E Kulturiake tha Chibake Dinelipene e Evropiake Yekipeneske / The Cultural and Linguistic Stupidities of the European Union
I have just seen a copy of the “Council of Europe Descriptive Glossary of terms relating to Roma issues”, which is the EU's “how and what” manual to teach the Eurocrats about Roma, various travelling people, and other tribes of Indian origin (Lom, Dom). It was, of course, written by gàdje rather than by Roma (well, after all, those damn Gypsies are far too stupid to be able to write about themselves or even help themselves, according to the Eurocrats) and consequently full of outright errors, insulting nonsense and sheer stupidity. Where to begin? There is simply so much dinelipen in the document!
First of all, it is ridiculous and insulting to use the term “Roma” to cover all of the people mentioned, which is what they suggest. While it's quite reasonable to include Sinte, Manouche and Kàle/Calé under Roma because those are all simply subdivisions of the Roma with the same cultural and linguistic heritage and the same blood, it is inaccurate to include the Lom and Dom: they are certainly related to Roma, but they are not Roma and have different languages – for example, the Domari language is so different from Romani that I can't understand it at all. And it is even more wrong and offensive to class people of European origin (Pavees (Irish Travellers), Yeniches, self-declared “Gypsies” etc.) as Roma; we are ethnically Indian, speak an Indic language and have a distinctly Indic culture. And such mislabelling is probably just as offensive to those groups of people as it is to us. And on a related note, the Eurocrats have also invented a neologism, “Romaphobia”, to denote prejudice against Roma (and against the others that they have decided to lump in with us) – what, I want to know, is wrong with Antiziganism, the correct and established term in English, and a highly international word (antiziganismus in German, antitsiganisme in French, and so on). I grant that antiziganism contains embedded within it an exonym that many of us don't like, but I feel that that rather emphasises the point of the word: pinning belittling exonyms on us is antiziganism!
The document mentions certain groups of kashtale (non-Romani-speaking Ţigani -- ex-slaves of non-Roma origin) such as the Boyash/Rudari who often make a claim to Roma identity despite not being of Romani origin or speakers of our language. While it is encouraging that the EU document acknowledges their different origin, it is totally unacceptable to lump them together with us under the collective term “Roma”. Non-Indian, or non-Roma, peoples cannot be Roma!
It is stated that Manouche is just the French term for Sinte. Wrong! They are distinct tribes, although the two were one until around 1870. Nowadays they have separate identity and slightly different dialects of Romanes. Talking of which, the usual term used by both tribes for their language is Romanes, just as it is for the rest of us, not Romnepen as stated. The latter form does exist as a by-form in the Sintikes dialect but it is a corruption of the proper meaning of Romanipen.
The authors claim that the Norwegian Romani do not have any Indian origin. This is wrong. They speak a creole language, Skandoromani, rather than real Romani (a mix of Norwegian and somewhat corrupted Romani), but they are originally of Roma origin, though now mixed heavily with gàdje blood. They descend from Romanichal who were deported from Britain by the Tudor monarchs in the 16th century, and during the time when I lived in Norway I found that I could understand Skandoromani with a bit of effort: I speak Norwegian, and the underlying Romani in the dialect was originally virtually identical to my native dialect -- although now rather distorted.
Similarly, the "English Romany" are something of a special case: they did originally descend from Roma but that was 500 years ago, and they soon lost the Romani language and intermarried extensively with gàdje, so as to become a separate group in their own right, who nowadays have a minimal amount of Indian blood. They are not Roma in the strict sense but I regard them as distant cousins.
The authors also claim that the exonym “Gypsy” is not considered offensive in Britain. Really? I grant that some of the “Travellers” are quite happy with the term, but just try saying it to actual Romani-speaking Roma, like me, and see where it gets you!
And my least-favourite word of all time, poraimos, makes an appearance too: the document lists it as a word used in our language to mean the Roma Holocaust and claim it means “devouring”. Wrong! The word correctly means rape in many Romani dialects (including my own) and is extremely offensive. The word itself is màkhado [unclean], and to associate it with the Roma who died in the Holocaust is a terrible offence against their memory and their families (I lost family in the Holocaust, and feel very strongly about this). The “holocaust” meaning of the word is not real Romani, it was invented by the notorious hoxano and fàsheno-Rom [fake-Rom] Ian Hancock. Many Roma writers, myself included, have loudly registered our objection to the word – but have the EU listened? No, of course not, they'd rather listen to gàdje than to native Romani speakers! And, of course, while on this subject, the document repeats the grossly-underreported death toll of 500,000 rather than a more accurate figure: always the authorities want to downplay the death toll; in truth around 75% of all the Roma of Europe were murdered, probably 7 to 8 million people.
And last but not least, the errors made in linguistics are particularly egregious in my view – perhaps because I am myself a linguist of the Romani language, but to all real Roma, our language is a central part of Romanipen. So here is a list of the worst linguistic stupidities:
The authors claim that “it was not discovered until the late 18th century that Romani is an Indian language” – totally untrue. Our ancestors knew very well that they were Indian; I recently published an item from the written records of the Papal States from the 1420s that proves that fact. And our original religion (a derivative of Hinduism) was still widely practiced by Roma as late as the 19th Century and is still retained by some clans including my own and others, especially in South America and Eastern Europe. This is the subject of a separate article: The Romani Old Faith
The origin claimed for the endonym Romanichal is wrong. Chal is not a deflection of sel/cel, meaning a collective (after all, Romani-sel would mean “all the Roma”!), in fact chal derives from the Sanskrit word छल्ली [challī], meaning “offspring”. It even exists as a stand-alone word both in my own dialect and in older Angloromani. Romanichal means “offspring of the Roma”, probably reflecting the fact that the founders of the tribe were a group of young Roma who set off westwards from Carpathian Romania during the Middle Ages.
“In English, Rom is used to mean both men and women” – no it isn't! Our culture has very strong ideas about gender, and I would take enormous offence at being called Rom rather than Romni.
“the double-R spelling Rromani is used... to distinguish Roma from Romanians” – no it isn't (in Romanian, romi means Roma, while români means Romanians)! The double-R spelling was invented by certain linguists (gàdje, of course) because it offended their sensibilities to use R indifferently for the trilled R and the alveolar-tap R. Of course, native speakers don't need such a distinction – I know perfectly well which R sound is in which word, the R at the end of per is different to the R at the end of lester, for example. And anyway, in the oldest dialects (including my own) the R of Roma (and many other words, where the Sanskrit/Prakrit root word has a retroflex D) is retroflexed, not trilled.
“Welsh Kàle has not been spoken since the 1950s” – oh really? I recall hearing it spoken by some of the older people when I was a little girl, and I was born in the early 1960s. And a remnant of the dialect still exists today, abeit very anglicised now and rather akin to Angloromani.
“Manouche comes from manus, meaning to be human” – no, manush (not manus) isn't a verb, it's a noun. Clearly the Eurocrats couldn't be bothered to have even one Romani speaker involved in this project.
“The dj in gàdjo is represented by a special letter in the Romani alphabet, Ʒ”. This is doubly wrong: the dj is pronounced as a hard j (as in the English word “jump”). GaƷo would be pronounced differently – it's a variant form used in some dialects – the Ʒ is pronounced like the Russian letter Ж or as in the French word, jeu. Furthermore, 'real' Romani doesn't use bizarre characters like Ʒ, that was invented by Marcel Courthiade (a gàdjo linguist) as part of his made-up “standard” dialect of Romani – which is all but incomprehensible to Romani speakers – usually that sound is represented by ž or ź.
When, when, when will the Eurocrats and other authorities start listening to real Roma, not to mention actually doing something to help us – like acting against the massive institutional and social racism against us right across Europe – instead of continually producing error-laden and offensive nonsense and meaningless verbiage?