It seems obvious.\u00a0 But to get people to acknowledge this natural right can at times be very difficult.\u00a0 Millions of people in Europe speak the Romani language, but only a very few of them study or have studied the language in formal educational settings such as elementary schools, universities, or training academies.\u00a0 For more than a thousand years, this language has lived almost exclusively among the Roma, transferred from parents to children, preserving the history and culture of a people, but remaining oral, little-studied, closed off.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in fact it is only because of the Romani language, which preserves within itself echoes of all of those countries and dialects that were encountered by the Roma in their long journey across Eurasia, were we able to reconstruct this people\u2019s origin and history.\u00a0 It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of the Romani language in the Roma\u2019s definition of themselves, the role it plays in preserving their cultural traditions and in the socio-culturological survival of a people who have been able to maintain their uniqueness through hundreds of years of travel and persecution, slavery in Romania, forced assimilation in Hungary, the Nazi genocide, the Decree on Compulsory Settlement of 1956 in the USSR (and the subsequent, analogous decrees in other countries throughout the Eastern Bloc), and all of the other prohibitions and limitations that have been imposed upon them in the last few decades.\u00a0 The Romani language is unique in that it is diverse but at the same time still maintains a unified character.\u00a0 Dozens of dialects have absorbed the linguistic specificities of those countries in which one or another group of Roma have lived for long periods of time. Linguistic borrowings and the influence of other languages have played a role in the development of each unique dialect of Romani\u2014Caldarari (which arose in Romania), Lovari (in Hungary), Russian Romani, Finnish, Swedish, Polish, and many others.\u00a0 And all Roma from each of these different countries are able to talk to one another without translation, can understand a fellow Roma from Greece or Finland, France or Romania, Poland or the Czech Republic, Bulgaria or Serbia, because each of the Romani dialects of Europe shares a single origin.<\/p>\n
This cultural wealth and great benefit offered to the Roma by knowledge of their own language should be preserved and developed.\u00a0 Roma children who attend school should be given the opportunity to study their native language on a level that is equal to their study of the language of the country in which they are residing:\u00a0 they should be able write in Romani and expand upon their vocabulary, moving away from just a knowledge of everyday vocabulary and getting closer to the communicative needs of the modern world.\u00a0 Moreover, measures should be taken to preserve the legacy of the Romani language\u2014songs and sayings, stories and ballads\u2014which have, through the centuries, retained descriptions of long-held traditions and a way of life that is already becoming a thing of the past.\u00a0 This is not just important for historians and ethnographers; memories of the past have value for everyone, including linguistic memories.\u00a0 Modern, educated children read stories about a spindle that caused a beautiful girl to fall into a deep sleep, and they understand what is being described, despite the fact that even their grandmothers, for the most part, have never seen such a thing in real life.\u00a0 It is not important that there are no longer large fairs where the Roma trade horses or forge horseshoes; it is important that people remember about this and know the old words which give name to the activities and things that were so important to their forebears.\u00a0 A language should maintain all of its variety, finding new words for new things but not losing the old words that were given to us by our ancestors.\u00a0 The Romani language has a long history, a striking present, and, one can assume, an interesting future.\u00a0 For it is in our current era that Romani has begun to move into uncharted territory\u2014the language has entered into the political sphere, has been heard on the radio and television in several European countries, has become a part of educational programs, and not only in a few elementary schools, but also in universities.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, only a few countries support the education of Roma children in their native language.\u00a0 However, some experience has already been gained and is certainly of interest.\u00a0 In November 2008, a group of Roma activists and educators who teach in elementary schools where Roma children study were given a unique opportunity to go to Sweden and become acquainted with the Swedish experience in educating Roma children.\u00a0 Only a few tens of thousands of Roma live in this northerly country, and they all belong to different groups\u2014Swedish Roma, Finnish, Lovari, Caldarari, Russian and Polish Roma, Roma refugees from the former Yugoslavia.\u00a0 Nevertheless, in Sweden the importance of educating children in their native language is understood, and particular emphasis is placed upon it.\u00a0 It must be said that Roma children\u2019s knowledge of their language differs:\u00a0 some speak in Romani better than in any other language, and for some, Swedish has become the primary language, and understanding conversations in the language of their forefathers is becoming ever-more difficult.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the level of education within any given family and the related desire to ensure the education of one\u2019s own children varies greatly.\u00a0 Families that include educators are one thing: in these families, the children themselves strive to attend college, and their parents support them.\u00a0 Refugee families are an entirely different story: parents in these families are at times poorly educated, more often than not unemployed and very poor\u2026 In some poor neighbourhoods, whose residents have only recently moved to Sweden, up to half of the Roma children still do not attend school. This is a problem.\u00a0 But it is good that the problem has been recognized by the government, which considers it to be its duty, at the very least, to know about the real state of affairs, not hide its anxiety, and to attract experts to help in the resolution of the problem.\u00a0 Hopefully the Swedish society will find a means through which all of its children will be able to attend school, and other countries will begin the resolution of their own problems using Sweden\u2019s example, first admitting that there are children who do not attend school, then collecting information about these children, and then developing a plan to gradually overcome the divide that exists between the levels of education held by Roma and non-Roma.<\/p>\n
For those children in Sweden who have already been so assimilated as to have begun to forget their native Romani language, textbooks are being developed that will help teachers educate the children in Romani grammar and lexicon, each in their own native dialect\u2014Lovari-Roma children are being taught Romani with their own textbooks, and the Caldarari with their own.\u00a0 With financial assistance from the government, books of fairytales in Romani and collections of sayings and songs are also being published.\u00a0 Certified teachers are being trained in the Romani language and are also being prepared to teach other subjects in Romani.\u00a0 In Stockholm there are functioning schools for Caldarari children in which all of the subjects for half of the day are taught in their children\u2019s language (including mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science), and in the second half of the day, the subjects are taught in Swedish, the knowledge of which is certainly necessary for any educated citizen of the country.<\/p>\n
However, the state of affairs in the highly developed, wealthy Sweden, where, after all, there are not that many linguistic and ethnic minorities, is much better than in the poor countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where hundreds of thousands, and in some cases even millions, of Roma live, many of whom to this day do not have access even to the most basic levels of education.\u00a0 Illiteracy is a tragedy for children in the 21st