Romany writing systems

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The Romany language has for most of its history been an entirely oral language, with no written form in common use. Although the first example of written Romany dates from 1542 (Matras 2002) it is not until the twentieth century that vernacular writing by native Roma arose. Currently, Romany is written using Cyrillic, Latin or Devanagari.

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[edit] Standardisation

Currently there is no one single standard orthography used by both scholars and native speakers. Efforts of language planners have been hampered by the significant dialectal divisions in Romany: the absence of a standard phonology in turn makes the selection of a single written form problematic.

In an effort to overcome this, during the 1980s and 1990s Marcel Courthiade proposed a model for orthographic unification based on the adoption of a meta-phonological orthography, which "would allow dialectal variation to be accommodated at the phonological and morpho-phonological level" (Matras 2002). This system was presented to the International Romani Union in 1990, who adopted it as the organisation's "official alphabet". This recognition by the International Romani Union allowed Courthiade's system to qualify for funding from the European Commission.

Despite being used in several publications, such as the grammar of Romany compiled by Gheorghe Sarău[1] and the Polish publication Informaciaqo lil, (Hancock 1995) the IRU standard has yet to find a broad base of support from Romany writers. One reason for the reluctance to adopt this standard, according to Canadian Rom Ronald Lee, is that the proposed orthography contains a number of specialised characters not regularly found on European keyboards, such as θ and ʒ (Lee 2005).

Instead, the most common pattern among native speakers is for individual authors to use an orthography based on the writing system of the dominant contact language: thus Romanian in Romania, Hungarian in Hungary and so on. A currently observable trend, however, appears to be the adoption of a loosely English-oriented orthography, developed spontaneously by native speakers for use online and through email (Matras 2002).

Descriptive linguistics has, however, a long and established tradition of transcription (Matras 2002). Despite small differences between individual linguists in the representation of certain phonemes, most adhere to a system which Hancock terms Pan-Vlax (Hancock 1995).

[edit] Systems currently in use

[edit] Latin

The overwhelming majority of academic and non-academic literature produced currently in Romany is written using a Latin-based orthography (Matras 2002). There are three main systems which are likely to be encountered: the Pan-Vlax system, the International Standard and various Anglicised systems (Hancock 1995).

[edit] Pan-Vlax

In most recent descriptive literature, a variety of the orthography which Hancock terms Pan-Vlax will likely be used (Hancock 1995). This orthography is not a single standardised form, but rather a set of orthographical practices which exhibit a basic "core" of shared graphemes and a small amount of divergence in several areas. The Pan-Vlax script is based on the Latin alphabet, augmented by the addition of several diacritics common to the languages of eastern Europe, such as the caron.

In the following table, the most common variants of the graphemes are shown. The phonemes used in the table are somewhat arbitrary and are not specifically based on any one current dialect (for example, the phoneme denoted /ʤ/ in the table can be realised as /ʒ/, /ʐ/ or /ɟ/, depending on dialect):

Grapheme Phoneme Example
A a /a/ akana now
B b /b/ barvalo rich
C c /ʦ/ cirdel he pulls
Č č /ʧ/ čačo true
Čh čh /ʧʰ/ čhavo boy
D d /d/ dorjav river
Dž dž /ʤ/ džukel dog
E e /e/ ertimos forgiveness
F f /f/ foros town
G g /g/ gadže non-Rom
H h /h/ harmasari stallion
I i /i/ ičarel he crushes
J j /j/ jag fire
K k /k/ kaj where
Kh kh /kʰ/ khamesko sunny
L l /l/ lašo good
M m /m/ manuš man
N n /n/ nav name
O o /o/ oxto eight
P p /p/ pekel he bakes
Ph ph /pʰ/ phabaj apple
R r /r/ rakli girl
S s /s/ sunakaj gold
Š š /ʃ/ šukar gold
T t /t/ taxtaj cup
Th th /tʰ/ them land
U u /u/ uš lip
V v /ʋ/ voro cousin
X x /x/ xarano wise
Z z /z/ zeleno green
Ž ž /ʒ/ žoja Thursday

The use of the above graphemes is relatively stable and universal, taking into account dialectal mergers and so on. However, in certain areas there is somewhat more variation. A typically diverse area is in the representation of sounds not present in most varieties of Romany. For example, the centralised vowel phonemes of several varieties of Vlax and Xaladitka, when they are indicated separately from the non-centralised vowels, can be represented using ə, ъ or ă (Hancock 1995). Another particularly variant area is the representation of palatalised consonants, which are absent from a number of dialects. Some variant graphemes for /tʲ/ include tj, ty, ć, čj and t᾿ (Matras 2002). Finally, the representation of the phoneme /ʀ/ (the reflex of the Sanskrit retroflex series), which in several dialects has been merged with /r/, tends to vary between rr, ř and rh, and sometimes even gh, with the first two being the most frequently found variants (Hancock 1995).

[edit] International Standard

The International Standard orthography, as devised by Marcel Courthiade and adopted by the International Romani Union, uses similar conventions to the Pan-Vlax system outlined above. Several of the differences are simply graphical, such as replacing carons with acute accents, transforming č š ž into ć ś ź. However, its most distinctive feature is the use of "meta-notations", which are intended to cover cross-dialectal phonological variation, particularly in degrees of palatalisation; and "morpho-graphs", which are used to represent the morphophonological alternation of case suffixes [2] in different phonological environments (Matras 1999).

The three "morpho-graphs" are ç, q and θ, which are used to represent the initial phonemes of a number of case suffixes, which are realised /s/, /k/ and /t/ after a vowel and /ʦ/, /g/ and /d/ after a nasal consonant. The three "meta-notations" are ʒ, ŏ and ă, the realisation of which varies by dialect. The latter two, for example, are pronounced /o/ and /a/ in Lovaricka, but /jo/ and /ja/ in Kalderash (Hancock 1995).

[edit] Anglicised

The English-based orthography commonly used in North America is, to a degree, an accommodation of the Pan-Vlax orthography to English-language keyboards, replacing those graphemes with diacritics with digraphs, such as the substitution of ts ch sh zh for c č š ž (Hancock 1995). This particular orthography seems to have arisen spontaneously as Romany speakers have communicated using email, a medium in which graphemes outside the Latin-1 charset have until recently been difficult to type (Matras 2002). In addition, it is this orthography which is recommended for use by Romany scholar and activist Ronald Lee (Lee 2005).

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[edit] Cyrillic

Cyrillic alphabet of Kalderash dialect

А а Б б В в Г г Ғ ғ Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж
З з И и Й й К к Кх кх Л л М м Н н О о
П п Пх пх Р р Рр рр С с Т т Тх тх У у Ф ф
Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
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[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Sarău, Gheorghe (1994) Limba Romani: Manual pentru Clasele de Invățători Romi ale Școlilor Normale Bucharest: Editura Didactică și Pedagogică
  2. ^ Whether these endings are to be analysed as postpositions or case endings is still a matter of debate in Romany linguistics. See, for example, Hancock (1995) and Matras (2002) for varying approaches.

[edit] References

  • Hancock, Ian (1995). A Handbook of Vlax Romani, Columbus: Slavica Publishers. ISBN 0-89357-258-6.
  • Lee, Ronald (2005). Learn Romani: Das-dúma Rromanes, Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press. ISBN 1-902806-44-1.
  • Matras, Yaron (1999). Writing Romani: The pragmatics of codification in a stateless language. Applied Linguistics, vol. 20, pp 481-502.
  • Matras, Yaron (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-512-02330-0.
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