history

Rombase
 

http://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/
 

Liverpool University Library Gypsy collections

http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/collections/gypsy/intro.htm
 

Romani Cymru - Archival and interactive research and publishing project.

http://www.valleystream.co.uk/romhome.htm

Journey Folki - Gypsy and Traveller Communities within Britain.
 

http://www.journeyfolki.org.uk/

Texas Romani Archives and Documentation Center (Ian Hancock)

http://www.radoc.net/

Chicago University Western European Studies Section catalogue of links in Romani Studies

The history of the language/ E chibijaki historia

The Romani language was a mystery to the Europeans when they first came in close contact with Roma in the dark Middle Ages. The earliest documentation on Romani in Europe was published in 1542.  Random articles or world lists followed during the next couple of centuries. The first academic research and findings related to the Romani language in Europe were made in the second half of the 18th century by two German linguists, Johan Christian Rüdiger and Heinrich Grellman, who discovered the linguistic relationship between the Romani language and India.

Evolution about the language/ E chibijaki evolucia

The Flag: The Congress of London of the International Romani Union in 1971 defined the flag of the Roma people like a red wheel, taking again all the Indian symbolic system of the wheel, centered on two-tone bottom: blue higher half, symbolizing the Sky, infinite father of Humanity, and green lower half, symbolizing the Earth, mother of Humanity. This flag can be seen in various festivals and events.

The song, GELEM, GELEM, whose music is popular of Banat and the words were composed by Jarko Jovanovic at the time of his visit in Struthof, became spontaneously during years and by its popularity, the national anthem of the Roma people. It was devoted to be the Roma anthem by the Congress of Geneva in 1978; the Congress of Warsaw in 1990 published the official words in four parties.

The anthem GELEM, GELEM can be interpreted with any style of traditional Roma music (Eastern, lovesong, flamenco, rumba) This freedom of interpretation expresses the richness of the cultural traditions of Roma and the mutual respect of the different groups the ones for the others. Despite this, the melody line and the words are fixed.

The word "Roma" comes from the  word "Rom" (originally: Dom) which means "human being", "a man" in Romani language.

The term Roma in general literature is not limited to those who use the self– appellation Roma. It also refers to those groups who ethnically, culturally and historically belong to the same kind of groups/tribes calling themselves Kaldarash, Kále, Lovara, Arlija, Gurbet, Romungro, or belong to other groups/tribes of which there are dozens of different ones in Europe according to various research.

Among the majority non-Roma population, the word "Gypsy" originated from the world "Egyptian",  is mostly used  in English speaking countries, having a reference to the migration route of the Roma who might have reached Europe via Egypt and the Straits of Gibraltar.

April 8th is an old Romani festival from Transylvania – the “day of the horses” (a festive occasion when the horses are led out of their winter shelters, and decorated with garlands).  This festival has recently taken on a new meaning for many Roma worldwide to celebrate the date of the first Romani World Congress in 1971.

On this important day for the Romani people, the victims of the Samudaripen  are commemorated, and remembered because they were deported and killed just for being born Roma. In order that this terrible tragedy of history does not ever repeat itself, the Romani people feel that it is important for all of them to come together and to get to know each other. If the mother of racism is ignorance, its father is egoism and in making the Romani culture known to all, suspicion, hostility, hatred and scorn towards the Romani people will cease and simply be a subject for historians to write about, of a time when the Romani people were once badly looked upon and treated but are no longer.

source: "La voix des Rroms"

In Romani, this word means “(the) murder of all” (collective murder) and refers to the genocide of the Roma, Sinté and Kalé during the Second World War.

The Romani people will never forget, even if all too often historians and the media are silent on this tragedy in which the Romani population of Europe lost more than 500.000 of their own people between 1933 and 1945.  The Nazis and their allies persecuted, sterilized, imprisoned, tortured, shot and gassed the Roma in the concentration and death camps or in the forests.  The Nazi classification of Zigeuner (Roma) was for a person to have at least one great grand-parent who was of Romani origin.

Romani is the language of the Roma. It is undeniably of Indian origin and close to Hindi, one of the languages of India. 

The base of Romani vocabulary and grammar is two thirds Indian.  The rest is a mixture of vocabulary borrowed in relation to the exodus from India of the Romani people, i.e., principally from Persian and Greek, followed by the European languages with which the Romani people came into contact.

Despite its claimed dialectical diversity, Romani is one language and the Roma of Russia, Albania, Greece etc. can easily communicate with each other – as long as the Romani language is preserved from generation to generation.

Romani has been found in its written form from the beginning of the 20th century, using the different alphabets according to the countries the Roma were living in. In 1990, a standard alphabet/writing for Romani was put into place which allowed for a better diffusion of Romani literature. 

The Roma are a European people living throughout Europe and beyond, but originating from India a thousand years ago.  The Rumanians are a separate people of around 30 million, living in Rumania, in the Republic of Moldavia and in some neighboring countries.  Their language, Rumanian is a neo-Latin language.

The word “Rom” is from the Sanskrit word “Domba”, signifying “artist; artisan who creates or works with his hands”; in Romani the word "Rom" means "human being".  The name “Rumanian” comes from the name of the city Rome.

They are therefore two distinct peoples, having different origins, languages and cultures.  Although Rumania has the largest Romani minority – just under 2 millions, this is a coincidence only, all Roma are not Rumanian and all Rumanians are not Roma.

Source: "La voix des Rroms"

The Roma are a European people but of Indian origin, whose ancestors come from the Ganges valley, in northern India around 800 years ago. 

They live today throughout the world, above all in Europe.  Arriving in Europe from Asia Minor and the Bospherus, they settled at first in the Balkans, moved into the Carpathians and from there on some moved further onwards, little by little, from the Balkans to Greece up to Finland and Russia, into western Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom).  There are about 10 million Roma in Europe; and the two countries with the highest Romani minority are Rumania and Bulgaria.

On August 2nd and 3rd 1944, several thousand Roma and Sinti were massacred at the Zigeunerlager in Auschwtiz-Birkenau concentration camp.

An estimated 600.000 to 1,5  million Roma were exterminated during the Holocaust. As a percentage, that makes Roma the ethnic group most affected by the Nazi killings. Over 90 percent of the Roma population of Austria, Germany and Estonia was exterminated by the fascist regimes.