THE ROMANI PROJECT

The ROMANI PROJECT considers itself a contribution to the preservation of culture and identity by codifying and developing teaching methods for the language varieties of the Austrian Roma.

Due to the assimilation pressure the Romani - represented in Austria by several varieties -, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages, is threatened with extinction. Thus, not only from the point of view of the native speakers, codifying is essential in order to reduce the probability of the language being lost and consequently becoming extinct in the future.

The Romani Project at the linguistics department of the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, which was started in autumn 1993, has to be seen from this background. This project, which was initiated by the people affected, is neither a purely scientific-academic project nor a folkloric measure trying to maintain the purity of the language, but work carried out on a scientific basis on the instructions of the ethnic group which counteracts the extinction of the language and thus contributes to the preservation of culture and identity. Because of this orientation the Romani Project has gradually turned from a linguistic project into a cultural service organisation. This is one of the reasons why, apart from the main area LINGUISTICS, the areas TEACHING, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, JOURNALS and RADIO are also presented on these pages. Within these areas the learning aid of both the association Roma in Oberwart in southern Burgenland and the association Romano Centro in Vienna have been founded independent of the Romani Project, as well as Radio Romano Centro and the newspaper Romano Centro, which are partly run by people who also participate in the project. The newspaper Romani Patrin of the association Roma in Oberwart, however, is primarily looked after by the project. The bibliographies, of which the bibliographic database - romane lila with more than 12,000 entries has to be mentioned first, can be considered "by-products" of the project work in progress. Furthermore, bilingual books as well as CDs including documents of oral traditions of Roma have been published in close cooperation with the Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Credits:
These web-pages were made through grants of the following Austrian institutions: Many thanks for your support!
Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt aus Mitteln der Volksgruppenförderung)
Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur)

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This file last modified 06/01/07