Petra Cech
SEPEČIDES ROMANI

1. Sepečides
   1.1 History
   1.2 Present Situation
   
   
2. Sepečides-Romani
   2.1 Some Characterisics of Sepečides-Romani
   2.2 Codification
   
   References

Sepečides-Romani

1 Sepečides

1.1 History

The Sepečides of Izmir are a non-Vlax group of Greek/Turkish origin. Their ancestors lived in the area of Saloniki in the Osman Empire. After an undefined period of nomadic life this Muslim group of basket-weavers was affected by the Greek/Turkish exchange of ethnic/religious groups as defined by the Lausanne treaty of 1923. These parts of the group willing to adapt to the religion of the majority stayed in Greece. Those who had a greater inclination for Turkey and the Muslim religion were expelled from the Greek territory and moved to Turkey. Greek/Osman influence of unknown duration then gave way to modern Turkish influences. The families migrated for approx. ten years before they finally settled in the vicinity of Izmir. The group's history of the last 75 years is well documented in biographical recordings, family stories (and legends). Beyond that, former settlements are unknown. The Sepečides' dialect is clearly non-Vlax and, compared to other Balkan Romani dialects, rather conservative.

Presently, the Sepečides of Izmir are a completely sedentary group of Gypsies. Until approx. 1920 their traditional profession was the production and selling of baskets. They all spoke Greek, some of them also Turkish, fluently. Some family names still reflect former Greek settlements of Sepečides, such as Tralangere (Trala, a village in the surroundings of Saloniki), Kardičakere (Karditsa, a village in northern Greece). When the group split up in the early 20ies, the knowledge of the Turkish language proved to be an advantage for the ones who left Greece. The migrants avoided the regions engaged in the war and posed as either Greek or Turkish people, according to the situation. Informants report that they even had two flags and used them alternatively. In this manner, they migrated far into the east. After several months they reached the town of Malatya; after a short stay they were expelled by the locals and moved on to Mersin where they stayed for about three years before the group split up. Sepečides settled in the area of Mersin in Adapazar, Tarsus and Adana. In Mersin and Adana there are still settlements of at least several hundred speakers. However, no records of their dialect exist so far. From Mersin, one part of the group went to Izmir by ship. They settled in Çırpıköy, Arapçıköy and Çıplaköy, villages in the region of Izmir. Later, many of them moved into Izmir, where they settled in the Gypsy quarter Gültepe and finally in the district of Ballıkuyu. This was approx. 10 years after they had left Greece. In Izmir they became totally sedentary.

1.2 Present situation

The generation of today's 70- to 80year old people still worked in the old basket weaving profession, especially in the rural areas. The next generation, however, has dropped basket weaving. The women work as cooks or cleaning women, mostly for Americans at the NATO-base or rich Turkish families. The men are temporarily employed in service industries, e.g. at filling stations, or trade with food and dry goods in small shops or at the markets. However, they still refer to themselves as 'Sepečides'.

Language competence has decreased alarmingly among the younger people. Within the middle generation, only a few informants have full competence. As sedentary Roma the children generally attend school, which favors their second language, Turkish. Especially among the young men, frequent contact with gadže leads to an increasing number of exogamic marriages. Because of these tendencies, the young Roma are undergoing an assimilation process that seems irreversible; Turkish is their main language now; they understand Romani, but do not speak it any more. There is no information about the Sepečides groups living in Mersin and Adana, but a similar situation is to be expected.

Those families that stayed in Greece after 1923, moved south and finally settled in Volos. They are Greek-orthodox, and can be identified as direct relatives of the Sepečides from Izmir. They left the area of Saloniki approx. at the same time as their relatives. Their only contact language since then has been Greek. Despite many prevailing Turkish words in their dialect, they do not call themselves Sepečides, but 'sevlengere Roma' - basket(weaving) Roma. Their traditional profession, however, has changed. The women work in carpet factories, where they are partly paid in products, apart from money. The carpets are then sold independently by the men, who roam as far as Saloniki with their trucks. Both women and men use Romani at work and at home. Their children's first language is Romani, followed by Greek.

2 Sepečides-Romani

The dialect can be described as rather conservative. It is definitely non-Vlax, although there are a few Vlax features that might have their origins in southern Gurbet, as Boretzky (1999) proposes. The dialect resembles the ones of Rumeli described by Paspati (1870) in many respects.

2.1 Some Characteristics of Sepečides-Romani

The phonological inventory and the accent pattern show weak influence by present contact languages. The accent is primarily oxytone; stress also serves as a morphonological marker for the origin of words, as within the nominal paradigm inherited and loaned words are strictly divided by their accentuation. The aspirations are still distinctive:

There are no long vowels. Non-indigenous phonemes, such as Turkish ö, ü or central î, are restricted to Turkish loanwords. Tendencies of vowel harmony are weak. Cf. loanverbs, where the incorporating suffix /-in-/ or /-Cin-/ takes a central vowel due to the features of the stem vowels:

The old cerebrals are conservatively represented by ndr, probably via nr (see Boretzky 1999):

The morphological system is also rather conservative. The nominal paradigm comprises the inherited masc. and fem. noun classes for indigenous, Iranian and Armenien and some Greek words, whereas loans from more recent contact languages such as Macedonian and Turkish have their own inflectional classes. They were presumably established during early Greek contact, as they resemble - in the singular - Greek nominal classes.

čhavo 'son', phral 'brother', divi 'giant', gruni 'pig'

odas 'room', avdžis 'hunter', xoros 'kind of dance', kokalos 'bone'

phuri 'old (woman)', mol 'wine', funda 'tassel', xoli 'anger'

Nominal inflection shows the old case system with three primary and five secondary cases. Unlike in other Romani dialects of the Balkan all morphological cases are still in use in Sepečides-Romani. None of them - not even the locative - is reduced or replaced by prepositional constructions. The prepositional system is, compared to other Balkan dialects, not very extended; there are two major prepositions of a general locative (ko, ki) or ablative (katar ko, katar ki) meaning. They are further specified by prepositioned adverbs to obtain semantic diversity. Due to Turkish influences the choice of cases may differ from other non-Vlax dialects, especially in idiomatic phrases of Turkish origin. There are also a few instances of postpositional constructions with andre, avri, talal, opral, anglal. Postposition alternates with prepostion in these cases:

In verbal inflection the present indicative is extended with final -a, as in other non-Vlax dialects, whereas future tense is formed with the prefix ka- + fully inflected subjunctive form. As usual, past tense denotes past durativ, habitual or iterative actions, in opposition to preterite for non-habitual, punctual, non-durative ones. Pluperfect is hardly used for referring to events before the narration time, but for past conditional. There is no morphological infinitive, it is expressed with ti plus the subjunctive inflectional verbal form. Loaned verbs are affixed with a "marker" in-. Turkish verbs are loaned as their participle stem, followed by -in-, which results in an overall suffix /-tin-/ or /-din- for Turkish verbs in Sepečides-Romani. This stem distinction between indigenous and loaned verbs is rather strict.

In general inflectional (e. g. passive) and derivational (e. g. causative) suffixes differ for indigenous and loaned verbs. Inchoative intransitive verbs, however, are an exception: there are two synonymous suffixes available for both, indigenous and loaned verbs.

Certain inflectional/derivational categories are more common in this dialect than in others. Especially causative constructions abound, which is due to influences of the rich Turkish causative morphology. Passive constructions are also quite frequent.

There is a type of gerund not found in other dialects: indigenous verbal stems are suffixed with -i and reduplicated. They strongly resemble Turkish gerunds in -e- of the type güle-güle. As their Turkish counterparts, the Romani gerunds denote durative, intensive actions:

In contrast to the pure non-Vlax phonology there are a few Vlax features in the morphological system. The 3rd personal pronouns masc. and fem.sing. and pl. are vov, voj, von in the nominative. They differ from the usual ov, oj, on of non-Vlax dialects. Also for abstract nouns there is only the suffix -ipe, with only one noun in -ibe: xabe 'food'. This resembles more the situation in Vlax dialects than in non-Vlax ones, where we find both suffixes, -ipe- for denominal, and -ibe- for deverbal abstract nouns.

The syntactical word order proves to be rather free in this dialect, so we find all types of word order in clauses with S, O and V. The sequence SVO though appears as the unmarked form, if the subject is a noun:

Personal pronouns are mostly dropped, their existence denotes emphasis:

Like in Greek, individual parts of sentences with subordinate clauses can be topicalized and may precede the complementizer of the subordinate clause:

One characteristic feature of this dialect's syntax is the doubling of objects, that is, the repetition of a nominal object by a pronoun or noun. Doubling is common in other South Balkan dialects as well as some Balkan languages, Greek among others. In Sepečides-Romani doubling in the expression 'to have' (with kopula) is almost compulsory. The first object may have nominative, the second expression must have the correct case:

Doubling also occurs frequently in transitive sentences where a nominal object is repeated by a pronoun after the verb:

2.2 Codification

The Sepečides never wrote their language, as most of the people were illiterate anyway. Nowadays the children attend school and are trained in writing Turkish. As some Sepečides are living abroad now, letters are sometimes written in Romani to communicate with gadže who know Romani, but not Turkish. In these cases Sepečides naturally use the Turkish letters to express Romani sounds, which works well.
As the community is neither interested in a standardized codification of their dialect nor in teaching their children to speak (or write) Romani, the dialect was codified for linguistic publications in Slavic Latin script.

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