-based
orthographies use a ha5ek, but in other respects its orthography resembles the
First World Romani Congress (Kenrick 1981) orthography. In the Czech
Republic, a Czech-based orthography, similar to that proposed at the First
World Romani Congress (Kenrick 1981), is in use (e.g. Hiibschmannovd et al.
1991), while in Bulgaria there are several orthographies: one based on Cyrillic
(e.g. Malikov 1992, KjuSukov 1993b, Marushiakova and Popov 1994), one
using English spelling conventions (e.g. KjuCukov 1993a), and one similar to
Kenrick (1981; e.g. Marushiakova and Popov 1994). As has been noted
elsewhere, the problem with the Fourth World Romani Congress orthography is
that in other East European orthographies (notably Polish and former
Serbo-Croatian), the acute is used to indicate mellow palatals (cf. de Gila
Kochanowski 1994:81, who has proposed an orthography based on the
standard transliteration of Devanagari into the Latin alphabet but without
diacritics, in which the palatals are represented by sh, zh, c, j). RS follows
standard East European practice of using the wedge (hadek, diriklo) to indicate
the strident palatals (s, i, t, dz). In this it continues the standard Latinization
practice for Macedonian and other Slavic languages.

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

© Copyright 1997 - John Benjamins B.V.

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