Romanes, also called Romanes Čhib or Romanes Šib [Čhib or Šib = language or tongue in Romanes], is the language originally spoken by all Sinti and Roma. Today, a large proportion of Sinti and Roma still speak it. During National Socialism, the use of Romanes, including prohibitions on speaking the language was important in various persecution contexts.
History of the Language
The Indian origin of Romanes was first discovered at the end of the 18th century by the Hungarian aristocrat István Valyi, also Váli or Wáli, (1729/30–1779). From the middle of the 19th century, well-known studies, such as those by August Friedrich Pott (1802–1887), Alfred Graffunder (1801–1875) and Franz von Miklosich (1813–1891) were published, followed by studies by English linguists such as John Sampson (1862–1931). The origin of Romanes lies in Prakrit, the spoken form of Sanskrit. To this day, the language shows a strongly articulated Indian morphology and a large proportion of words from the Indian vocabulary. Much of the grammar can be found in existing Indoaryan languages.
Romanes has a multi-layered structure, the origin of which lies in the early migrations of the Roma from India. Some layers, such as the Indian roots, are extremely strong, while others, such as the Armenian, are somewhat less important in terms of the number of words they have contributed to the language. The layers that can be found in all dialects of Romanes are Prakrit, Old Persian, Armenian, Greek, and South Slavic. These layers provide a consistent shared foundation on which all dialects are built. We need to note here that there are no traces of Semitic languages in Romanes, neither Arabic nor Syriac. Only in the Balkan Roma groups do we find loan words of Semitic origin, all of which come from Turkish. The Greek influence is, after Prakrit, the greatest. Numerous words, including the majority of terms for work and tools, are of Greek origin.
Those Sinti and Roma who speak Romanes are at least bilingual. They speak their respective national languages as well as Romanes. In the Balkan states, Ottoman Turkish is often added, and in some places it is not unusual for Roma to speak four languages. This multilingualism is one of the reasons for the existence of language layers in Romanes. People emigrating to a new region take with them their old national language along with Romanes. Since the old language is usually not understood in the new place, elements of it become integrated into Romanes.
Dialect Groups and Dialects
After their stay in the Byzantine Empire, which left a broad Greek influence on the language, some Roma migrated further, mainly as a result of the advance of Ottoman troops into the Balkans. This gave rise to four large dialect groups: The Vlach Roma, who lived in the Romanian-speaking area, absorbed many Romanian (sometimes Hungarian) lexemes and even parts of the grammar into their dialects. The Romanes of the Carpathian Roma, who lived mainly in what is now Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria, show a strong influence of Hungarian. The Balkan Roma are those who remained in the region under Ottoman rule and thus show a strong influence of Turkish in their dialect. Finally, the group that migrated to the German-speaking territories at the beginning of the 15th century should be mentioned. From there, Sinti and Roma went to Italy, Spain, France, England, and Scandinavia. Some fled eastwards to Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Russia because of persecution in the German lands. The dialects in these countries therefore show more or less strong influences from German.
The historical development of the various dialects over the centuries clearly refutes the Anti-Roma caricature of alleged rootlessness — around the 16th and 17th centuries, permanent regional and finally national affiliations emerged.1Matras, Die Sprache der Roma, 260.
It is often claimed that different Romanes dialects are incomprehensible to one another. The reasons are simple: a Polish Rom, for example, does not understand Romanian. If he speaks to Vlach Roma, he will not understand their Romanian loanwords. However, Romanes is constructed in such a way that original Romanes words have been preserved alongside newer borrowings. So if one knows the language well, one can easily overcome this hurdle. It should be noted that the dialects of the Vlach Roma are the most different from all others and are therefore the least easily understood by other Roma.
Modern words and concepts are more difficult. Terms such as television, telephone, or aeroplane are mainly borrowed from the local language and are therefore typically incomprehensible to other Roma. So it can be said that the more the Romanes dialect is mixed with the local language, the more difficult communication becomes. Some linguists and activists have tried to introduce a standardized form of Romanes. Local conditions and the influence of local languages have meant that these efforts have so far been unsuccessful.
Language and Persecution
In some countries, such as Hungary or Spain, most Roma no longer speak Romanes. The use of the language was banned in her lands by the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780), and this led to the loss of Romanes among the groups in Hungary that did not belong to the Vlach Roma. In Spain, Romanes was also banned in the 18th century as part of the state-run forced assimilation, but it has been demonstrated that it was spoken until the mid-19th century.
As Nazi Germany pursued its programme for the comprehensive registration of ‘Zigeuner’, knowledge of Romanes became part of the machinery of persecution, a tool for gaining intimate knowledge of the family relationships and living conditions of the Sinti and Roma. From the perspective of Robert Ritter (1901–1951), the head of the Racial Hygiene Research Unit (RHF), knowledge of Romanes was a key qualification for extracting information from Sinti and Roma in the German Reich during interrogations about their families.2According to Ritter, the racial-biological surveys were to be carried out by ‘linguists who were well-versed in languages and were specially trained in genealogy and racial biology’, cf. Ritter, Die Bestandsaufnahme, 480. He therefore encouraged his employees to learn the language.3Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 141. He himself acquired rudimentary language skills within three weeks.4Bundesarchiv Berlin, Zsg. 142 Anh. 28, undated manuscript from Robert Ritter, ca. 1940, printed in: Reiter, Sinti und Roma, 51–58, here 53. Eve Rosenhaft judges Ritter’s ambition to appropriate Romanes as an ‘act of aggression’, cf. Rosenhaft, Wissenschaft als Herrschaftsakt, 345f., citation 345. Other employees of the RHF also acquired relevant knowledge. One of them was Eva Justin (1909–1966), also called ‘Loli Tschai‘ [Red Girl] by Sinti. At first, she spoke only a moderate amount of Romanes, but over the years she learned more and was remembered by many survivors, not least because she surprised them and tried to win them over with her language skills.5See survivors’ descriptions: Strauß, Weggekommen, 237f (Anton Winter); Hanstein, Meine hundert Leben, 32 (Ewald Hanstein); Krausnick, Abfahrt Karlsruhe, 26 (Josef Reinhardt).
The importance Ritter attached to Romanes is also demonstrated by his ruthlessness towards researchers who did not want to work for the RHF. In 1936, he had the Magdeburg Gestapo confiscate the extensive library of the specialist linguist Siegmund A. Wolf (1912–1987) for the institute library which he was building up, after Wolf refused to sell it.6Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 140; Hohmann, Robert Ritter, 430.
Since Ritter had often seen Roma communicating with each other in Romanes while they were being examined and interviewed, he described Romanes as the ‘strongest weapon’ of Sinti and Roma to evade ‘repeated cross-examination’.7Bundesarchiv Berlin, Zsg. 142 Anh. 28, undated manuscript from Robert Ritter, ca. 1940, printed in: Reiter, Sinti und Roma, 51–58, citation 52. It is therefore not surprising that in numerous Detention Camps the use of Romanes was strictly forbidden to prevent communication between camp inmates that the guards could not understand. One example is the camps in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The ‘camp regulations’ of 30 September 1942, which applied to Lety near Pisek and Hodonin near Kunstadt, stated: ‘The spoken language is German. The “Gypsy language” is forbidden.’8Zigeunerbekämpfung – Lagerordnung für die Zigeunerlager Lety bei Pisek (Böhmen) und Hodonin bei Kunstadt (Mähren), 3.
Linguistic Research motivated by Racial Politics
The Sanskrit origin of Romanes presented the National Socialists with a racial ideological problem, as it was evidence for the origin of the Roma from India and thus from the area that was also considered the origin of ‘superior’ ‘Aryans’. Ritter made took it upon himself to refute the ‘erroneous […] view that the Gypsies who emigrated from India’ and whose ‘language contained elements of Sanskrit’ were ‘Aryans at all’.9Ritter, Die Bestandsaufnahme, 477. He divided ‘Gypsies’ into a small circle of ‘original Gypsies’ who ‘still spoke the Gypsy language’ and adhered to their ‘tribal laws’, while he declared 90 percent of all ‘domestic Gypsies’ in the German Reich to be ‘Mischlinge’.10Ibid. 482f. In 1942, a discussion was initiated by the Ahnenerbe of the SS (Schutzstaffel) about the group that Ritter described as ‘true Gypsies’. The discussion also included the idea of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) that this small group of—in his terms—‘racially pure Gypsies’ should be kept alive in a kind of reservation. To this end, the SS Ahnenerbe was to study the ‘Gypsy language’ in particular.11Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 297f.; NO-1725, Amt Ahnenerbe an die Kriminalpolizeileitstelle Wien, 14.1.1943 betr. Zigeunerfragen.
One of these studies was carried out by the doctoral student Johann Knobloch (1919–2010). In the spring of 1943—shortly before the deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp—he visited the Lackenbach Detention Camp to study the language of Burgenland Roma.12Fings/Sparing, Sprachwissenschaftliche Verhöre; Knobloch, Romani Texte. Another area of investigation was Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. Georg Wagner (1898–1981) was to travel there from Königsberg in East Prussia beginning in November 1943, also with support of the SS Ahnenerbe, with a view to studying ‘Indo-Germanic borrowings among the Gypsies’ and ‘comparative studies of Gypsy dialects’.13Hohmann, Robert Ritter, 281–286, Citation 283. While the course of the war prevented Wagner from completing his research, the investigations carried out at the Lackenbach camp paved the way for Johann Knobloch to pursue a professional career in the Federal Republic of Germany. He became the long-time director of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Bonn. While the linguistic research initiated by the SS Ahnenerbe was ultimately of no significance for the continuation of the National Socialist ‘Gypsy policy’, it constituted a further abuse of people held in detention camps or under police supervision, whose fate had already been decided.
Language and Resistance
Romanes, for those who spoke it, was a way to communicate with each other and to seek opportunities in the face of persecution. Unfortunately, little research has been done on this topic. There are nevertheless some examples. Several cases of messages written in Romanes are recorded. They were written to circumvent the SS’s letter censorship in concentration and extermination camps, and thus to give relatives a realistic picture of the murderous conditions.14See Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid, 121; König, Sinti und Roma, 127. For example, Margarete Bamberger (1918–1971) hid a message in Romanes in a letter to her sister smuggled out of Auschwitz-Birkenau: she sent her special greetings from ‘Baro Naßlepin, Elenta and Marepin’. However, these were not the names of people, but rather an indication of the mortal danger they were in: ‘Great illness, misery and murder’.15A page of this letter is printed in: Geigges et. al., Zigeuner heute, 271, as scan, transcription, and audio with contextualisation it can be accessed in: https://www.romarchive.eu/de/collection/grosse-krankheit-elend-und-mord/ [Accessed 29.05.2024]. In September 1944, Walter Stanoski Winter (1919–2012) wrote a letter to his family from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Although the camp censors did delete the mention of the forced sterilisations carried out in Ravensbrück, Winter’s references in Romanes to the poor conditions in the camp and the terrible hunger managed to get out.16The letter is printed and transcribed in Guth, Z 3105, 127 and 202. There is evidence that Romanes was also used as a means of communication in other dangerous situations. Jan Yoors (1922–1977) describes how Roma imprisoned in German-occupied Belgium communicated from cell to cell in Romanes to encourage each other.17Yoors, Crossing, 146f.
During the Second World War, the use of Romanes to communicate with resistance groups in occupied Yugoslavia and Southeastern Europe was considered in the United Kingdom. However, this idea was rejected because it was assumed that knowledge of Romanes was excellent in Germany.18Francis, Lady Eleanor Smith, 72.
One example of Romanes being used to warn of impending arrest is known from German-occupied Serbia. On 20 October 1941, at 10 p.m., several residential areas in Niš where Roma lived were surrounded by Serbian police on the orders of German officers to arrest all male Roma aged 16 and over and transfer them to the Crveni Krst camp. The police used some Roma, whom they had appointed as ‘spokesmen.’ They were supposed to call the residents to gather. One of these spokesmen is said to have told the order word for word in Serbian, but added in Romanes: ‘Našen tumen kote džanen.’ [Run away wherever you can.] As a result, some Roma are said to have managed to escape.19Kenrick/Puxon, Sinti und Roma, 89–90. About this event, as usual in this book, no references are given. It is also falsely dated to 1942. One cannot attribute this warning to a specific spokesman. The book names two: Jašar Salijevic, spokesman of the Stočni Trg neighbourhood in Niš, and Trajko Latifović for the neighbourhood of Beogradska Mahala.
Aftermath
The murder of hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma during National Socialism and World War II also damaged Romanes as an important cultural asset. In countries such as Estonia and Croatia, members of the minority were almost completely annihilated, taking their language with them. The high death rates among Burgenland Roma, German, and Czech Sinti and Roma also caused significant losses. Older people in particular had little or no chance of survival in the camps, so that these key language carriers and their knowledge were unavailable to subsequent generations.
Especially in Germany, where Sinti and Roma had been particularly exposed to National Socialist persecutions, nurturing the language and speaking it in public was not possible. On the one hand, there was a legitimate concern that this would reveal the speaker as a member of the minority, which could only result in personal disadvantages given the continued existence of antigypsyism. On the other hand, history had taught Sinti and Roma that it was advisable not to share one’s language with others.20See Hanstein, Meine hundert Leben, 31f.
