Thursday, April 21, 2016

Qualirom = Quality Education for Romani in Europe


QUALIROM developed teaching materials in various Romani varieties for primary, secondary and tertiary teaching at proficiency levels A1 to B2. Some of the materials were piloted in teaching activities during the lifetime of the project. Downloadable materials are listed below under the respective Romani variety:
  • ARLIJE ROMANI, a vital dialect cluster from mainly south eastern Europe with groups of migrant speakers in all European countries and beyond.
  • EAST SLOVAK ROMANI, an inter-regional variety with speech communities in Slovakia (SK) and in the Czech Republic (CZ) and with migrant speakers in many other EU countries. 
  • FINNISH ROMANI, an isolated variety whose speech community is currently undergoing a language shift with elders still perceiving their "language" as a tabooed in-group marker but, on the other hand, want their children to be taught the ethnic language. 
  • GURBET ROMANI, a dialect cluster that reaches from Macedonia via Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia and Croatia with speech communities all over Europe and beyond and with written varieties in use for some decades.
  • LOVARA ROMANI, an internationally spread variety from the wider Hungarian context; it is an integral part of Romanšago 'Romaniness' and is used in the media, in political contexts and in inter-group contacts. 
  • KALDERAŠ ROMANI, an internationally spread variety with speech communities all over Europe (and beyond) since the beginning of the 20th century, is perhaps the most important variety of the Romani political movement on the international level; it is the prime basis of an emerging "Inter-Roman". 

Friday, April 15, 2016

Roma parents help tutor children

Sixty percent of Slovakia’s children classified as “mentally disabled” are Roma. Most just don’t know Slovak well enough to be classified as “standard.” Given this situation, and the need of several church members for work, we took four days of the February 2016 school break week to help ten of the church’s Roma children in grades 0 – 4 improve their Slovak reading and writing skills. Three parents plus my children (aged 12 and 15) taught grade-appropriate materials. The parents did not receive “pay” for teaching, rather a “reward” at the end of the week approximately equal to what they would have received had they been selected for extra community service work (about 1 euro an hour).

We met at the Hlinné Cirkev bratská church. The children wanted to come, even though we had no candy – only a healthy snack during ten minutes of the three hour daily
tutoring sessions. In fact, more children asked to come than those who were registered. The parents explained the lessons to the younger children using Romani. Progress was made by up to 21 words per minute faster reading speed of an unknown text. Now we are considering ways to continue.

Lisa van Vuuren, April 12, 2016