[[[Portal:Rmc|rmc]]] Activate new language: Carpathian Romani - ''romaňi čhib''

A few page written in Carpathian Romani on the internet:

Adehertogh (talk)22:30, 4 December 2020

OK, thanks.

Here's what I'm wondering about. We already have the Vlax Romani language (code rmy), and in the list of langauges it's called "romani čhib". In the links that you sent me, I can see that the language is called "romanes" or "romaňi čhib". The name "romaňi čhib" is not identical, but very similar to "romani čhib". Is there perhaps a name that I can give it, so that it will be easily distinguishable from "romani čhib" for people who will see both in the same list? Would the name "romanes" be acceptable, or is it also ambiguous?

Amir E. Aharoni (talk)13:59, 6 December 2020

Note that even if the languages are different, the pople using them may still colloquiially call it often the same way as they have somme common origin and they may forget to give the distinction. However the term "Romanes" is, apparently only used to refer to the people (ethnonym) as a group (where as "Rom" or "Ram" refers to an individual man or women) , not to the language or culture. In "romani čhib" the important term to see is "čhib" which explicitly says this is a language, but nothing else.

So for Vlax Romani, the translation as "romani čhib" does not designates explicitly it is the Vlax variant, it could be used as well for any other Romani language. And it you look at [Portal:Rom], refering to the macrolanguage "Romani", you'll see that it also has "romani čhib".

We then still need a better translation for "Vlax Romani" (than "romani čhib" which is jsut a short convenient designation used by people in their own community only, but probably not when they speak with other Romani communities and want to better identify their own language; however most Romani people are multilingual already and constantly adapt their language to their other locutors and where they live or go, so probably they also adapt their own Romani language as well to the other variants, and the simple idea of making these distinctions may seem "strange" for some of them, notably for those that are used to travel frequently across borders several times a year, and whose children go to schools in various countries with various official/national languages they are forced to learn too instead of Romani which remains a strong language in their family and that resists because, unlike the major languages they're forced to use in each country, thir familial language remains stable across their frequent travels).

And today there are less restrictions forbidding them to travel, and in Europe there are many laws forcing municipalities to create suitable meeing points and camping sites for travelers (Romani or not): there are also lot of other European natives that need to travel for their work, notably lot working seasonally in agriculture/forestry, tourism, arts, or building industry; as well they have families and must have access to schools for their children, which may then become multilingual if they travel across national borders (very frequent now in Europe whose internal borders are still wide open, even with the temporary restrictions related to COVID-19.).

Romani languages is then more threatened for settled Romanis, than it is for nomadic Romanis which can naturally preserve their language in well-defined familial communities, independantly of national borders.

So we still need better, more stinctive native names for Romani languages. For now [rom] (Romani "macrolanguage") and Vlax Romani share the same ambiguous name. I think that only the current translation for [rom] is correct. We need better native names for all the listed variants (notablyt because they are in fact not really mutually intelligible: different Romanu people using them will interact partly but most often using another non-Romani language, such as one of the major languages for the place where they are currently, or where they send their children to local schools: they can speak German, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian or Russian in their meetings, and will just learn a few words from other Romanes they meet and use them temporarily...).

Verdy p (talk)16:06, 6 December 2020
 

"romani čhib" and "romaňi čhib" both means "romani language" (rom) without specification within the romani languages. The population use to say they speak Romani without any specification even if they do not, for have difficulties to understand other Romani. For Carpathian Romani, it's possible to translate "Carpathian Romani language" by "Karpatcko romaňi čhib". It's certainly not often used and long but native speakers will understand that it's the "Eastern Slovak and around Romani". Romanes as wrote Verdy p is not correct and also ambiguous. Maybe, I should try to ask at the Romani for Romani studies at the university of Prešov which term they use.

Adehertogh (talk)18:56, 8 December 2020

Thank you. Are there any websites or books that use "Karpatcko romaňi čhib"? I'd love to see an example of how it's used.

Amir E. Aharoni (talk)10:25, 14 December 2020

Hi, I'm back after exchanging information with Viktor Elšík specialist of the romani dialects at the Charles University in Prague https://ling.ff.cuni.cz/en/viktor-elsik/ about how to name the romani language used. If the ISO code is the right one to use for this particular romani language/dialect, the question of the name is much more complicated and he had no clear answer. The term romaňi čhib is the one that north central romani uses when south central uses romani čhib (the same as the Vlax Romani uses. Of course, not only the north central romani uses romaňi čhib. The romani language used is the standardized romani language form 2008 in Slovakia and Czechia based on the most widespread dialect of the central romani: the East Slovak Romani. This standardized East Slovak Romani is used by governmental communication, national medias...

In the scientific publication, the term north central romani language is used, in English, Slovak, but is not yet translated in romani. The term carpathian romani is not used any more by the scientific community and had never been used by the romani speakers.

If you ask a Romani speakers with language he speaks he will always answer Romaň/ni čhib no matter the dialect he speaks. To differentiate they will add the name of the country Slovakian Romani vs Romanian Romani, Spiš Romani vs Abov Romani (Spiš and Abov are traditional regions in Slovakia) no matter the dialect they speak. In Slovakia about 85% of Romani speakers speak Central Romani mainly North central Romani but the Vlax Romani speaker (10% of romani speakers) will also answer Slovak Romani even if they will hardly understand each other.

In conclusion, a translation of North Central Romani or East Slovak Romani would be maybe the best but not used at the present time in romani communities. Where North Central Romani cover the all area but is an academic term and East Slovak Romani is reducing the language area which is larger than only East Slovakia but a bit less academic and identify the variety of North Central Romani used for standardisation.

A last question is the max possible length of the language name North Central Romani in Romani is about 30 characters.

Adehertogh (talk)12:25, 31 January 2021

Hi,

I fully enabled the language here on translatewiki to avoid further delays. (I also added a list of useful things to translate to your talk page, and I hope it's useful.)

I did it with the name "romaňi čhib", which appears to be the most useful at the moment. However, it's quite similar to other varieties of "Romani", and this may be confusing when they appear in one list of languages. I guess that it doesn't often happen within one country; for example, when people work with websites or documents in Slovakia, people probably choose from a short list that includes Slovak, Hungarian, and Romani, and then it's clear which variety of Romani it is. However, on translatewiki and on Wikipedia and other related projects, many more languages appear, and this includes other varieties of Romani, and then it may get difficult. So please try to think of a better name that won't be confusing, and let me know if you come up with something nice. I am reluctant about adding country names like "romaňi čhib (Slovakia)", but if other websites commonly do something like this, then maybe we can consider of something like that here, too.

Amir E. Aharoni (talk)09:38, 22 February 2021