LANGUAGE IN INDIA

GYPSY CHILD LANGUAGE
Hristo Kyuchukov, Ph. D.

Introduction

Gypsies in Europe and in USA call themselves Roma and their language – Romani. Romani is an Indo–European language related to the new- Indian languages and the most similar to it is the contemporary Hindi.

In their way from India to Europe the Gypsies settled for some 200 years during the Middle Ages in Greece and a lots of Greek words entered their language.

Nowadays, the contemporary Romani contents many Greek loanwords. Somewhere in the 14th century the Gypsies spread all over Europe and latter-all over the world, but they kept the Indian origin and the Greek influence in their language. Those of them who remain in the Balkan area got some changes in their language, which make it related to the other Balkan languages like Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian.

Romani is not a standard language and being in a contact with other languages it has some influence from them as well, but nevertheless it has its own structure and rules, which make it totally different from other languages.

In East European countries Roma people live mainly in ghetto type of settlements and the every day language for communication is Romani, although they would know at least 2-3 other languages as well, spoken in the society where they live. In one village or town could live 2-3 different groups which speak different dialects, but still they will have no problems understanding each other.

Roma in Bulgaria are mainly concentrated in the surroundings of big towns and cities and their total number is approximately 800 000, although the official census says that their number is approximately 350000.

The differences between the Bulgarian Romani dialects are on vocabulary level and it depends also form the surrounding population. The Roma groups, which have contacts with Turkish minority, have Muslim religion and the influences on their dialect are from Turkish.

The groups, which have contacts with Bulgarians, have Orthodox Christian religion and their dialects are mostly influenced by Bulgarian language. However, there are cases when a Roma group had a Muslim religion in the past and nowadays it has Orthodox Christian religion, but the change of religion did not influence the language so much.

Another grouping of Roma is based on the professions, which they had some 50-60 years ago. However one can find different professional groups to have the same dialects, which means they belong to same dialect group.

Number of studies and publications on different dialects appeared in last 20 years but the most general and coherent one, presenting the Romani as a system is by Y. Matras (2002). The work of Matras presents the Romani language on different grammatical level - phonological, morphological and syntactic, which shows the whole grammatical structure of the language.

The present study here aims to show how Roma children acquire a particular Romani dialect in their home environment. The study here does not have the goal to describe the structure of the dialect but rather to show how Roma children learn Romani from everyday communication with parents and with other adults in the community. The dialect, which the study is focused on, is form Sofia- Bulgaria and it is called Erlija dialect (from Turkish “yerli”- settled). This is a dialect of settled Roma. Nowadays Roma in Bulgaria do not have nomadic life anymore.

The paper presents a detailed study of the processes of language acquisition of Roma children, and compares the processes with the processes found universally, while identifying the specific features of Roman child language.

Conclusion

Concluding, I must say that the process of language development of Roma children on different linguistic levels follows the universal stages of language acquisition of any child, learning any language. However, the language acquisition, the language use, and language socialization amongst the Roma children is different from the western child development. It is close to the process of language acquisition among cultures described by B. Schieffellin (1985). There are cultural startegies used by the adults in the child directed speech.

Romani adults having culture very different from the western culture also show different attitude towards language learning. The communication whit the children are done is such a way as it is whit Roma adults. The input, which the Roma children receive, shows that the Roma adult’s concept on language acquisition is a complex one form very early age. In terms of Gleason’s bridge theory in Roma community not only the fathers but also the mothers and other adults present the complex language to the children.

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Hristo Kyuchukov

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