Roma News and Views: Language is a Precious Gift - Is it to share or to keep secret?
In this month of Roma News and Views, Rahela Cirpaci writes about the importance of language preservation and how Romanes, spoken by Roma people is being learned by people from Roma and non-Roma backgrounds.
Photo from Rahela’s Romanes class
By Rahela Cirpaci | Photo by Romano Lav
Govanhill is one of the most diverse and multilingual places you’ll find and Romanes is just one of them. Romanes is the language spoken by Roma people, and until very recently has not been written down, only spoken - over hundreds of years, passed on from generation to generation.
I teach Romanes, and have just finished a block of online beginners classes. I have students from all over the world, from both Roma and non-Roma backgrounds. I was interested to find out more about my students, and reasons for joining the class. I managed to get a chat with one of my students, 76 year old Lon Silagi from New Mexico, USA.
Lon’s grandparents were from Bihor, Romania. His grandfather emigrated in 1913 to Canada, and that's where he met Lon’s grandmother.
Later on they had 11 children and Lon’s father was the only boy in the family so he was treated like a prince but he had to learn to take care of his father’s businesses; his father was a carpenter and owned several businesses.
Lon’s family is what we call ‘Boyas Romani’, a tribe that made wooden spoons and bowls.
I asked Lon what he thought about non-Roma people learning our language as some Roma people feel that our language should be kept a secret. Lon was very open to non-Roma people learning Romanes. He felt the language is “kind of a secret and is dying, it’s fading” and it should be shared to be kept alive.
Lon’s wife Lindsey’s heritage is from Scotland and she has similar opinions on sharing languages. Once, when she was at a conference in Nova Scotia, she saw a woman singing in a Gaelic language dialect that is no longer spoken.
It was very meaningful to Lindsley and opened her up to how easily we can lose languages. A recent study found that Gaelic is at risk of becoming extinct by 2030.
Should we keep our languages a secret and speak only within our communities? Or should we keep our language alive by teaching more people and sharing our languages with other communities?
In my opinion I think it’s very important that we share our language not only with other communities but with the whole world. I want my language to be passed on and not forgotten, I would be devastated to find out that in, say, 100 years my language would die out. The Romanes language is such a beautiful and rich language and with many different dialects, I want people to learn more about its beauty and be able to speak with their brothers, sisters and neighbours surrounding them in their communities.