“Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people came from and where they are going.” Rita Mae Brown “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein Language is bearer of sense and descent, key to understand the world and oneself as well as central means of interpersonal comprehension. 10 – 12 Million Roma live in Europe; about 4.3 Million in the partner countries of our project: 185.000 in North Macedonia, 750.000 in Bulgaria, 120.000 in Germany, 175.000 in Greece, 600.000 in Hungary, 3.350 in Lithuania, 1.95 Mio. in Romania and 500.000 in Serbia (Statista 2019). At the beginning of their migration from India, Romanes (actually Romani - coming from romani chip, "Roma-language") was still a common language. The long way that has been leading Roma for centuries through different continents and countries finally to Europe, but also the long stay in those countries, caused that Romanes fell apart into different dialects. Over the years, more and more words of the according national languages were integrated in the Romanes or the respective dialects. In a few European countries, e.g. Romania and Spain, Roma were not allowed for a long time to speak their own language. This contributed also to the loss of the common language. Until the younger past, Romanes was mainly an only spoken and orally inherited language. Unfortunately, until today no successfully standardised Romanes exists. Besides, it is written with several alphabets - Latin, Cyrillic and Devanagari. Nowadays, language scientists group Romanes in four main and more than 60 sub-dialects. However, the key challenges of preservation and development of Romanes remain in its infrequent use. The problems of learning and preserving Romanes are crystallised in the lack of high-quality teaching of Romanes, the shortage of producers of learning material, and the language's invisibility in public activities. For example, play and activity material, didactic books and fairy tale books for children are almost non-existent. Therefore, it is the aim of the project “PROUD I” to find out if an online platform for Romanes would be a reasonable tool for both preserving Romanes as part of the Roma’s cultural identity and enabling them to participate in lifelong learning.
The key challenges of preservation and development of Romanes remain in its infrequent use. The problems of learning and preserving Romanes are crystallized in the lack of high-quality teaching of Romanes, the shortage of producers of learning material, and the language's invisibility in public activities. For example, play and activity material, didactic books and fairy tale books for children are almost non-existent. Therefore, the aim of the project was to find out if an online platform for Romanes would be a reasonable tool for both preserving Romanes as part of the Roma’s cultural identity and enabling them to participate in lifelong learning.
Language is bearer of sense and descent, key to understand the world and oneself as well as central means of interpersonal comprehension. 10 – 12 Million Roma live in Europe from which about 4.3 million in the partner countries of our project. The targeted survey with 732 Roma in their communities and 249 experts in the partner countries we implemented within the Strategic Partnership “pROMise – Preserving Romanes in adult education” (2018-1-DE02-KA204-005131) showed: - Romanes is not taught at school and no books can be found in libraries or book shops. - 72 % Roma and 78% experts would attend education measures if they would be implemented in Romanes; - 68 % Roma and 67% experts would attend education measures if they would be held in the national language but all training material would also be available in Romanes; - 100 % experts consider Romanes an important part of the Roma’s cultural identity; - 100 % experts say that it is important to preserve Romanes for coming generations, particularly through lifelong learning offers - 97 % experts expressed their readiness to contribute to projects with which Romanes would be preserved and utilized for education measures.