Celebrating the World Day of Romani Language at Charles University
November 5th marks the World Day of Romani Language, celebrated across Czechia with events that highlight and support the importance of Romani as a living language and as an integral part of Czech Roma identity. This year, for the first time, the day is being celebrated at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, home to a Department of Romani Studies.
The programme began this morning at Charles University with a series of talks under the title Romani Language in Scholarly Teamwork. Academics from Czechia, Ukraine, and Poland delivered their presentations in Romani, highlighting the language’s growing role within academia.
One of the talks was delivered by Viktor Chovka, a journalist from Ukraine who, owing to the ongoing war, was forced to leave Ukraine and now lives in the United Kingdom.
"The Romani language is very important to me because many of us don't know the language anymore, and so we lose part of our identity. I am very thankful to Charles University that they have organised a Romani language day. At events like these, we can see that the Romani language is alive, despite everything that happened in our Roma history," he highlighted.
Across Europe, there are an estimated 6.6 million Romani speakers – far fewer than the total Roma population living across the continent.
“Because we live in different countries, we are impacted by different cultures and so a lot of Roma lose their identity. This is why it is very important to speak Romani, as we live among various nationalities and don't have our own country,” Chovka explained.
“Our past generations spoke Romani, but they didn't write down our language. So, today, it is important to have Romani written down also in an academic environment – in order to have a Romani vocabulary for our future generations.”
Why study Romani?
Alžběta and Vojtěch have been studying Romani Studies for four years. According to Alžběta, the Romani language is "really beautiful" and she likes how similar it is to Hindi.
Vojtěch expanded more on his take on the langauge:
“When you're a kid here in the Czech Republic, you usually learn English at school, or sometimes German, Russian, or French. But when we came to Charles University and started learning Romani, it felt different. Still, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly harder than, for example, English. It’s just another language—and I think it’s important for people to understand that. It has the same linguistic categories and everything. Because even some people here in the Czech Republic don’t really see it as a language; they think it’s just some kind of slang.”
Vojtěch adde that he would love to see more people study Romani.
"It's great that Roma and non-Roma study here at our Department, so we can all learn the language together and share our experiences. That's the most important thing to me.”
In the evening, the programme will continue with an event that will focus on Romani as a literary language. Roma authors will take the stage to read from their works, followed by a panel discussion.
