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Two apples and an orange. The introduction as it presently reads equates Romani people/Romany people with Roma people. This is incorrect and I recommend for this removing "Roma people" from the introductory paragraph. The differences are explained discussed in the "Terminology" section as they should be (though the significant difference should be made more explicit there). I will repeat three citations (now archived) that support my recommendation:
1) "'Roma' is a political term used as an umbrella name for all members of the Romani ethnic community ... [F]rom an ethnographic point of view, the Romani community is extremely diverse and all Romani groups, subgroups and metagroups have their own ethnic and cultural features .. so far, the homogeneous Romani identity is a political project rather than a reality." (p. 13 in Illona Klimova-Alexander's The Romani Voice in World Politics: The United Nations and Non-State Actors (2005, Burlington, VT.: Ashgate).
2) "Before the changes in 1989-90, the name 'Roma' was used most commonly as an endonyme (an internal community self-appellation) in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (except for former Yugoslavia) when the Gypsies spoke Romanes (the Gypsy language). This name was not widely popular and did not have an official status. In order to be faithful to the historical principle we use the word Roma only for the period after 1989. In all other instances we use the term 'Gypsies'. We think that 'Gypsies' is wider in scope than 'Roma' and we also use it to include the Gypsy communities who are not Roma or who are considered to be 'Gypsies' by the surrounding population but do not wish to be considered as such." (p. 52 in Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov's "Historical and ethnographic background; Gypsies, Roma, Sinti" in Will Guy [ed.] Between Past and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe [with a Foreword by Dr. Ian Hancock], 2001, UK: University of Hertfordshire Press).
http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/romani.html [wherein Dr Ian Hancock uses "Romani people" in place of "Roma people" consistently in order to avoid the ambiguity I am drawing attention to.
In sum, "Romani people" and "Romany people" refer to the more inclusive ethnic group described in the article, of which "Roma people" is a part. The introduction should be rewritten to make that clear. The scholarly citations appearing above have much more more authority and validity than those blogs and encyclopedia references given in support of "Roma people" as equivalent in meaning to "Romany people" and "Romany people". Steviemitlo ( talk) 00:05, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Now that the normal and long waited move to "Romani people" was finally accomplished, I think that we should have a manual of style for his matter, as it was already discussed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Romani_language#Request_for_Comment:_Romani.2C_Romany.2C_Roma
Basically, following the talks, I think that "Romani people"/"Romanies" for the entire ethnic group, Roma (as a noun) for the E Europe subgroup, and "Romany" with an "y" when we cite a title is the best solution. AKoan ( talk) 10:36, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
The introductory phrase has been discussed here [1]. I couldn't continue the discussion, cause I was absent a long time. I support the version initially suggested by Kuaichik (with the largest concentrated populations in Europe, but also in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere), because it represents better the reality. The Romanies have the largest concentration in Europe, followed by the Americas, followed by "elsewhere". The current version (with the largest concentrated populations in Europe and the Americas) gives the impression the Europe and the Americas have kinda the same Romani populations. AKoan ( talk) 10:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Oh, another thing with the intro. I think that the second phrase should be "The Romani people are.." or "The Romanies are.." in order to be grammatically correct. Romani is the singular form. AKoan ( talk) 13:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
The section about the Romani groups uses to references that are in Russian. Can anybody translate them (at least the relevant parts) cause I'm suspicious about them. AKoan ( talk) 11:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
The see also section of the article is getting a bit out of hand. Would anyone object if I attempted to cut it down? Cordless Larry ( talk) 17:23, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Cem Romengo, Indian diaspora and List of Roma, Sinti and Mixed People should be kept. -- Olahus ( talk) 18:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
The introduction to the article appears to have stabilized. This encourages us to begin to attempt to revise and update what is now the "Terminology" section and "Etymology" sub-section. It would be great if one of our Romani language specialists would attempt a systematic yet concise reorganization of the present contents that logically follows from the introduction. Something comprehensive yet without unnecessary esoteric digressions. Something written at the comprehension level of a 9th grade English-reading audience. I hesitate to attempt this myself, as so many other editors have earlier worked hard and contributed to the present contents -- which as far as I can tell are pretty much correct in substance, though in need now of updating and consolidation. If we are to have a Manual of Style for this article (or a direct from this section to a separate Manual of Style page), this seems a good opportunity. Steviemitlo ( talk) 23:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Someone keeps inserting this into the introductory paragraph. In looking over the archives, it appears that this (non)issue has been beat to death by previous editors. So what if the spellings "Romani people" and "Romanian people" are similar. The distinction can be addressed in "Terminology". Reference to Romanians does not belong in the introductory paragraph. Steviemitlo ( talk) 12:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I have taken the initiative to draft a proposed "Terminology and Manual of Style". I have reorganized the existing "Terminology" and "Etymology" sections, keeping most of what was there but deleting some items and adding a very few others. My main objective was to revise the article in ways that reflect the new name and its implictions regarding issues of terminology. The section may still be too long, but what I would like is your feedback on at this time regarding the accuracy of the content. If you encounter statements you consider absolutely wrong or very wrong, please do two things:
1) tell me here in "talk" how wrong they are, citing your opinions with the titles of scholarly references that have authority and validity.
2) ask me here to cite my opinions in support of contested statements with scholarly authority and validity.
The citations will enhance the next draft with more authority and validity until we reach a point where we can all agree here to a draft we can post. Once we post a consensus draft we can perhaps reformat it to be more aesthetically pleasing. What we need now, however, is consensus on credibility of content.
I should add that I deleted some paragraphs on etymology that went beyond what I thought was appropriate for the English-language Wikipedia entry "Romani people". We can always create new Wiki pages for digressions from "Romani people". One of the managerial complaints to our editors in the past is that the article is way too long and perhaps not reader-friendly to an encyclopedia readership at the ninth-grade English-language level.
Thanks for your constructive comments as we continue to work together to improve Wikipedia's "Romani people" article. All I can say is, the project is important. A world of learners is watching, hoping to increase their knowledge on this significant, complex and provocative topic.
Terminology and Manual of Style
Romanies in English-language terminology are a subcategory of European ethnic peoples with worldwide distribution and having ancestral roots traceable to India. The reasons for initial emigrations of proto-Romanies from India toward Europe (circa AD 1000), and the timetables and routes taken thereafter, remain obscure. Nevertheless, the Romani people are often these days termed a “Diaspora people.” Romani (or Romany) can be both an adjective and a noun.[54] All Romani-speaking branches of the Romani people use the word Romani as an adjective. From this long-observed usage, the term came to be an English-language noun used to comprehensively describe the entire ethnic group (Romani, categorized here as Romani people; and meaning Romanies).[55] Today, the term Romani is used by most organizations —including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the US Library of Congress.[56] Roma is not accurate terminology when used an English-language generic name for all branches (subcategories) of the Romani people.[53] Thus, "Roma language" or "Roma diplomacy” are examples of incorrect terminology, while "Romani language" or "Romani diplomacy" are examples of correct terminology.[55][57] Despite the fact that the Sinti branch, the Romnichal banch, and some other widely dispersed branches of the Romani people, do not self-ascribe as Roma[52] some organizations persist to misuse the term Roma as an ethnic name to refer to all Romani people around the world.[52] Roma misused in this comprehensive way is a neologism and incorrect from linguistic, historic and ethnographic perspectives (cite here). Roma is however accurate terminology when restricted to describing that branch of Romani people found in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, or to emigrants around the world from that region (for example, the Macvaya sub-branch of Roma in California). Sometimes, Rom and Romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., Rrom and Rromani, particularly in Romania in order to distinguish from the Romanian endonym (Români). This is well established in Romani itself, since it represents a sound different from the one written with a single r.[56] This variation in spelling is however not widely used outside of Romania, where non-Romanies still often confuse the names “Romani” and “Romanian”. As English-language terminology related to “Romani” is thus often confusing, the following suggestions regarding matters of style are recommended. Consideration in English-language usage should begin with matters involving some root-word Romani-language self-ascribing terminology. These are 1) rom (or rrom) depending on the dialect means "husband" and 2) romni (or rromni) means "wife” and 3) unmarried youth are named čhavo ("boy”) or čhej ("girl"). Etymologies for root-word Rom-related terminologies are unknown. However, these theories have been proposed: 1) Rom might come from old Indo-Aryan rama, which means "husband", the meaning that was kept in Romani itself.[58] 2) Rom might come from Dom, the name of an ethnic group of Indian origins from the Middle East, that some authors believe to be related to the Romani people. However, it should be noted that in the Domari language Dom means "man" and not "husband".[59][60] 2) The ethnonym Rom might have been acquired in the Byzantine Empire where the local people called themselves Romaioi ("Romans" in Greek).[61] 4) Rom might have come from ramta (wandering).[62] Recommended English-language usage should appreciate that Rom (plural Roma) is a noun. For example, “I am Rom” or “I am Roma”. In widespread English-language usage, the term “Romanies” (n. pl.) categorizes the ethnic Romani people inclusive of all sub-subcategories (or branches) variously named. Romani is an adjective . For example, the language of the Romani people is called “the Romani language”. In the Romani language, the adjective is created by attaching suffixes to the root that express gender and number: "Romani" (f. sing.), "Romano (m. sing.) and "Romane" (m. & f. pl.). Usually, in English, only the feminine singular form (Romani) is used adjectively (for example, the Romani (or Romany) road). The use of the Romani word Romanes in English as a noun is incorrect.[64].Romanes, with the following glaring exception, is an adverb (meaning, roughly, "in the Romani way"); the exception being -- the Romani language is also called Romanes ! The result is that “Lets speak Romani!” = “Let’s speak (in) Romanes !” The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Greek word Αιγύπτοι (Aigyptoi), modern Greek γύφτοι (gyphtoi). The Spanish term Gitano and the French term Gitan may have the same origin.[67] There was widespread belief among Europeans during their early encounters with the Romani people that they were royalty and originated in Egypt, and, as some of their stories and documents relate, were exiled as punishment for allegedly harboring the infant Jesus.[65] It seems significant that the Romani people themselves made these initial claims, which influenced the terminology that subsequently was used to ascribe their identities by others, and to which some Romanies still choose to self-ascribe, when it serves their own purposes. Thus the English-language term “Gypsy” when used to name the Romani people or its branches and their members is not an exonym. Correct use is that “Gypsy” pertaining to the ethnic group.[66] and its members should always be written with a capital letter. The Gypsy ethnonym is rarely used by the Romani people when speaking among them selves in Romani language to describe themselves. Many Romanies consider the “Gypsy” term and its variations and depravities, spoken, or written with or without capitalization, pejorative and defamatory (for example, when used as "gyp" meaning "to cheat) However, use of the word "Gypsy" in English has now become so pervasive that many Romani organizations use it in their own organizational names. In North America, where the Romani people proliferate and prosper, but generally keep a low profile, the word "gypsy" (usually not capitalized) is frequently used by outsiders as a reference to lifestyle or fashion. However, when “gypsy” is written in reference to ethnic Romanies, it is these days usually capitalized. There is also some frequent though now relict English-language use of “Bohemian” in reference to the Romani people (were first known as Bohémiens.[71] in France due to their supposed origins in Bohemia), and which also describes a “bohemian” lifestyle that Romanies first inspired among non-Romanies in France, and which to this day remains a fashion statement worldwide -- even in East and Southeast Asia, where Romanies can be encountered from time to time and place to place, but not in large concentrations. Steviemitlo ( talk) 21:28, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Regarding this sentence "I also agree with the use of Romani" Can you explain to me why exactly it was so important to change from Roma to Romani? I am a Romanian and I learn that more and more often, by mistake, lack or knowledge or ill intended even here in North America it is now creating this confusion: Roma People equal Romanian People.By using "Romani" ,no matter your reasons,you guys are doing a great unmerited "disservice " to both Romanians and Roma People. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Georgegheorghe ( talk • contribs) 22:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
The article is titled Romani people. This title and the introductory statement guides the entire content of the article, which is now under revision since the name change. In my opinion concise, relevant content extraneous to Romani people can perhaps be inserted in an appropriate place in the body of the article, but has no place in the introduction -- Especially if it is esoteric content written in a language other than English. This is an English-language Wikipedia. It disseminates the best knowledge available on a topic, through consensus. Which is: Since the Romani people are a European people (A. Fraser, The Gypsies, 1992) any concise, English-language historic, ethnographic and linguistic introduction of proto-Romanies belongs in the body of the article. When deciding what what content should be included and given prominance in the article, scholarly materials pertaining Romani people should be privileged. Extraneous materials do no belong in this article. We should discuss these matters here on this Talk page rather than continue to change the present concise and uncluttered introduction. Polemics, proselytizing and petty feuding don't belong here. Let's stick to disseminating the most accurate and updated knowledge about the Romani people. For a start, we should reach a consensus on whether or not the Romani people and proto-Romanies can and should be introduced and discussed separately using these terms. That would really help organizing the contents of the article and sorting out the wheat from the chaff. Steviemitlo ( talk) 14:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
"proto-Romanies" appears to be a term made up ad-hoc, getting all of 7 google hits
"Romany/Romani" and "Roma" are two English terms for the same group. The preferred plural of "Romany" is not "Romanies", just "the Romany". Fwiiw, I think Steviemitlo is correct in his opinion that "Romani" is the better choice for referring to the entire group, because "Roma" in some instances could also refer to specific subgroups. The Roma are, of course, a " people of Europe" even if about half of their numbers are not European, this makes them a "people of the Near East" on equal terms. -- dab (𒁳) 12:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
The ">15 million" estimate is reasonable if we include the "Indian Roma": in this case, we have 6 million in India, 5 million in the Near East (high estimate), 4 million in Europe and 2 million in the Americas (high estimate), or 17 million as a high estimate (or about 10 million as a low estimate). But this would mean that nearly half of the Roma population lives in India. The article does not reflect this: it uses the Indian population just to inflate the population count, but discusses European and Near Eastern groups exclusively in the remainder. Usually, the Roma are associated with the groups that left India in the Middle Ages. Consequently, the groups that did not leave India, are not normally included. It is rather dubious that the article should include them half-heartedly as it does. I also note that the Lambani article makes no attempt to include the group under the "Roma" term. Nor does any article attempt to give a serious reference for the "6 million Indian Roma" claim other than the joshuaproject.net website which gives 5.6 million as the population of the Banjara. This article either needs to be clear that about half of the Roma population are in fact Banjara, or it needs to exclude the Indian 6 million from the population estimate and list the Banjara as a cognate group, not a subgroup. Excluding the Indian Roma, the high estimate would be about 11 million, and the low estimate probably near 7 million. Since the Banjara do not speak Romanes, but a Rajasthani dialect, I find it highly artificial to include them here. It would require rather credible sources under WP:REDFLAG. The article would need to be updated that most Romani do not actually speak Romanes, but Rajasthani, and that "only" the out-of-India minority (i.e. those usually counted as Romani) speak the Romani language. In other words, I recommend we drop the Indian 6 million figure from the demographics section and the infobox. -- dab (𒁳) 11:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC):
ok, removing the Banjara. -- dab (𒁳) 17:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
There's a broken ref tag at the beginning of the third paragraph under "Terminology". Since I really don't know what it was intended to refer from/to, maybe someone who knows could fix it. Thanks. - Special-T ( talk) 19:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Olahus ( talk · contribs), if you are interested in discussing the writing systems used for Romani, please present your sources, at Romani language. Wikipedia articles aren't references you can usee [4]. It is pointless to repeat the same term in three different writing systems unless you can show it is relevant that we show it in each. Your transliterations do not appear to have any currency whatsoever:
Now please stop reverting unless you can satisfy WP:CITE. This isn't optional, you get to edit the article after you have presented your sources. -- dab (𒁳) 21:47, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
you obviousy have no understanding on WP:RS. You cannot present Wikipedia as a reference for a claim made in Wikipedia. There is no way you can enforce your content without providing quotable references, it's as simple as that. If you continue to refuse to honour this obligation, your edits fall under WP:DISRUPT. We don't have any control over the quality of the rmy: article. It doesn't cite any sources whatsoever. The Devanagari was added by an anonymous editor, on 22 December [5]. Are you seriously saying you imagine it is permissible for people to go make changes to some sister project and then come here presenting these edits as "references" to be used for en-wiki? Whom are you trying to kid? You may or may not be aware of the fact that Sanskrit manusha isn't spelled मानुशा at all, it is spelled मानुष. What we have here is an attempt at rmy-wiki to Sanskritize the Romani language, but an attempt by people who don't know very much Sanskrit. Neither will of course be tolerated on en-wiki without the presentation of adequate references. I have no idea why the authors of rmy: would opt for using Devangari. It seems about as intelligent as, say, writing tr: using cuneiform. Rmy has some 1.5 million speakers, mostly in Eastern Europe. Most of them are barely literate. Presenting them with a Wikipedia project in their own language but written in some perfectly foreign (to them) alphabet seems to be a mind-boggling feat of cultural arrogance, or misplaced and artificial ethnic nostalgia. Not that this is relevant to this discussion on the en:Romani people article in any way of course. -- dab (𒁳) 14:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
That said, we haven't even got as far as establishing that "Romane manusha" is a term that is in use by anyone, in any writing system. Google gives me all of 25 hits for the term, about half of which are wikipedia mirrors. Olahus, you are cleary trying to push unreferenced content, and now would be a good time to either stand down or start presenting respectable references. -- dab (𒁳) 14:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
ok, I have looked into it. In the light of this, we should clearly use the international standard orthography for all Romani strings (unless given in direct and attributed quotations). Anything else will be an arbitrary choice among dozens of dialects and local standards.-- dab (𒁳) 16:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
If it wasn't already clear what is going on here, I just found this interesting exchange from two years back. It seems that the rmy: project is rather infected by linguistic activism. The editor who came up with the idea that "Romani should be written in Devanagari" is Desiphral ( talk · contribs). -- dab (𒁳) 16:35, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't doubt about the fact that the latin script is the most spreaded. But you you couldn't proove me that is not also written in Cyrillic or Devanagari, as I asked you above. The Romani Wikipedia has articles written with the
Latin,
Cyrillic and
Devanagari script. --
Olahus (
talk)
16:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Isn't Romani devoid of retroflex sounds (irony)? Notwithstanding, Dbachmann has a point: forcing Devanagari on modern Romani would be cruel. 67.194.150.69 ( talk) 05:13, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
The map in this article needs to be objectified. Using that wheel symbol is not appropriate. Also, it should not just be Europe, but the entire world, and also contain hard numbers, as well as percentages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.173.138 ( talk) 17:47, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
I have tried to bring this article in a halfway acceptable WP:SS format. It has long been in an appalling shape, essentially a dumping ground for headlines on recent events of persecution and various genetic studies. I have tried to acommodate this material in a reasonable ToC, and exported a lot of the "dumping ground" material to Modern Antiziganism and Origin of the Romani people. As things go, this stuff is now just sitting in these articles waiting for cleanup, but at least exporting them will direct further accretion of such material to the proper sub-articles.
The article atm has still an excessive length of 83k and needs further attention from skilled editors. The most urgent problem is the huge Romani_people#Roma_people_by_geographic_area section. It is of course necessary to distinguish the various distinct populations, but the main "Romani people" article cannot do this in such detail and should focus on global statistics and commonalities instead. -- dab (𒁳) 17:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
This article was suffering from a very bad case of Wikipedia:Main article fixation. I have made Roma people by country the main article for discussing an "overview of Romani populations", now itself running to 50k. The "by geographic area" section here should just be a brief summary of that (or be merged into the "Population" section altogether). -- dab (𒁳) 17:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
The (re-)creation of an article specifically about the Roma would, IMO, help us to sort out a good deal the wrangling over terms in the main article Romani people. — Zalktis ( talk) 08:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)The Roma people are a major division of the Romani people, also known as Gypsies. The Roma were previously based in south-eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans, but since the 19th century have spread to most parts of Europe and beyond. Because of the fact that they are so numerous and widespread, "Roma" is often, albeit inaccurately, used in English as a synonym for the Romani people as a whole.
The problem is that "Roma" as a true subset of "Romani" is an intermediate level, in turn consisting of various subgroups that already have full articles on Wikipedia. There is nothing wrong with making this the summary article of all subgroups, both Roma and non-Roma Romani. If we are to have a separate article on the Roma exclusively, we'll simply need good sources ( WP:RS) establishing which groups are Roma and which aren't. It may be possible to write such an article in principle, but somebody will have to sit down and do it properly. My current understanding is that "Roma" is more or less synonymous with " Romani people in Central and Eastern Europe". If this is correct, we don't need a new article, we can simply add a discussion of the situation to the "Eastern Europe" article. -- dab (𒁳) 15:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
let's do this properly then. At present, we simply don't have the references that would allow us to describe "the Roma" as a well-defined subcategory. Other than that it used to be a self-designation of Roma speakers, but when we say "the Roma", we are using an English exonym, not a Romanes endonym. So, we have the following articles on Romani subgroups:
Your first step will be to clearly establish for each one whether they are Roma in the narrow sense. I suspect that these are Roma:
I suspect that these aren't
but I am not sure about Romnichal (UK Roma?) and Manouche (French Roma?) Mind you, this judgement is just based on what we have on Wikipedia already, and not because I know anything about the topic. Please set it straight. -- dab (𒁳) 11:32, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
The article currently states "The Romani (also ... Gypsies) are an ethnic group with origins in South Asia." Under English law not all Gypsies are Romani (and not all Romani are Gypsies it depends if lead a nomadic lifestyle). Different English laws make different assumptions so the first sentence to this article is currently misleading. -- PBS ( talk) 14:17, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
"Gypsy" is clearly a very common synonym for "Romani". There is nothing wrong with mentioning it as an alternative term in the lede. Nor is it wrong to keep a separate article on the term itself. -- dab (𒁳) 15:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I knew that this problem will be reopened soon, so please read what I've said here. "Roma" (and not "Roma people") is a subgroup of the "Romani people". "Roma people" is a grammatically incorrect term, and we should avoid it in all stances! We should restart the Roma (Romani subgroup) article, and "Roma people" should be just a redirect to "Romani people". AKoan ( talk) 13:58, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
how is "Roma people" grammatically incorrect? You need to take care not to equate English and Romani grammar. Hancock is giving recommendations for his preferred terminology, not more and not less. -- dab (𒁳) 12:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
So Roma is a noun. Well, English is very good at noun+noun compounds. Is " cat people" ungrammatical because cat is a noun? Note that I am not disputing our preference for Romani, I am just saying that it is completely irrelevant that Roma is a noun. The point is that it is ambiguous (are the Roma the Romani, or a subset of the Romani). -- dab (𒁳) 19:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
it is news to me that -a serves as an English plural suffix. I am not talking about Romani grammar, I am talking about English grammar. This discussion is futile because I agree we should use "Romani people". All I am saying is that we need to reflect the fact that "Roma people" sees some use in English without passing judgement on "correctness" in Wikipedia's voice. So the OED favours "Roma" as a noun. Any evidence it considers it a plural with either a distinct or a non-existent singular? -- dab (𒁳) 17:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I propose that something should be added to this article about the major economic activities (and their development through history) of the Roma people; in other words, what they did and do to support themselves in societies in which they are always a minority. Here is a nice article about this within the Soviet Union and CIS, and here is a more general overview. Esn ( talk) 09:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I cannot edit the article, so just one remark: The estimate 550 000 for Slovakia is wrong and the two links provided in the table do not contain such a number. In reality, there are many estimates, but none of them is higher than 370 000. The point is, if this is how also the other figures in this article have been "chosen" (i.e. simply invented by someone to be as high as possible without any grounds and nobody even notices that), the value of this article is zero. Romaaaa ( talk) 13:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
see above below, we're in the process of cleaning up the estimate figures. Bear with us, or feel free to help. The current approach is to restrict ourselves to estimates quoted by coe.int in order to avoid the more unrealistic ones. --
dab
(𒁳)
19:29, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
The population count in the infobox is ... buggered. Also, File:Eurogipsy official.PNG is useless: it pretends to give "official" numbers, when it is simply copying dubious figures off Roma people by country. Many of the countries listed have no official figures, so the claim is wrong in any case. The best neutral source I can reach at this moment is Pan and Pfeil (2004), who give a number of 3.8 million Romani in Europe. Their count is broken down by country as follows (in thousands):
I suggest we use these figures for the infobox pending the presentation of some more credible source. -- dab (𒁳) 17:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Yes, do that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trkgnd ( talk • contribs) 06:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
this also appears to be a reasonable source. If the Council of Europe lists a source, it may be worth mentioning. -- dab (𒁳) 15:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Oppose to both proposals. They are dozens of other reliable sources that can be presented. Actually, Dbachmann's proposals will only reopen Pandora's box. -- Olahus ( talk) 17:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
The "proposal" here is to clean up the sad mess in the current infobox. You are welcome to help, but I think you need to review our idea of WP:RS first. -- dab (𒁳) 21:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Dbachmann has a good suggestion here. However, population data for Romani people in almost all countries of Europe as well as other countries around the world will continue be contested by other editors with other sources (as Olahus warns). I agree to the change, but the article should be transparent about population data for Romani people: weakness in the data and the reasons for it (persisting high rates of secrecy and mobility among ethnic Romanies) should be clearly and concisely stated in the text of the article, and in the new data box. before schoolchildren begin citing as true the "best estimates" data from our page. But even before revising the population section in this manner, I recommend we agree to use Romani people or Romanies in the article wherever we mean ethnic Romani people, and to use Roma people wherever we mean ethnic Roma people. Let us try to avoid perpetuating the ambiguity in the article that results from the causual substitution of Roma for Romani people, because the ethnic Roma people are a subcatagory of the ethnic Romani people -- in Europe and elsewhere. This is the main problem with the article: we are not consistent when we use Romani people to mean ethnic Romani people and thus, as Dr. Ian Hancock states here (and I, and many other scholars agree based on solid ethnographic, historic-geographic, and linguistic evidence): the Romani people "did not form an ethnic identity until the stay in Anatolia, nor did Romani begin to crystallize into one language until then." If we can agree to this statement as a working hypothesis, we can replace almost every use of "Roma" in the population section, as well as almost all other sections of the article, with "Romani people" or "Romanies" and thereby reduce ambiguity and internal contradiction within the article substantially. Think about it this way: do we want to convey in this article with this new population data list that there are 90 thousand ethnic Roma in the UK? Or do we want to convey our best estimate at present that there are 90 thousand ethnic Romani people in the UK? Steviemitlo ( talk) 23:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Dbachmann proposed wisely above to replace the present multisourced and endlessly disputed Romani people population counts table with a simplified table originating in one source, which is authoritative and cited. Overwhelming editor consensus was reached a week ago in support of the proposal. Please, Db, make that change while the consensus stands. Steviemitlo ( talk) 21:41, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
I must admit that the Pan and Pfeil (2004) numbers I quoted appear to be "low" or "official" estimates. I suggest we use the CoE estimates instead, quoting high and low. Yes, for some countries, the high and the low estimates are very different. Too bad, that's how it is, so that's how we need to report it. All the work has already been done for us, here, we just need to copy the figures and their sources. And since the immediate source is the Council of Europe website, we should assume that they didn't include unrealistic or far out estimates. It appears that there is no consensus as to who is a "Roma proper" as opposed to a "Romani", so it will be futile to attempt making this distinction here. I understand that most Romani are also "Roma proper", and it would be actually a minority of Romani who would not subscribe to being "Roma". Perhaps we should do articles about these instead, as in Sinti and Kale/ Kale/ Caló. -- dab (𒁳) 22:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
(moved section to bottom as re-activated). I've exported the infobox for transclusion ({{ Romani infobox}}) and I've cleaned up the population estimates, reducing it to something that is actually useful for a quick overview expected of an infobox. The infobox links to Romani people by country for more detail (this article needs to be cleaned up badly). The 3.8-9.1 million estimate for Europe is based on quotable sources of the 2000s. The "up to 4 million" estimate for the Americas is more shaky, based on an [external link edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www web4desi com/Articles/36-ArticlesbyJorgeMFernandezBernal/52-the-rom-in-the-americas online article quoting "UNESCO, RNC, Romani Union, SKOKRA and federated Organizations" as its "sources". The high estimate of 13 million for the total population is the result of adding 9 and 4 (gasp, teh WP:SYN!).
I understand that most "Roma" populations of the Middle East (other than Turkey) we sometimes found reported are actually Dom people which we agreed not to include in this count (the infobox links to the Dom people as "related"). There are a few Middle Eastern Roma populations, i.e. Qawliya, Roma in Armenia, and possibly Roma minority in Syria (or are these Dom?), also some in Israel (immigrated from Russia), but these are tiny and do not noticeably contribute to the overall population.
Please let us remember what an infobox is intended for: a guide to a quick, rough overview of a complex topic. An unreadable tangle of numbers and flag icons isn't helpful. Wikipedia has ample space to go into the gory details, but that's not for the infobox. -- dab (𒁳) 10:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
The page says of "Gypsy": "If used, this exonym should also be written with capital letter, to show that it is about an ethnic group." This is dubious: English has no set rule about whether ethnic groups are written with capital letters. Most English writers write "white" and "black" without capitals, for instance. 22:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.225.234 ( talk)
how are "white" and "black" ethnic groups? Use of "gypsies" indicates an occupation or class, like "tinkers", "vagabonds", "carpenters", "builders", "commoners" etc. Use of "Gypsies" would imply recognition of the term as a demonym. -- dab (𒁳) 10:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
((Source: Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit (RamaNa) http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=HK&tinput=ramana&country_ID=&trans=Translate&direction=AU
(gRhaja meaning domestic but also civilian. possible source for Romani Gajo (m) / gaji (f) / Gaje (p)) http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=HK&tinput=grhaja&country_ID=&trans=Translate&direction=AU (paaNDu meaning white like Romani 'Parno (m) / Parni (f) / Parne (p)') http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?tinput=paaNDu&direction=SE&script=HK&link=yes))
I can see the reference where Hancock mentions "Old Indo-Aryan rāma 'husband'" as one suggestion (not his own, although he doesn't say whose) for an alternative (Sanskritic) etymology. Now, I am not aware of any "Old Indo-Aryan" term for "husband" looking like rāma. I think Hancock may be mixing up things.
I think this is about the "so-called Rajput theory" mentioned
here, which tries to create a heroic backdrop to the migration out of India, and which takes Romane Chave to mean "sons of the god
Rama". We can document this "theory", although it is rather
suspect, but we'll need to do it properly. --
dab
(𒁳)
11:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't pretend to know any Romani, I am just repeating what I find in the sources cited. I do know some Sanskrit, however, as you seem to do as well: ramaNa is an adjective meaning "charming", but it can also be used in the sense of "husband" or "lover". This doesn't really help, since Hancock unambiguously claims an "Old Indo-Aryan" rāma meaning "husband". I think we should just drop this detail as unsubstantiated and not affecting the overall argument either way. I don't understand what you mean by "ME view". I don't see that there is any dispute regarding de facto English usage. My point is that we need to keep discussion of English usage cleanly separate from discussion of terminology within the Romani language. In any case, I have now created a Names of the Romani people article, and any detail regarding the etymology of rrom etc. should now go there. -- dab (𒁳) 15:58, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I think I found it. Apparently, rama (not rāma!) can mean "joy; a lover, husband, spouse". This meaning of an adjective "pleasing, dear" is attested in lexicography only, imho shedding light on how far-fetched this hypothesis is. rāma and other inaccuracies imho also shed some light on Hancock's limited linguistic qualifications. I am sure he is a bona fide expert on the Romani in general, but I will view his etymological musings with suspicion in the future...
I do not think that MW contradicts OED wrt English usage, but OED is (as usual) more detailed. OED has "Rom: also pl. Roma(s), Rom. a) A (male) gipsy, a Romany. b) attrib. (the Rom people, Rom families)" and "Romany 1. A gipsy; also collect., the gipsies. 2. The language of the gipsies. 3. attrib. or as adj."
I am now looking for substantiation of this alleged Sanskrit ramta "wandering". This is even more suspicious than rama, since ramta isn't a possible Sanskrit word. I think it transpires that all these proposed Sanskritic etymologies on r- are, not to put too fine a point on it, pompous nonsense motivated by a desire to avoid association with the Ḍoma. -- dab (𒁳) 12:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
it turns out that ramta "itinerant" is Hindi, not Sanskrit. [6] This seems to be another sample of just how much these "Sanskritic" etymologies are worth: ramta is a Hindi word without any apparent Sanskrit precedent (perhaps ramhi, an obscure Vedic word for "speed"? Of course a Hindi etymology would be sufficient for a tribal name around 1000 AD, but no, it must be Sanskrit). -- dab (𒁳) 12:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
I am doing precisely the opposite of "pushing a pov", I am debunking an unduly over-represented pov per WP:FRINGE. "Indo-Aryan" obviously doesn't equal Sanskrit, since even Romani itself is included in the term, but Old Indo-Aryan is pretty much a synonym for "Sanskrit (including Vedic Sanskrit)" -- dab (𒁳) 10:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
AKoan, I believe I have even written that sentence myself. Can we stop the games please? You may well know a lot about the Romani that I don't, but I doubt you can tell me much about Sanskrit and Old Indic. The point here is that ramta is Hindi, not Sanskrit and not "Old Indo-Aryan". -- dab (𒁳) 16:38, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
right. this is a detail in any case. The sources we cite that "Sanskritic etymologies were suggested", and mention rama and ramta as mere examples. None of our sources do actualy propose or defend these specific etymologies. I believe the situation is summarized properly as it stands: the possible relation go Dom, Lom and ultimately Sanskrit Doma was recognized in the early 20th century, by Sampson. This remains the standard assumption. The "Kshatriya theory" first advanced by Kochanowski (1968) doesn't necessarily affect etymology, but in its context, Sanskritic etymologies were suggested from the 1980s, following Rishi (1983). This is the situation, and this is how it is presented at Names_of_the_Romani_people#Etymology. I think any further discussion on this would belong on Talk:Names of the Romani people. -- dab (𒁳) 15:01, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Following Information is unsourced/incorrect: "The Romani share a "common ethnic substratum" with the Jat Sikhs, the Panjabi Hindus and the Rajputs."
The Punjabis consist of a number of different tribes, and cannot be distinguished foremost by religion. For example there are Hindu and Muslim Rajputs, Hindu and Muslim Jats and so on.
Can someone back me up on this one, and amend the statement? It would make far more sense to say for example: "The Romani share a "common ethnic substratum" with several tribes of the Punjab region located in the northern Indian subcontinent." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.12.86.181 ( talk) 14:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
this is taken directly from the source cited, Ian Hancock, We are the Romani people, p. 13. I don't see the problem, obviously both Muslim and Hindu Rajputs share a "common ethnic substratum" connecting them much more closely than either are connected to the Romanies. This is just intended to gesture at the Romani area of origin. -- dab (𒁳) 15:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I think you mean Origin_of_the_Romani_people#Genetic_evidence. -- dab (𒁳) 15:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
It is true that the Romani ethnogenesis probably took place in the 13th or 14th century in Anatolia. It is just as true that the "proto-Romanies" contributing to that ethnogenesis originated in NW India in the 10th or 11th century. Both are true statements, and both may be noted, and they are not mutually contradictive. -- dab (𒁳) 15:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
It's what I gather from the situation as described in the "Origins" article as well as this map. I don't think this is very controversial. The earliest records are from the 14th century, and they appear out of Anatolia. Whatever they were up to between leaving India around AD 1000 and appearing on the European radar around AD 1300, god knows, but three centuries is just about the time a good and proper ethnogenesis will take. The geneticists propose that the population was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, which falls squat within the 1000 to 1300 period. -- dab (𒁳) 18:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
well, we do have the reference saying there was a founder population 32-40 generations ago, so no, they were not a single ethnic group back in India. Which is also evident from the fact that there is no record of any ethnic group identifiable as the Romani equivalent in India. Ethnogenesis is indeed a complicated process, and it does take time (many generations), but we can say with confidence that in the case of the Romani this process took place in Anatolia in the early centuries of the 2nd millennium. I am not aware of any source given in the "Origins" article that would be in contradiction to this general scenario. -- dab (𒁳) 10:31, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a noticable bias here. The Rom are well known in Europe for their propensity to criminality and that they do indeed lead an uncivilized life for the most part. In Rome, there is not a single area where they do not invade and make a hassle. Shouldn't this be objectively mentioned? It is wrong to automatically close your eyes to things just because it labels a particular group. I mean, who denies Italians like pasta. When a thing is so greatly associatiated to a people, it should be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.37.204.198 ( talk) 13:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
The various stereotypes, including the one related to criminality, are already in the article. Kenshin (ex AKoan) ( talk) 10:46, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Hi Kenshin,
Suggesting that this is a stereotype shows bias. An objective analysis is required instead. Such a research is hard to commit as most people, including me, has had negative experiences with gypsies. (valuables stolen at knife-point, I'm lucky to be alive as to say). Let's not waste time by going down the "stereotype" path. A section is needed about gypsy criminal stats and not in the biased style of "people often accuse gypsies of street crime and living off of social aid" but a factual representation of the problem, pro or contra. Lothandar ( talk) 14:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I totally agree that it should be mentioned that it's Romani culture to steal, there is a link to a bbc documentary on Romani people here: [ [7]] I think it's made by someone ethnically Romani himself which goes some way in dispelling accusations of bias. But who can be bothered to write it in, that is the real question. 84.69.228.89 ( talk) 21:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
The "References" section seems to be put on alert, so as to not screw anything up, here are my sources. maybe someone can put them up:
re: Roma/Jatt Sikh genetic distance: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18768723
re: geographic/cultural origin: http://ling.kfunigraz.ac.at/~rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/lang/gen/origin.en.xml
A lot of other sources say similar things, if these don't make the cut.
I don't have anything against Romani, but the statement regarding the Jatt Sikh connection caught my eye, as I am one myself. I looked into it, and most sources I came across (fairly reputable ones) say that their origin lies in Central India, among such other nomadic groups as the Banjara. Not to be pretentious, but i think this makes more sense; the vast difference in lifestyle between the agrarian, martial Jatt Sikh and the staunchly itinerant Romani just doesn't equate, and their culture seems more akin to that region. They did spend a few centuries in the Punjab region (200BC~500AD) after moving from central India; thet doesn't make it their region of origin. The linguistic kinship between Punjabi and the Romani language would be because they are both Indo-Aryan languages. From what I've seen of the vocabulary it is somewhat more akin to Hindi, although a Punjabi element comes up every now and then due to the Punjabi/Hindi relationship. For an author to state a connection to illustrate from which area the Romani took off from South Asia is one thing; forging a kinship without any evidence is another. It really seems awkward that they are from "Jatt Sikhs," as opposed to other Jatts or Tarkhan Sikhs (all of whom are similar) and from Hindu Punjabis and rajputs; the Romani don't claim such specific lineages, and considering that they barely have any cultural similarities, it is mindboggling to do so. I believe that the author is simply trying to eqaute the most well-known northerners (who are very present in the Souht Asian diaspora) with Roma. Linguistic (Indo-Aryan)connection? Sure. Closest genetic/cultural kin? Hardly. 3swordz ( talk) 20:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The following two paragraphs are copied verbatim from Antiziganism:
They're poorly sourced to begin with. The first article, "Italy assailed over plan to fingerprint Gypsies", reflects early knee-jerk reactions to a census proposal that later gained international acceptance (from Antiziganism: "On September 4, 2008 the European Commission said Italy's census of illegal gypsy camps does not discriminate against the Roma community. They said the census is in line with European Union law.", etc.). The second article is in Romanian, and references an Italian research of dubious notability. Overall, it seems likely that these two paragraphs were added to both this article and Antiziganism by the same person on the spur of the moment after reading some piece of news, with little regard to how relevant they were to an encyclopedia article. The duplicate in this article should be removed, since the information is more relevant to Antiziganism. But even in that article there is some reduplication: the paragraph that's based on the article about initial reactions to the census proposal was tacked on after existing text that already covered the same issue in more detail and in a less POV way. Flavus ( talk) 19:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
I second Flavus in that the paragraph needs to be improved. Kenshin is incorrect in sensing an anti-Romani bias on Wikipedia. If anything there is a pro-Romani bias, seeing that we cover Antiziganism and persecution of Romani in great detail, but we have hardly any coverage on the very real issues of organized crime, and if the general poverty and squalor in the Romani communities is mentioned, it is invariably in a paragraph arguing that these are the result of discrimination and persecution. This isn't honest, or neutral. I don't want any articles bashing the Romani, but neither do I want PC whining about how badly the Romani are treated by everybody. I want neutral, unemotional, detached, well-informed reports on the facts. -- dab (𒁳) 09:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
On the box on the side it mentions 'Paganism' among the religions the Romani people practice. I have never encountered that claim in any literature. Any sources? MethMan47 ( talk) 00:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
What exactly is Romani religion? I know they often adopt the religions of their host countries, but, what are the religious beliefs & practices of Romanis, in & amongst their own tribes & peoples. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.55.25.209 ( talk) 22:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
The article claims that "gyp" ("cheat") derives from "gypsy". But the OED (online edition) says that "gyp" only "perh." (perhaps) derives from "gypsy" (or perh. from "gippo"). The derivation should therefore not be stated as fact, since it is only speculation. 86.146.228.185 ( talk) 06:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
fixed. Details would belong on wikt:gyp, not here. -- dab (𒁳) 09:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
{{editsemiprotected}}add Hala Strana as a rock band from America influenced by Romani music in the paragraph on Romani music Blue00 ( talk) 21:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)Blue00
A picture showing Romani literature if needed
[URL= http://img39.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rromaneekhipecopy.jpg][IMG] http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/4899/rromaneekhipecopy.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.213.52 ( talk) 06:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
I think the post-1945 history section should be divided into two parts, because the largest number of Roma lived and still live in the East-Central European region, where the attitude towards them was greatly affected by the 1989 political changes. I suggest that a section should be written on "Roma between 1945-1989", emphasizing how governments tried to integrate Roma into communist societies, and another one on "post-1989", pointing out that the new, post-communist governments tended to show little concern about them. The success of radical anti-Roma political parties at the 2009 EP elections should definitely be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.216.200 ( talk) 12:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
for the beginning sentense of the topic-- 222.64.20.222 ( talk) 11:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I have read many posts that I know were written by racist people. For example a user named 'Omerlives' here wrote that Romani people are jatts and rajputs. Interestingly I found a comment in youtube by Omerlives(by the same name) that the Pushtuns(he is a pushtun probably) are better than Punjabi(he used the term 'Punjabi Tamils' for them). The people who hate Jatts and Rajputs of Pakistan and India deliberately identify them with Romani people, who don't have a good reputation. Other than that baseless theories are posted here without any evidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.24.216 ( talk) 04:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
As an American-Born person who hates racism, it seems to me the section titled: Contemporary Issues is blatently racist. I never heard of the Romani people until my girlfriend, a recently-immigrated Hungarian, warned me about them several times. She also let me know they were "Gypsies," and their main cultural trait was pickpocketing. This raised my suspicions so I came to the WikiPedia, only to find a very poorly written section which mentioned, but neither cited nor referenced the the following; "Romani are often confined to low-class ghettos because of their incapability to pay rent, are refused in jobs due to the lack of education and bad working moral, and Romani children are in highly disproportional numbers placed into special schools for mentally backward children."
It gets worse as the section goes on. The only references to supporting articles is one written by a "controversial researcher." This smacks of code words - for racist. And it gets worse in the second paragraph.
"Low education, frequent job-switching, low working moral and low personal responsibility are listed as the main reasons of the high unemployment rate. Unemployed Roma often work illegally or gain livehood from crime and other forms of illegal activity. Their leisure time is not used rationally, with many Roma spending big amounts of money on drugs and gambling."
Clearly, this is opinion. The reference to it is from a foreign language source. That seals the books on researching the reference.
One big clue this is a racist opinion is the poor grammar found in a few areas. I won't be more specific so as not to let the author clean it up.
I followed the link and read the article on antiziganism, and that is beutifully written with good grammar, a journalistic tone, and qualified references.
I hope the writers for the Romani section clean this up and make it palatable. Pcdr ( talk) 19:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Pcdr,
As an American, it is hard to have a clear vision of the issues with European minority groups. A friendly reminder: Poor grammar is not a suggestion for factual errors. Not everyone is born English, please keep that in mind before discrediting sources. There is a saying in Eastern-Europe and it goes "The farther you live from the Balkans, the more tolerant you get towards the minority groups living there". Basically this means that since you never hear about the minority groups in a negative context, you will base your views on them by assumption. But if you think about your girlfriend's experience, you have to see that the farther you are geographically from a problem, the less insight you have into it. Care must be taken before forming opinion of overseas issues. Cheers, Lothandar ( talk) 15:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Kenshin
This is 3swordz, who corresponded with you a few months ago. I decided to incorporate the other source regarding the genetic studies that I showed in the previous discussion. That study, that drew upon larger representative samples of Jats and Roma as opposed to a single family, strongly suggested that the two groups are rather unrelated in terms of male descent, which was the focus of the study.
About your recent source, I do have my doubts about its content, although I am in no position to debate it. This form of glaucoma associated with the Roma (1 in 1250) also occurs in other populations: "estimated at 1:10,000 in Western countries and higher in inbred populations such as those of Saudi Arabia (1:2500), Slovakia Roma (1:1250), Arab Bedouins of the Negro region in Israel (1 of 1200),and Andhra Pradesh in India (1:3300)," and "the incidence of PCG is geographically and ethnically variable." SOURCE: http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:15322984 mutation history of the roma/gypsies. I believe the mention of Andhra Pradesh in Southern India is of note. There are no standout populations in north India, I think due to greater variability (I read in another article), and the Jats don't have this condition at a noteworthy rate, which would also imply that they don't have some kind of monopoly on this gene, which seems somewhat silly to name the gene after them. Some of the other info regarding Roma origins struck me as a little incorrect, but whatever. I did take the liberty of changing the wording from 'confirming' to 'suggesting,' which struck me as especially unscientific, with no actual group studies of PCG prevalence, along with the haplogroup stuff sharply suggesting otherwise.
I pulled some of the y-dna prevalences in different populations from other wiki articles (cited ones), just so you know. I also nixed the subheading due to the contradictory study.
A lot of sources say that Roma language is related to a multitude of Indo-Aryan languages (no surprises there), among them Hindi, rajasthani, Punjabi, Sindhi, etc. I decided to look at some Romani vocab to see if I could see a trend. Most Romani words aren't really recognizable anymore unsurprisingly, but I do think that the language is most related to Hindi; the few words that were immediately recognizable to me were in Hindi, and if anything was in common with Punjabi, it was the same in Hindi as well. An example of this was the Romani word "amaro" (Our), which was more akin to Hindi ("hamara") than to Punjabi ("saadda") The pronunciation of "haath" [long "a" sound] (hand) was the same as Hindi ("Haath", also long "a",) than to Punjabi (huth, or h'th, it is hard to capture the phonolgy, but there is no vowel, let alone extended, in that pronunciation. Languages have a trend to simplify pronunciations/grammar over time but not to add to them. So Romani probably retained the pronunciation)There were other examples, these were among the more striking. It jives, at any rate, with the notion that the Romani originated farther south. Just a few more interesting facts. If the semantics doesn't suit, again, feel free. I do think my source is rather valid, and I will keep yours as well of course. 3swordz ( talk) 10:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi Kenshin. Some thoughts I have is that the study actually mentioned the discovery in a single Pakistani family, not a Romani one. They were comparing it to Romani populations. The team studied four Pakistani families and isolated it in one. If you have any studies regarding this form of PCG regarding Jatt populations, that would be cool. I was a little thrown by how momentarily the article gleaned over the mutation besides calling it a name. The particular strain, or PCG in general, isn't unduly present in Jatt populations to my knowledge. Jatt Sikhs and Haryans Jats also make up about half of all Jats roughly as well so it's pretty significant, even being "endogamous".
In terms of looks (if you really want to bring that up), Jatts tend to be rather fair skinned actually, either that or a few shades darker. The younger Punjabi populations, Jatts especially in the West (myself included, never got the "farmer's tan," lol) don't really have that "indian" look or how you want to call it; I can tell you out of experience that a lot of Punjabis in general but Jatts in particular are immediately distinguishable from "Indian looking" people, the ones raised here especially, it's quite a vast departure. Perhaps you may have seen some Sikhs (religious or not)like this. Their looks just scream "not indigenous" at any rate. I know that Romani are at least on average 50% European genetically by now (may even become mostly European in due time maybe), but before they started to mix (fairly recently, picked up in the 1800s) they were commented on their darkness of skin and even now some are quite dark and Indian-looking, at least from pictures I have seen and comments made in texts.
I didn't want to get into the whole "looks" thing because it struck me as a bit unresolvable (we could go on all day about looks of Romanis and whatnot) but that is my take on it. The genetics and such showed a large discrepancy, along with my look at the language vocab, as well as the traditions and dances and such, there is little in common, like the dances (the lively spinning dances and skirt style and the presence of distinctly Hindi words/syntax) just don't jive as Punjabi at all, but look like Rajasthani dress and movement. I honestly don't think people can just pick up traditions like [forgive my stereotyping for a sec] fortune-telling, itinerancy, musical entertainment and entertainer class traits, whatever, especially from a settled "warrior past" that strikes as being more self-empowering than factual, like black nationalists claiming Zulu descent or whatever. I am not trying to denegrate them , don;t take it that way, but some things just don't fit at all. I also read of in quite a few articles (for however much this counts) a mannerism of Romani, the "head bobble" or something, where some shakes their heads from a sort of side-to-side to indicate "yes," and I immediately knew what they were talking about, this is a distinct Hindi-speaker trait that I see often; Punjabi speakers don't do this at all (I think the drastically different diction and tone don't allow for it, honestly.)
Here are some more examples of distinctly Hindi or Punjabi words with Romani. They match a lot more with Hindi most of the time. (eng-rom-hnd-pun)
Only these have more of a resemblance to Punjabi.
Didn't mean to ramble, I have just been learning a lot about Romani as of late, some of which I wanted to share. I'm cool with the new body section, the one thing I would change is the subheading to "Speculative" as there are sharply conflicting studies, at least until more detailed studies come out regarding the mutation's prevalence in subcontinental populations, as I'm sure they will. I just don't think two lines mentioning a Jatt mutation really cuts it with no detail, more should be divulged. Like actual population studies for one. I also think my study and the mention of R1awhich is a quandary which cannot be counted out (R1a is the most common male lineage in northern India, not just Jatts, of which Romani populations have literally none; this is unreconcilable to me) and should be incorporated back in, which was really the most head-on direct study of Jatt/Roma comparison I have come across. Also, the presence of Hindi words kind of contradicts the "origin" in Punjab, unless they dipped back down to Rajasthan before their sojourn. The presence of a few distinct Punjabi (and Dardic, Persian, Slavic, etc) loanwords simply indicates their migration to me.
Notwithstanding, this is a fascinating topic. PS This may warrant a "duh" from you, but are you a Romani? And have you seen the PBS Romani documentary film with Johnny Depp in it? Interesting stuff. Anyway, I will do the heading, fell free to reply. 3swordz ( talk) 14:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I also have a few images regarding Haplotype H's prevalence, in addition to "Haplogroup H is frequently found among populations of India (approximately 27%[8]), Sri Lanka (approx. 25%[8]), Nepal (approx. 12% in Kathmandu and 6% in Newars[6]), and Pakistan (haplogroup H1-M52 in 4.1% Burusho, 20.5% Kalash, 4.2% Pashtun, 2.5% other Pakistani)[7]." and 47% of Roma lineages is H, with no R1a. PU/PUN=Punjab, GU=Gujarat, etc. here here. In a nutshell: H is extremely scarce in Punjab, R1a is scarce in Romani, no detail of Jatt PCG prevalence (not unduly present, and extremely brief mention with no explained basis for naming), the discovery in only a single Pakistani family (sample size?), cultural/linguistic/genetic affinities farther south, etc. This is my basis for using "speculative," and calling the source under question. (Keep in mind that the new study doesn't necessarily trump the old one; one dealt with common haplogroups and the other with a gene. 3swordz ( talk) 18:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
On the other hand, as far as I saw, the Rajastan nomads are really to dark as compared with the Romanis.
We don't know actually how mixed are the Romanis with the Europeans and when exactly this mixage happened. And coming back to probabilities, is hard to believe that the Romanis mixed with Europeans in some hundreds of years more than the Jatts mixed with the "native" Indians in 3500 years, especially considering that the cultural distance between Romanis and Europeans is greater than the one between Jatts and other Indian groups.
Considering the general Jatt look, they maybe whiter than "pure" Indians, but for me, as European, they are still brownish on the average. And, if a group of Jatts would come to Romania today and, for some reason, they would have some conflict with Romanians, you can be sure that they would receive the "fucking crows" tag.
The skin color comparisons I've made were between "dressed" Romanis and "dressed" Jatts, I haven't seen farmer Jatts. And my general impression is that on the average Romanis are a little lighter than Jatts.
Yes, I have also thought about this aspect of the Romani haplogroups, the absence of R1a, even if they traveled almost exclusively in R1a areas. This would rather support a reduce mixage with other peoples. Even if they would assimilate more women than men, it is still very improbable that they wouldn't have acquired some R1a lineages. So, the Romani genetics puzzle is even more complicated :)
Indeed, small human groups evolute faster because the new genes/mutations spread faster the smaller the group is. (That was my digression :) )
About the reliability of the study, I don't know about South Asian academics, but the study was done at the University of Leeds which is a very respected university. But I also hope to hear some more details to clarify things.
The Romanis were not that itinerant. There have been only a couple of important migration in their history, triggered by some events (usually violent events). Other than that, the Romanis of Romania have been here for hundreds of years, the Romanis of Germany (the Sinti) or the Romanis of Spain (Iberian Kalos), just the same. I thing that their nomadism is exaggerated just like their darkness.
I do agree that the other genetic findings should be put into it, I trimmed the paragraph not to undermine those other aspects, but because I think that details aren't needed. I think it's enough to say that the Romani haplogroups don't match the Jatt ones, but I don't think that supplemental details about those haplogroups help. Especially since the article is already to large.
It has been a nice discussion:) Kenshin ( talk) 11:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Since the article is protected for whatever reason, I thought I would go ahead and explain why I changed a line. As it was the oppening line of the Contemporary Issues section was poorly worded. It said something to the extent of "the government tried to blame the gypsies for crimes committed in urban areas" and finished off with the phrase "Roma emergency." First, the government didn't "try" to do anything, it did explicitly blame the gypsies for crimes in urban areas. Putting the word try in there sounds more like the Italian government doing a concsious frame job or something to that extent. No matter what is happening or how objectively awful it may appear we should probably avoid such loaded language and show of bias and stick to basic, straight forward demonstrable facts. We have no idea why the Italian government has been motivated to say what they've said and we have no idea what, if any, truth exists in what they have said. It's better to just put what they said, include any counter criticism and move on. Save the exposition for the op-eds. Second, is really picky, but why put Roma Emergency like some Italian form of Spanglish? It should either just be Emergenza Roma (or emergenza nomadi as the article I cited called it or emergenza di sicurezza-emergency of security another term that gets used) or simply national security risk or emergency. Roma Emergency sounded really awkward to me. Anyway, that's the reason I made the change, feel free to disagree with me if you want.
Okay I don't want to start an edit war here. The first time I changed it I thought I had made the typo myself when I changed the first sentence. But now I see that someone changed it again to "Italy's Roma population" instead of "Italy's Gypsy population." I don't know the ends and outs of who gets called Romani or Roma, I just know the term that most people use, Gypsy. Maybe that's not the best term but if it's more correct they should just be called Romani. Here it's confusing to say Roma. If the sentence reads that the Italian government have declared Italy's Roma population a national security risk, what information is conveyed in that sentence? Okay so the handful of people on this planet who use Roma as a term for a subset of Romani people, might get that sentence. To everyone else that sounds like the Italian government is cracking down on the citizens of Rome. Roma population, Roma is the capital city of Italy, am I the only one who would be confused by that sentence? Use Romani if you want to be old school or stick with the title of the article but not Roma.
And in fact I went ahead and changed it to Romani. That should make sense and hopefully avoid any offense taken to the word Gypsy.
It was always gypsy so why should we start calling them differently now? They even refer to themselves as the gypsies. Norum ( talk) 21:52, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Why is Christos Patsatzoglou in the picture when his article doesn't mention him being a Romani? Spiderone ( talk) 10:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, he does look like a gypsy though. He doesnt really Greek, he seems to be much darker. Norum ( talk) 01:07, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Please can you remove Category:Europe from this page. IMHO, it should not be in such a high-level cat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.89.70 ( talk) 22:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
In terms of contemporary fiction, I see a great deal in common with the Tuatha'an in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, in at least the stereotypical view. Does anybody see the same thing? Pueblonative ( talk) 22:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | → | Archive 13 |
Two apples and an orange. The introduction as it presently reads equates Romani people/Romany people with Roma people. This is incorrect and I recommend for this removing "Roma people" from the introductory paragraph. The differences are explained discussed in the "Terminology" section as they should be (though the significant difference should be made more explicit there). I will repeat three citations (now archived) that support my recommendation:
1) "'Roma' is a political term used as an umbrella name for all members of the Romani ethnic community ... [F]rom an ethnographic point of view, the Romani community is extremely diverse and all Romani groups, subgroups and metagroups have their own ethnic and cultural features .. so far, the homogeneous Romani identity is a political project rather than a reality." (p. 13 in Illona Klimova-Alexander's The Romani Voice in World Politics: The United Nations and Non-State Actors (2005, Burlington, VT.: Ashgate).
2) "Before the changes in 1989-90, the name 'Roma' was used most commonly as an endonyme (an internal community self-appellation) in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (except for former Yugoslavia) when the Gypsies spoke Romanes (the Gypsy language). This name was not widely popular and did not have an official status. In order to be faithful to the historical principle we use the word Roma only for the period after 1989. In all other instances we use the term 'Gypsies'. We think that 'Gypsies' is wider in scope than 'Roma' and we also use it to include the Gypsy communities who are not Roma or who are considered to be 'Gypsies' by the surrounding population but do not wish to be considered as such." (p. 52 in Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov's "Historical and ethnographic background; Gypsies, Roma, Sinti" in Will Guy [ed.] Between Past and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe [with a Foreword by Dr. Ian Hancock], 2001, UK: University of Hertfordshire Press).
http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/romani.html [wherein Dr Ian Hancock uses "Romani people" in place of "Roma people" consistently in order to avoid the ambiguity I am drawing attention to.
In sum, "Romani people" and "Romany people" refer to the more inclusive ethnic group described in the article, of which "Roma people" is a part. The introduction should be rewritten to make that clear. The scholarly citations appearing above have much more more authority and validity than those blogs and encyclopedia references given in support of "Roma people" as equivalent in meaning to "Romany people" and "Romany people". Steviemitlo ( talk) 00:05, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Now that the normal and long waited move to "Romani people" was finally accomplished, I think that we should have a manual of style for his matter, as it was already discussed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Romani_language#Request_for_Comment:_Romani.2C_Romany.2C_Roma
Basically, following the talks, I think that "Romani people"/"Romanies" for the entire ethnic group, Roma (as a noun) for the E Europe subgroup, and "Romany" with an "y" when we cite a title is the best solution. AKoan ( talk) 10:36, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
The introductory phrase has been discussed here [1]. I couldn't continue the discussion, cause I was absent a long time. I support the version initially suggested by Kuaichik (with the largest concentrated populations in Europe, but also in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere), because it represents better the reality. The Romanies have the largest concentration in Europe, followed by the Americas, followed by "elsewhere". The current version (with the largest concentrated populations in Europe and the Americas) gives the impression the Europe and the Americas have kinda the same Romani populations. AKoan ( talk) 10:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Oh, another thing with the intro. I think that the second phrase should be "The Romani people are.." or "The Romanies are.." in order to be grammatically correct. Romani is the singular form. AKoan ( talk) 13:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
The section about the Romani groups uses to references that are in Russian. Can anybody translate them (at least the relevant parts) cause I'm suspicious about them. AKoan ( talk) 11:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
The see also section of the article is getting a bit out of hand. Would anyone object if I attempted to cut it down? Cordless Larry ( talk) 17:23, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Cem Romengo, Indian diaspora and List of Roma, Sinti and Mixed People should be kept. -- Olahus ( talk) 18:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
The introduction to the article appears to have stabilized. This encourages us to begin to attempt to revise and update what is now the "Terminology" section and "Etymology" sub-section. It would be great if one of our Romani language specialists would attempt a systematic yet concise reorganization of the present contents that logically follows from the introduction. Something comprehensive yet without unnecessary esoteric digressions. Something written at the comprehension level of a 9th grade English-reading audience. I hesitate to attempt this myself, as so many other editors have earlier worked hard and contributed to the present contents -- which as far as I can tell are pretty much correct in substance, though in need now of updating and consolidation. If we are to have a Manual of Style for this article (or a direct from this section to a separate Manual of Style page), this seems a good opportunity. Steviemitlo ( talk) 23:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Someone keeps inserting this into the introductory paragraph. In looking over the archives, it appears that this (non)issue has been beat to death by previous editors. So what if the spellings "Romani people" and "Romanian people" are similar. The distinction can be addressed in "Terminology". Reference to Romanians does not belong in the introductory paragraph. Steviemitlo ( talk) 12:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
I have taken the initiative to draft a proposed "Terminology and Manual of Style". I have reorganized the existing "Terminology" and "Etymology" sections, keeping most of what was there but deleting some items and adding a very few others. My main objective was to revise the article in ways that reflect the new name and its implictions regarding issues of terminology. The section may still be too long, but what I would like is your feedback on at this time regarding the accuracy of the content. If you encounter statements you consider absolutely wrong or very wrong, please do two things:
1) tell me here in "talk" how wrong they are, citing your opinions with the titles of scholarly references that have authority and validity.
2) ask me here to cite my opinions in support of contested statements with scholarly authority and validity.
The citations will enhance the next draft with more authority and validity until we reach a point where we can all agree here to a draft we can post. Once we post a consensus draft we can perhaps reformat it to be more aesthetically pleasing. What we need now, however, is consensus on credibility of content.
I should add that I deleted some paragraphs on etymology that went beyond what I thought was appropriate for the English-language Wikipedia entry "Romani people". We can always create new Wiki pages for digressions from "Romani people". One of the managerial complaints to our editors in the past is that the article is way too long and perhaps not reader-friendly to an encyclopedia readership at the ninth-grade English-language level.
Thanks for your constructive comments as we continue to work together to improve Wikipedia's "Romani people" article. All I can say is, the project is important. A world of learners is watching, hoping to increase their knowledge on this significant, complex and provocative topic.
Terminology and Manual of Style
Romanies in English-language terminology are a subcategory of European ethnic peoples with worldwide distribution and having ancestral roots traceable to India. The reasons for initial emigrations of proto-Romanies from India toward Europe (circa AD 1000), and the timetables and routes taken thereafter, remain obscure. Nevertheless, the Romani people are often these days termed a “Diaspora people.” Romani (or Romany) can be both an adjective and a noun.[54] All Romani-speaking branches of the Romani people use the word Romani as an adjective. From this long-observed usage, the term came to be an English-language noun used to comprehensively describe the entire ethnic group (Romani, categorized here as Romani people; and meaning Romanies).[55] Today, the term Romani is used by most organizations —including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the US Library of Congress.[56] Roma is not accurate terminology when used an English-language generic name for all branches (subcategories) of the Romani people.[53] Thus, "Roma language" or "Roma diplomacy” are examples of incorrect terminology, while "Romani language" or "Romani diplomacy" are examples of correct terminology.[55][57] Despite the fact that the Sinti branch, the Romnichal banch, and some other widely dispersed branches of the Romani people, do not self-ascribe as Roma[52] some organizations persist to misuse the term Roma as an ethnic name to refer to all Romani people around the world.[52] Roma misused in this comprehensive way is a neologism and incorrect from linguistic, historic and ethnographic perspectives (cite here). Roma is however accurate terminology when restricted to describing that branch of Romani people found in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, or to emigrants around the world from that region (for example, the Macvaya sub-branch of Roma in California). Sometimes, Rom and Romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., Rrom and Rromani, particularly in Romania in order to distinguish from the Romanian endonym (Români). This is well established in Romani itself, since it represents a sound different from the one written with a single r.[56] This variation in spelling is however not widely used outside of Romania, where non-Romanies still often confuse the names “Romani” and “Romanian”. As English-language terminology related to “Romani” is thus often confusing, the following suggestions regarding matters of style are recommended. Consideration in English-language usage should begin with matters involving some root-word Romani-language self-ascribing terminology. These are 1) rom (or rrom) depending on the dialect means "husband" and 2) romni (or rromni) means "wife” and 3) unmarried youth are named čhavo ("boy”) or čhej ("girl"). Etymologies for root-word Rom-related terminologies are unknown. However, these theories have been proposed: 1) Rom might come from old Indo-Aryan rama, which means "husband", the meaning that was kept in Romani itself.[58] 2) Rom might come from Dom, the name of an ethnic group of Indian origins from the Middle East, that some authors believe to be related to the Romani people. However, it should be noted that in the Domari language Dom means "man" and not "husband".[59][60] 2) The ethnonym Rom might have been acquired in the Byzantine Empire where the local people called themselves Romaioi ("Romans" in Greek).[61] 4) Rom might have come from ramta (wandering).[62] Recommended English-language usage should appreciate that Rom (plural Roma) is a noun. For example, “I am Rom” or “I am Roma”. In widespread English-language usage, the term “Romanies” (n. pl.) categorizes the ethnic Romani people inclusive of all sub-subcategories (or branches) variously named. Romani is an adjective . For example, the language of the Romani people is called “the Romani language”. In the Romani language, the adjective is created by attaching suffixes to the root that express gender and number: "Romani" (f. sing.), "Romano (m. sing.) and "Romane" (m. & f. pl.). Usually, in English, only the feminine singular form (Romani) is used adjectively (for example, the Romani (or Romany) road). The use of the Romani word Romanes in English as a noun is incorrect.[64].Romanes, with the following glaring exception, is an adverb (meaning, roughly, "in the Romani way"); the exception being -- the Romani language is also called Romanes ! The result is that “Lets speak Romani!” = “Let’s speak (in) Romanes !” The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Greek word Αιγύπτοι (Aigyptoi), modern Greek γύφτοι (gyphtoi). The Spanish term Gitano and the French term Gitan may have the same origin.[67] There was widespread belief among Europeans during their early encounters with the Romani people that they were royalty and originated in Egypt, and, as some of their stories and documents relate, were exiled as punishment for allegedly harboring the infant Jesus.[65] It seems significant that the Romani people themselves made these initial claims, which influenced the terminology that subsequently was used to ascribe their identities by others, and to which some Romanies still choose to self-ascribe, when it serves their own purposes. Thus the English-language term “Gypsy” when used to name the Romani people or its branches and their members is not an exonym. Correct use is that “Gypsy” pertaining to the ethnic group.[66] and its members should always be written with a capital letter. The Gypsy ethnonym is rarely used by the Romani people when speaking among them selves in Romani language to describe themselves. Many Romanies consider the “Gypsy” term and its variations and depravities, spoken, or written with or without capitalization, pejorative and defamatory (for example, when used as "gyp" meaning "to cheat) However, use of the word "Gypsy" in English has now become so pervasive that many Romani organizations use it in their own organizational names. In North America, where the Romani people proliferate and prosper, but generally keep a low profile, the word "gypsy" (usually not capitalized) is frequently used by outsiders as a reference to lifestyle or fashion. However, when “gypsy” is written in reference to ethnic Romanies, it is these days usually capitalized. There is also some frequent though now relict English-language use of “Bohemian” in reference to the Romani people (were first known as Bohémiens.[71] in France due to their supposed origins in Bohemia), and which also describes a “bohemian” lifestyle that Romanies first inspired among non-Romanies in France, and which to this day remains a fashion statement worldwide -- even in East and Southeast Asia, where Romanies can be encountered from time to time and place to place, but not in large concentrations. Steviemitlo ( talk) 21:28, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Regarding this sentence "I also agree with the use of Romani" Can you explain to me why exactly it was so important to change from Roma to Romani? I am a Romanian and I learn that more and more often, by mistake, lack or knowledge or ill intended even here in North America it is now creating this confusion: Roma People equal Romanian People.By using "Romani" ,no matter your reasons,you guys are doing a great unmerited "disservice " to both Romanians and Roma People. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Georgegheorghe ( talk • contribs) 22:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
The article is titled Romani people. This title and the introductory statement guides the entire content of the article, which is now under revision since the name change. In my opinion concise, relevant content extraneous to Romani people can perhaps be inserted in an appropriate place in the body of the article, but has no place in the introduction -- Especially if it is esoteric content written in a language other than English. This is an English-language Wikipedia. It disseminates the best knowledge available on a topic, through consensus. Which is: Since the Romani people are a European people (A. Fraser, The Gypsies, 1992) any concise, English-language historic, ethnographic and linguistic introduction of proto-Romanies belongs in the body of the article. When deciding what what content should be included and given prominance in the article, scholarly materials pertaining Romani people should be privileged. Extraneous materials do no belong in this article. We should discuss these matters here on this Talk page rather than continue to change the present concise and uncluttered introduction. Polemics, proselytizing and petty feuding don't belong here. Let's stick to disseminating the most accurate and updated knowledge about the Romani people. For a start, we should reach a consensus on whether or not the Romani people and proto-Romanies can and should be introduced and discussed separately using these terms. That would really help organizing the contents of the article and sorting out the wheat from the chaff. Steviemitlo ( talk) 14:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
"proto-Romanies" appears to be a term made up ad-hoc, getting all of 7 google hits
"Romany/Romani" and "Roma" are two English terms for the same group. The preferred plural of "Romany" is not "Romanies", just "the Romany". Fwiiw, I think Steviemitlo is correct in his opinion that "Romani" is the better choice for referring to the entire group, because "Roma" in some instances could also refer to specific subgroups. The Roma are, of course, a " people of Europe" even if about half of their numbers are not European, this makes them a "people of the Near East" on equal terms. -- dab (𒁳) 12:13, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
The ">15 million" estimate is reasonable if we include the "Indian Roma": in this case, we have 6 million in India, 5 million in the Near East (high estimate), 4 million in Europe and 2 million in the Americas (high estimate), or 17 million as a high estimate (or about 10 million as a low estimate). But this would mean that nearly half of the Roma population lives in India. The article does not reflect this: it uses the Indian population just to inflate the population count, but discusses European and Near Eastern groups exclusively in the remainder. Usually, the Roma are associated with the groups that left India in the Middle Ages. Consequently, the groups that did not leave India, are not normally included. It is rather dubious that the article should include them half-heartedly as it does. I also note that the Lambani article makes no attempt to include the group under the "Roma" term. Nor does any article attempt to give a serious reference for the "6 million Indian Roma" claim other than the joshuaproject.net website which gives 5.6 million as the population of the Banjara. This article either needs to be clear that about half of the Roma population are in fact Banjara, or it needs to exclude the Indian 6 million from the population estimate and list the Banjara as a cognate group, not a subgroup. Excluding the Indian Roma, the high estimate would be about 11 million, and the low estimate probably near 7 million. Since the Banjara do not speak Romanes, but a Rajasthani dialect, I find it highly artificial to include them here. It would require rather credible sources under WP:REDFLAG. The article would need to be updated that most Romani do not actually speak Romanes, but Rajasthani, and that "only" the out-of-India minority (i.e. those usually counted as Romani) speak the Romani language. In other words, I recommend we drop the Indian 6 million figure from the demographics section and the infobox. -- dab (𒁳) 11:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC):
ok, removing the Banjara. -- dab (𒁳) 17:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
There's a broken ref tag at the beginning of the third paragraph under "Terminology". Since I really don't know what it was intended to refer from/to, maybe someone who knows could fix it. Thanks. - Special-T ( talk) 19:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Olahus ( talk · contribs), if you are interested in discussing the writing systems used for Romani, please present your sources, at Romani language. Wikipedia articles aren't references you can usee [4]. It is pointless to repeat the same term in three different writing systems unless you can show it is relevant that we show it in each. Your transliterations do not appear to have any currency whatsoever:
Now please stop reverting unless you can satisfy WP:CITE. This isn't optional, you get to edit the article after you have presented your sources. -- dab (𒁳) 21:47, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
you obviousy have no understanding on WP:RS. You cannot present Wikipedia as a reference for a claim made in Wikipedia. There is no way you can enforce your content without providing quotable references, it's as simple as that. If you continue to refuse to honour this obligation, your edits fall under WP:DISRUPT. We don't have any control over the quality of the rmy: article. It doesn't cite any sources whatsoever. The Devanagari was added by an anonymous editor, on 22 December [5]. Are you seriously saying you imagine it is permissible for people to go make changes to some sister project and then come here presenting these edits as "references" to be used for en-wiki? Whom are you trying to kid? You may or may not be aware of the fact that Sanskrit manusha isn't spelled मानुशा at all, it is spelled मानुष. What we have here is an attempt at rmy-wiki to Sanskritize the Romani language, but an attempt by people who don't know very much Sanskrit. Neither will of course be tolerated on en-wiki without the presentation of adequate references. I have no idea why the authors of rmy: would opt for using Devangari. It seems about as intelligent as, say, writing tr: using cuneiform. Rmy has some 1.5 million speakers, mostly in Eastern Europe. Most of them are barely literate. Presenting them with a Wikipedia project in their own language but written in some perfectly foreign (to them) alphabet seems to be a mind-boggling feat of cultural arrogance, or misplaced and artificial ethnic nostalgia. Not that this is relevant to this discussion on the en:Romani people article in any way of course. -- dab (𒁳) 14:08, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
That said, we haven't even got as far as establishing that "Romane manusha" is a term that is in use by anyone, in any writing system. Google gives me all of 25 hits for the term, about half of which are wikipedia mirrors. Olahus, you are cleary trying to push unreferenced content, and now would be a good time to either stand down or start presenting respectable references. -- dab (𒁳) 14:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
ok, I have looked into it. In the light of this, we should clearly use the international standard orthography for all Romani strings (unless given in direct and attributed quotations). Anything else will be an arbitrary choice among dozens of dialects and local standards.-- dab (𒁳) 16:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
If it wasn't already clear what is going on here, I just found this interesting exchange from two years back. It seems that the rmy: project is rather infected by linguistic activism. The editor who came up with the idea that "Romani should be written in Devanagari" is Desiphral ( talk · contribs). -- dab (𒁳) 16:35, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't doubt about the fact that the latin script is the most spreaded. But you you couldn't proove me that is not also written in Cyrillic or Devanagari, as I asked you above. The Romani Wikipedia has articles written with the
Latin,
Cyrillic and
Devanagari script. --
Olahus (
talk)
16:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Isn't Romani devoid of retroflex sounds (irony)? Notwithstanding, Dbachmann has a point: forcing Devanagari on modern Romani would be cruel. 67.194.150.69 ( talk) 05:13, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
The map in this article needs to be objectified. Using that wheel symbol is not appropriate. Also, it should not just be Europe, but the entire world, and also contain hard numbers, as well as percentages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.173.138 ( talk) 17:47, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
I have tried to bring this article in a halfway acceptable WP:SS format. It has long been in an appalling shape, essentially a dumping ground for headlines on recent events of persecution and various genetic studies. I have tried to acommodate this material in a reasonable ToC, and exported a lot of the "dumping ground" material to Modern Antiziganism and Origin of the Romani people. As things go, this stuff is now just sitting in these articles waiting for cleanup, but at least exporting them will direct further accretion of such material to the proper sub-articles.
The article atm has still an excessive length of 83k and needs further attention from skilled editors. The most urgent problem is the huge Romani_people#Roma_people_by_geographic_area section. It is of course necessary to distinguish the various distinct populations, but the main "Romani people" article cannot do this in such detail and should focus on global statistics and commonalities instead. -- dab (𒁳) 17:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
This article was suffering from a very bad case of Wikipedia:Main article fixation. I have made Roma people by country the main article for discussing an "overview of Romani populations", now itself running to 50k. The "by geographic area" section here should just be a brief summary of that (or be merged into the "Population" section altogether). -- dab (𒁳) 17:57, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
The (re-)creation of an article specifically about the Roma would, IMO, help us to sort out a good deal the wrangling over terms in the main article Romani people. — Zalktis ( talk) 08:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)The Roma people are a major division of the Romani people, also known as Gypsies. The Roma were previously based in south-eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans, but since the 19th century have spread to most parts of Europe and beyond. Because of the fact that they are so numerous and widespread, "Roma" is often, albeit inaccurately, used in English as a synonym for the Romani people as a whole.
The problem is that "Roma" as a true subset of "Romani" is an intermediate level, in turn consisting of various subgroups that already have full articles on Wikipedia. There is nothing wrong with making this the summary article of all subgroups, both Roma and non-Roma Romani. If we are to have a separate article on the Roma exclusively, we'll simply need good sources ( WP:RS) establishing which groups are Roma and which aren't. It may be possible to write such an article in principle, but somebody will have to sit down and do it properly. My current understanding is that "Roma" is more or less synonymous with " Romani people in Central and Eastern Europe". If this is correct, we don't need a new article, we can simply add a discussion of the situation to the "Eastern Europe" article. -- dab (𒁳) 15:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
let's do this properly then. At present, we simply don't have the references that would allow us to describe "the Roma" as a well-defined subcategory. Other than that it used to be a self-designation of Roma speakers, but when we say "the Roma", we are using an English exonym, not a Romanes endonym. So, we have the following articles on Romani subgroups:
Your first step will be to clearly establish for each one whether they are Roma in the narrow sense. I suspect that these are Roma:
I suspect that these aren't
but I am not sure about Romnichal (UK Roma?) and Manouche (French Roma?) Mind you, this judgement is just based on what we have on Wikipedia already, and not because I know anything about the topic. Please set it straight. -- dab (𒁳) 11:32, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
The article currently states "The Romani (also ... Gypsies) are an ethnic group with origins in South Asia." Under English law not all Gypsies are Romani (and not all Romani are Gypsies it depends if lead a nomadic lifestyle). Different English laws make different assumptions so the first sentence to this article is currently misleading. -- PBS ( talk) 14:17, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
"Gypsy" is clearly a very common synonym for "Romani". There is nothing wrong with mentioning it as an alternative term in the lede. Nor is it wrong to keep a separate article on the term itself. -- dab (𒁳) 15:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
I knew that this problem will be reopened soon, so please read what I've said here. "Roma" (and not "Roma people") is a subgroup of the "Romani people". "Roma people" is a grammatically incorrect term, and we should avoid it in all stances! We should restart the Roma (Romani subgroup) article, and "Roma people" should be just a redirect to "Romani people". AKoan ( talk) 13:58, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
how is "Roma people" grammatically incorrect? You need to take care not to equate English and Romani grammar. Hancock is giving recommendations for his preferred terminology, not more and not less. -- dab (𒁳) 12:45, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
So Roma is a noun. Well, English is very good at noun+noun compounds. Is " cat people" ungrammatical because cat is a noun? Note that I am not disputing our preference for Romani, I am just saying that it is completely irrelevant that Roma is a noun. The point is that it is ambiguous (are the Roma the Romani, or a subset of the Romani). -- dab (𒁳) 19:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
it is news to me that -a serves as an English plural suffix. I am not talking about Romani grammar, I am talking about English grammar. This discussion is futile because I agree we should use "Romani people". All I am saying is that we need to reflect the fact that "Roma people" sees some use in English without passing judgement on "correctness" in Wikipedia's voice. So the OED favours "Roma" as a noun. Any evidence it considers it a plural with either a distinct or a non-existent singular? -- dab (𒁳) 17:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I propose that something should be added to this article about the major economic activities (and their development through history) of the Roma people; in other words, what they did and do to support themselves in societies in which they are always a minority. Here is a nice article about this within the Soviet Union and CIS, and here is a more general overview. Esn ( talk) 09:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I cannot edit the article, so just one remark: The estimate 550 000 for Slovakia is wrong and the two links provided in the table do not contain such a number. In reality, there are many estimates, but none of them is higher than 370 000. The point is, if this is how also the other figures in this article have been "chosen" (i.e. simply invented by someone to be as high as possible without any grounds and nobody even notices that), the value of this article is zero. Romaaaa ( talk) 13:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
see above below, we're in the process of cleaning up the estimate figures. Bear with us, or feel free to help. The current approach is to restrict ourselves to estimates quoted by coe.int in order to avoid the more unrealistic ones. --
dab
(𒁳)
19:29, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
The population count in the infobox is ... buggered. Also, File:Eurogipsy official.PNG is useless: it pretends to give "official" numbers, when it is simply copying dubious figures off Roma people by country. Many of the countries listed have no official figures, so the claim is wrong in any case. The best neutral source I can reach at this moment is Pan and Pfeil (2004), who give a number of 3.8 million Romani in Europe. Their count is broken down by country as follows (in thousands):
I suggest we use these figures for the infobox pending the presentation of some more credible source. -- dab (𒁳) 17:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Yes, do that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trkgnd ( talk • contribs) 06:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
this also appears to be a reasonable source. If the Council of Europe lists a source, it may be worth mentioning. -- dab (𒁳) 15:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Oppose to both proposals. They are dozens of other reliable sources that can be presented. Actually, Dbachmann's proposals will only reopen Pandora's box. -- Olahus ( talk) 17:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
The "proposal" here is to clean up the sad mess in the current infobox. You are welcome to help, but I think you need to review our idea of WP:RS first. -- dab (𒁳) 21:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Dbachmann has a good suggestion here. However, population data for Romani people in almost all countries of Europe as well as other countries around the world will continue be contested by other editors with other sources (as Olahus warns). I agree to the change, but the article should be transparent about population data for Romani people: weakness in the data and the reasons for it (persisting high rates of secrecy and mobility among ethnic Romanies) should be clearly and concisely stated in the text of the article, and in the new data box. before schoolchildren begin citing as true the "best estimates" data from our page. But even before revising the population section in this manner, I recommend we agree to use Romani people or Romanies in the article wherever we mean ethnic Romani people, and to use Roma people wherever we mean ethnic Roma people. Let us try to avoid perpetuating the ambiguity in the article that results from the causual substitution of Roma for Romani people, because the ethnic Roma people are a subcatagory of the ethnic Romani people -- in Europe and elsewhere. This is the main problem with the article: we are not consistent when we use Romani people to mean ethnic Romani people and thus, as Dr. Ian Hancock states here (and I, and many other scholars agree based on solid ethnographic, historic-geographic, and linguistic evidence): the Romani people "did not form an ethnic identity until the stay in Anatolia, nor did Romani begin to crystallize into one language until then." If we can agree to this statement as a working hypothesis, we can replace almost every use of "Roma" in the population section, as well as almost all other sections of the article, with "Romani people" or "Romanies" and thereby reduce ambiguity and internal contradiction within the article substantially. Think about it this way: do we want to convey in this article with this new population data list that there are 90 thousand ethnic Roma in the UK? Or do we want to convey our best estimate at present that there are 90 thousand ethnic Romani people in the UK? Steviemitlo ( talk) 23:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Dbachmann proposed wisely above to replace the present multisourced and endlessly disputed Romani people population counts table with a simplified table originating in one source, which is authoritative and cited. Overwhelming editor consensus was reached a week ago in support of the proposal. Please, Db, make that change while the consensus stands. Steviemitlo ( talk) 21:41, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
I must admit that the Pan and Pfeil (2004) numbers I quoted appear to be "low" or "official" estimates. I suggest we use the CoE estimates instead, quoting high and low. Yes, for some countries, the high and the low estimates are very different. Too bad, that's how it is, so that's how we need to report it. All the work has already been done for us, here, we just need to copy the figures and their sources. And since the immediate source is the Council of Europe website, we should assume that they didn't include unrealistic or far out estimates. It appears that there is no consensus as to who is a "Roma proper" as opposed to a "Romani", so it will be futile to attempt making this distinction here. I understand that most Romani are also "Roma proper", and it would be actually a minority of Romani who would not subscribe to being "Roma". Perhaps we should do articles about these instead, as in Sinti and Kale/ Kale/ Caló. -- dab (𒁳) 22:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
(moved section to bottom as re-activated). I've exported the infobox for transclusion ({{ Romani infobox}}) and I've cleaned up the population estimates, reducing it to something that is actually useful for a quick overview expected of an infobox. The infobox links to Romani people by country for more detail (this article needs to be cleaned up badly). The 3.8-9.1 million estimate for Europe is based on quotable sources of the 2000s. The "up to 4 million" estimate for the Americas is more shaky, based on an [external link edited for Wikipedia spam filter] www web4desi com/Articles/36-ArticlesbyJorgeMFernandezBernal/52-the-rom-in-the-americas online article quoting "UNESCO, RNC, Romani Union, SKOKRA and federated Organizations" as its "sources". The high estimate of 13 million for the total population is the result of adding 9 and 4 (gasp, teh WP:SYN!).
I understand that most "Roma" populations of the Middle East (other than Turkey) we sometimes found reported are actually Dom people which we agreed not to include in this count (the infobox links to the Dom people as "related"). There are a few Middle Eastern Roma populations, i.e. Qawliya, Roma in Armenia, and possibly Roma minority in Syria (or are these Dom?), also some in Israel (immigrated from Russia), but these are tiny and do not noticeably contribute to the overall population.
Please let us remember what an infobox is intended for: a guide to a quick, rough overview of a complex topic. An unreadable tangle of numbers and flag icons isn't helpful. Wikipedia has ample space to go into the gory details, but that's not for the infobox. -- dab (𒁳) 10:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
The page says of "Gypsy": "If used, this exonym should also be written with capital letter, to show that it is about an ethnic group." This is dubious: English has no set rule about whether ethnic groups are written with capital letters. Most English writers write "white" and "black" without capitals, for instance. 22:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.225.234 ( talk)
how are "white" and "black" ethnic groups? Use of "gypsies" indicates an occupation or class, like "tinkers", "vagabonds", "carpenters", "builders", "commoners" etc. Use of "Gypsies" would imply recognition of the term as a demonym. -- dab (𒁳) 10:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
((Source: Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit (RamaNa) http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=HK&tinput=ramana&country_ID=&trans=Translate&direction=AU
(gRhaja meaning domestic but also civilian. possible source for Romani Gajo (m) / gaji (f) / Gaje (p)) http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=HK&tinput=grhaja&country_ID=&trans=Translate&direction=AU (paaNDu meaning white like Romani 'Parno (m) / Parni (f) / Parne (p)') http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?tinput=paaNDu&direction=SE&script=HK&link=yes))
I can see the reference where Hancock mentions "Old Indo-Aryan rāma 'husband'" as one suggestion (not his own, although he doesn't say whose) for an alternative (Sanskritic) etymology. Now, I am not aware of any "Old Indo-Aryan" term for "husband" looking like rāma. I think Hancock may be mixing up things.
I think this is about the "so-called Rajput theory" mentioned
here, which tries to create a heroic backdrop to the migration out of India, and which takes Romane Chave to mean "sons of the god
Rama". We can document this "theory", although it is rather
suspect, but we'll need to do it properly. --
dab
(𒁳)
11:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't pretend to know any Romani, I am just repeating what I find in the sources cited. I do know some Sanskrit, however, as you seem to do as well: ramaNa is an adjective meaning "charming", but it can also be used in the sense of "husband" or "lover". This doesn't really help, since Hancock unambiguously claims an "Old Indo-Aryan" rāma meaning "husband". I think we should just drop this detail as unsubstantiated and not affecting the overall argument either way. I don't understand what you mean by "ME view". I don't see that there is any dispute regarding de facto English usage. My point is that we need to keep discussion of English usage cleanly separate from discussion of terminology within the Romani language. In any case, I have now created a Names of the Romani people article, and any detail regarding the etymology of rrom etc. should now go there. -- dab (𒁳) 15:58, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I think I found it. Apparently, rama (not rāma!) can mean "joy; a lover, husband, spouse". This meaning of an adjective "pleasing, dear" is attested in lexicography only, imho shedding light on how far-fetched this hypothesis is. rāma and other inaccuracies imho also shed some light on Hancock's limited linguistic qualifications. I am sure he is a bona fide expert on the Romani in general, but I will view his etymological musings with suspicion in the future...
I do not think that MW contradicts OED wrt English usage, but OED is (as usual) more detailed. OED has "Rom: also pl. Roma(s), Rom. a) A (male) gipsy, a Romany. b) attrib. (the Rom people, Rom families)" and "Romany 1. A gipsy; also collect., the gipsies. 2. The language of the gipsies. 3. attrib. or as adj."
I am now looking for substantiation of this alleged Sanskrit ramta "wandering". This is even more suspicious than rama, since ramta isn't a possible Sanskrit word. I think it transpires that all these proposed Sanskritic etymologies on r- are, not to put too fine a point on it, pompous nonsense motivated by a desire to avoid association with the Ḍoma. -- dab (𒁳) 12:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
it turns out that ramta "itinerant" is Hindi, not Sanskrit. [6] This seems to be another sample of just how much these "Sanskritic" etymologies are worth: ramta is a Hindi word without any apparent Sanskrit precedent (perhaps ramhi, an obscure Vedic word for "speed"? Of course a Hindi etymology would be sufficient for a tribal name around 1000 AD, but no, it must be Sanskrit). -- dab (𒁳) 12:22, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
I am doing precisely the opposite of "pushing a pov", I am debunking an unduly over-represented pov per WP:FRINGE. "Indo-Aryan" obviously doesn't equal Sanskrit, since even Romani itself is included in the term, but Old Indo-Aryan is pretty much a synonym for "Sanskrit (including Vedic Sanskrit)" -- dab (𒁳) 10:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
AKoan, I believe I have even written that sentence myself. Can we stop the games please? You may well know a lot about the Romani that I don't, but I doubt you can tell me much about Sanskrit and Old Indic. The point here is that ramta is Hindi, not Sanskrit and not "Old Indo-Aryan". -- dab (𒁳) 16:38, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
right. this is a detail in any case. The sources we cite that "Sanskritic etymologies were suggested", and mention rama and ramta as mere examples. None of our sources do actualy propose or defend these specific etymologies. I believe the situation is summarized properly as it stands: the possible relation go Dom, Lom and ultimately Sanskrit Doma was recognized in the early 20th century, by Sampson. This remains the standard assumption. The "Kshatriya theory" first advanced by Kochanowski (1968) doesn't necessarily affect etymology, but in its context, Sanskritic etymologies were suggested from the 1980s, following Rishi (1983). This is the situation, and this is how it is presented at Names_of_the_Romani_people#Etymology. I think any further discussion on this would belong on Talk:Names of the Romani people. -- dab (𒁳) 15:01, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Following Information is unsourced/incorrect: "The Romani share a "common ethnic substratum" with the Jat Sikhs, the Panjabi Hindus and the Rajputs."
The Punjabis consist of a number of different tribes, and cannot be distinguished foremost by religion. For example there are Hindu and Muslim Rajputs, Hindu and Muslim Jats and so on.
Can someone back me up on this one, and amend the statement? It would make far more sense to say for example: "The Romani share a "common ethnic substratum" with several tribes of the Punjab region located in the northern Indian subcontinent." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.12.86.181 ( talk) 14:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
this is taken directly from the source cited, Ian Hancock, We are the Romani people, p. 13. I don't see the problem, obviously both Muslim and Hindu Rajputs share a "common ethnic substratum" connecting them much more closely than either are connected to the Romanies. This is just intended to gesture at the Romani area of origin. -- dab (𒁳) 15:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I think you mean Origin_of_the_Romani_people#Genetic_evidence. -- dab (𒁳) 15:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
It is true that the Romani ethnogenesis probably took place in the 13th or 14th century in Anatolia. It is just as true that the "proto-Romanies" contributing to that ethnogenesis originated in NW India in the 10th or 11th century. Both are true statements, and both may be noted, and they are not mutually contradictive. -- dab (𒁳) 15:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
It's what I gather from the situation as described in the "Origins" article as well as this map. I don't think this is very controversial. The earliest records are from the 14th century, and they appear out of Anatolia. Whatever they were up to between leaving India around AD 1000 and appearing on the European radar around AD 1300, god knows, but three centuries is just about the time a good and proper ethnogenesis will take. The geneticists propose that the population was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, which falls squat within the 1000 to 1300 period. -- dab (𒁳) 18:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
well, we do have the reference saying there was a founder population 32-40 generations ago, so no, they were not a single ethnic group back in India. Which is also evident from the fact that there is no record of any ethnic group identifiable as the Romani equivalent in India. Ethnogenesis is indeed a complicated process, and it does take time (many generations), but we can say with confidence that in the case of the Romani this process took place in Anatolia in the early centuries of the 2nd millennium. I am not aware of any source given in the "Origins" article that would be in contradiction to this general scenario. -- dab (𒁳) 10:31, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a noticable bias here. The Rom are well known in Europe for their propensity to criminality and that they do indeed lead an uncivilized life for the most part. In Rome, there is not a single area where they do not invade and make a hassle. Shouldn't this be objectively mentioned? It is wrong to automatically close your eyes to things just because it labels a particular group. I mean, who denies Italians like pasta. When a thing is so greatly associatiated to a people, it should be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.37.204.198 ( talk) 13:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
The various stereotypes, including the one related to criminality, are already in the article. Kenshin (ex AKoan) ( talk) 10:46, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
Hi Kenshin,
Suggesting that this is a stereotype shows bias. An objective analysis is required instead. Such a research is hard to commit as most people, including me, has had negative experiences with gypsies. (valuables stolen at knife-point, I'm lucky to be alive as to say). Let's not waste time by going down the "stereotype" path. A section is needed about gypsy criminal stats and not in the biased style of "people often accuse gypsies of street crime and living off of social aid" but a factual representation of the problem, pro or contra. Lothandar ( talk) 14:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I totally agree that it should be mentioned that it's Romani culture to steal, there is a link to a bbc documentary on Romani people here: [ [7]] I think it's made by someone ethnically Romani himself which goes some way in dispelling accusations of bias. But who can be bothered to write it in, that is the real question. 84.69.228.89 ( talk) 21:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
The "References" section seems to be put on alert, so as to not screw anything up, here are my sources. maybe someone can put them up:
re: Roma/Jatt Sikh genetic distance: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18768723
re: geographic/cultural origin: http://ling.kfunigraz.ac.at/~rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/lang/gen/origin.en.xml
A lot of other sources say similar things, if these don't make the cut.
I don't have anything against Romani, but the statement regarding the Jatt Sikh connection caught my eye, as I am one myself. I looked into it, and most sources I came across (fairly reputable ones) say that their origin lies in Central India, among such other nomadic groups as the Banjara. Not to be pretentious, but i think this makes more sense; the vast difference in lifestyle between the agrarian, martial Jatt Sikh and the staunchly itinerant Romani just doesn't equate, and their culture seems more akin to that region. They did spend a few centuries in the Punjab region (200BC~500AD) after moving from central India; thet doesn't make it their region of origin. The linguistic kinship between Punjabi and the Romani language would be because they are both Indo-Aryan languages. From what I've seen of the vocabulary it is somewhat more akin to Hindi, although a Punjabi element comes up every now and then due to the Punjabi/Hindi relationship. For an author to state a connection to illustrate from which area the Romani took off from South Asia is one thing; forging a kinship without any evidence is another. It really seems awkward that they are from "Jatt Sikhs," as opposed to other Jatts or Tarkhan Sikhs (all of whom are similar) and from Hindu Punjabis and rajputs; the Romani don't claim such specific lineages, and considering that they barely have any cultural similarities, it is mindboggling to do so. I believe that the author is simply trying to eqaute the most well-known northerners (who are very present in the Souht Asian diaspora) with Roma. Linguistic (Indo-Aryan)connection? Sure. Closest genetic/cultural kin? Hardly. 3swordz ( talk) 20:46, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The following two paragraphs are copied verbatim from Antiziganism:
They're poorly sourced to begin with. The first article, "Italy assailed over plan to fingerprint Gypsies", reflects early knee-jerk reactions to a census proposal that later gained international acceptance (from Antiziganism: "On September 4, 2008 the European Commission said Italy's census of illegal gypsy camps does not discriminate against the Roma community. They said the census is in line with European Union law.", etc.). The second article is in Romanian, and references an Italian research of dubious notability. Overall, it seems likely that these two paragraphs were added to both this article and Antiziganism by the same person on the spur of the moment after reading some piece of news, with little regard to how relevant they were to an encyclopedia article. The duplicate in this article should be removed, since the information is more relevant to Antiziganism. But even in that article there is some reduplication: the paragraph that's based on the article about initial reactions to the census proposal was tacked on after existing text that already covered the same issue in more detail and in a less POV way. Flavus ( talk) 19:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
I second Flavus in that the paragraph needs to be improved. Kenshin is incorrect in sensing an anti-Romani bias on Wikipedia. If anything there is a pro-Romani bias, seeing that we cover Antiziganism and persecution of Romani in great detail, but we have hardly any coverage on the very real issues of organized crime, and if the general poverty and squalor in the Romani communities is mentioned, it is invariably in a paragraph arguing that these are the result of discrimination and persecution. This isn't honest, or neutral. I don't want any articles bashing the Romani, but neither do I want PC whining about how badly the Romani are treated by everybody. I want neutral, unemotional, detached, well-informed reports on the facts. -- dab (𒁳) 09:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
On the box on the side it mentions 'Paganism' among the religions the Romani people practice. I have never encountered that claim in any literature. Any sources? MethMan47 ( talk) 00:24, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
What exactly is Romani religion? I know they often adopt the religions of their host countries, but, what are the religious beliefs & practices of Romanis, in & amongst their own tribes & peoples. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.55.25.209 ( talk) 22:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
The article claims that "gyp" ("cheat") derives from "gypsy". But the OED (online edition) says that "gyp" only "perh." (perhaps) derives from "gypsy" (or perh. from "gippo"). The derivation should therefore not be stated as fact, since it is only speculation. 86.146.228.185 ( talk) 06:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
fixed. Details would belong on wikt:gyp, not here. -- dab (𒁳) 09:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
{{editsemiprotected}}add Hala Strana as a rock band from America influenced by Romani music in the paragraph on Romani music Blue00 ( talk) 21:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)Blue00
A picture showing Romani literature if needed
[URL= http://img39.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rromaneekhipecopy.jpg][IMG] http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/4899/rromaneekhipecopy.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.213.52 ( talk) 06:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
I think the post-1945 history section should be divided into two parts, because the largest number of Roma lived and still live in the East-Central European region, where the attitude towards them was greatly affected by the 1989 political changes. I suggest that a section should be written on "Roma between 1945-1989", emphasizing how governments tried to integrate Roma into communist societies, and another one on "post-1989", pointing out that the new, post-communist governments tended to show little concern about them. The success of radical anti-Roma political parties at the 2009 EP elections should definitely be mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.216.200 ( talk) 12:36, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
for the beginning sentense of the topic-- 222.64.20.222 ( talk) 11:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I have read many posts that I know were written by racist people. For example a user named 'Omerlives' here wrote that Romani people are jatts and rajputs. Interestingly I found a comment in youtube by Omerlives(by the same name) that the Pushtuns(he is a pushtun probably) are better than Punjabi(he used the term 'Punjabi Tamils' for them). The people who hate Jatts and Rajputs of Pakistan and India deliberately identify them with Romani people, who don't have a good reputation. Other than that baseless theories are posted here without any evidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.24.216 ( talk) 04:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
As an American-Born person who hates racism, it seems to me the section titled: Contemporary Issues is blatently racist. I never heard of the Romani people until my girlfriend, a recently-immigrated Hungarian, warned me about them several times. She also let me know they were "Gypsies," and their main cultural trait was pickpocketing. This raised my suspicions so I came to the WikiPedia, only to find a very poorly written section which mentioned, but neither cited nor referenced the the following; "Romani are often confined to low-class ghettos because of their incapability to pay rent, are refused in jobs due to the lack of education and bad working moral, and Romani children are in highly disproportional numbers placed into special schools for mentally backward children."
It gets worse as the section goes on. The only references to supporting articles is one written by a "controversial researcher." This smacks of code words - for racist. And it gets worse in the second paragraph.
"Low education, frequent job-switching, low working moral and low personal responsibility are listed as the main reasons of the high unemployment rate. Unemployed Roma often work illegally or gain livehood from crime and other forms of illegal activity. Their leisure time is not used rationally, with many Roma spending big amounts of money on drugs and gambling."
Clearly, this is opinion. The reference to it is from a foreign language source. That seals the books on researching the reference.
One big clue this is a racist opinion is the poor grammar found in a few areas. I won't be more specific so as not to let the author clean it up.
I followed the link and read the article on antiziganism, and that is beutifully written with good grammar, a journalistic tone, and qualified references.
I hope the writers for the Romani section clean this up and make it palatable. Pcdr ( talk) 19:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Pcdr,
As an American, it is hard to have a clear vision of the issues with European minority groups. A friendly reminder: Poor grammar is not a suggestion for factual errors. Not everyone is born English, please keep that in mind before discrediting sources. There is a saying in Eastern-Europe and it goes "The farther you live from the Balkans, the more tolerant you get towards the minority groups living there". Basically this means that since you never hear about the minority groups in a negative context, you will base your views on them by assumption. But if you think about your girlfriend's experience, you have to see that the farther you are geographically from a problem, the less insight you have into it. Care must be taken before forming opinion of overseas issues. Cheers, Lothandar ( talk) 15:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Kenshin
This is 3swordz, who corresponded with you a few months ago. I decided to incorporate the other source regarding the genetic studies that I showed in the previous discussion. That study, that drew upon larger representative samples of Jats and Roma as opposed to a single family, strongly suggested that the two groups are rather unrelated in terms of male descent, which was the focus of the study.
About your recent source, I do have my doubts about its content, although I am in no position to debate it. This form of glaucoma associated with the Roma (1 in 1250) also occurs in other populations: "estimated at 1:10,000 in Western countries and higher in inbred populations such as those of Saudi Arabia (1:2500), Slovakia Roma (1:1250), Arab Bedouins of the Negro region in Israel (1 of 1200),and Andhra Pradesh in India (1:3300)," and "the incidence of PCG is geographically and ethnically variable." SOURCE: http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:15322984 mutation history of the roma/gypsies. I believe the mention of Andhra Pradesh in Southern India is of note. There are no standout populations in north India, I think due to greater variability (I read in another article), and the Jats don't have this condition at a noteworthy rate, which would also imply that they don't have some kind of monopoly on this gene, which seems somewhat silly to name the gene after them. Some of the other info regarding Roma origins struck me as a little incorrect, but whatever. I did take the liberty of changing the wording from 'confirming' to 'suggesting,' which struck me as especially unscientific, with no actual group studies of PCG prevalence, along with the haplogroup stuff sharply suggesting otherwise.
I pulled some of the y-dna prevalences in different populations from other wiki articles (cited ones), just so you know. I also nixed the subheading due to the contradictory study.
A lot of sources say that Roma language is related to a multitude of Indo-Aryan languages (no surprises there), among them Hindi, rajasthani, Punjabi, Sindhi, etc. I decided to look at some Romani vocab to see if I could see a trend. Most Romani words aren't really recognizable anymore unsurprisingly, but I do think that the language is most related to Hindi; the few words that were immediately recognizable to me were in Hindi, and if anything was in common with Punjabi, it was the same in Hindi as well. An example of this was the Romani word "amaro" (Our), which was more akin to Hindi ("hamara") than to Punjabi ("saadda") The pronunciation of "haath" [long "a" sound] (hand) was the same as Hindi ("Haath", also long "a",) than to Punjabi (huth, or h'th, it is hard to capture the phonolgy, but there is no vowel, let alone extended, in that pronunciation. Languages have a trend to simplify pronunciations/grammar over time but not to add to them. So Romani probably retained the pronunciation)There were other examples, these were among the more striking. It jives, at any rate, with the notion that the Romani originated farther south. Just a few more interesting facts. If the semantics doesn't suit, again, feel free. I do think my source is rather valid, and I will keep yours as well of course. 3swordz ( talk) 10:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi Kenshin. Some thoughts I have is that the study actually mentioned the discovery in a single Pakistani family, not a Romani one. They were comparing it to Romani populations. The team studied four Pakistani families and isolated it in one. If you have any studies regarding this form of PCG regarding Jatt populations, that would be cool. I was a little thrown by how momentarily the article gleaned over the mutation besides calling it a name. The particular strain, or PCG in general, isn't unduly present in Jatt populations to my knowledge. Jatt Sikhs and Haryans Jats also make up about half of all Jats roughly as well so it's pretty significant, even being "endogamous".
In terms of looks (if you really want to bring that up), Jatts tend to be rather fair skinned actually, either that or a few shades darker. The younger Punjabi populations, Jatts especially in the West (myself included, never got the "farmer's tan," lol) don't really have that "indian" look or how you want to call it; I can tell you out of experience that a lot of Punjabis in general but Jatts in particular are immediately distinguishable from "Indian looking" people, the ones raised here especially, it's quite a vast departure. Perhaps you may have seen some Sikhs (religious or not)like this. Their looks just scream "not indigenous" at any rate. I know that Romani are at least on average 50% European genetically by now (may even become mostly European in due time maybe), but before they started to mix (fairly recently, picked up in the 1800s) they were commented on their darkness of skin and even now some are quite dark and Indian-looking, at least from pictures I have seen and comments made in texts.
I didn't want to get into the whole "looks" thing because it struck me as a bit unresolvable (we could go on all day about looks of Romanis and whatnot) but that is my take on it. The genetics and such showed a large discrepancy, along with my look at the language vocab, as well as the traditions and dances and such, there is little in common, like the dances (the lively spinning dances and skirt style and the presence of distinctly Hindi words/syntax) just don't jive as Punjabi at all, but look like Rajasthani dress and movement. I honestly don't think people can just pick up traditions like [forgive my stereotyping for a sec] fortune-telling, itinerancy, musical entertainment and entertainer class traits, whatever, especially from a settled "warrior past" that strikes as being more self-empowering than factual, like black nationalists claiming Zulu descent or whatever. I am not trying to denegrate them , don;t take it that way, but some things just don't fit at all. I also read of in quite a few articles (for however much this counts) a mannerism of Romani, the "head bobble" or something, where some shakes their heads from a sort of side-to-side to indicate "yes," and I immediately knew what they were talking about, this is a distinct Hindi-speaker trait that I see often; Punjabi speakers don't do this at all (I think the drastically different diction and tone don't allow for it, honestly.)
Here are some more examples of distinctly Hindi or Punjabi words with Romani. They match a lot more with Hindi most of the time. (eng-rom-hnd-pun)
Only these have more of a resemblance to Punjabi.
Didn't mean to ramble, I have just been learning a lot about Romani as of late, some of which I wanted to share. I'm cool with the new body section, the one thing I would change is the subheading to "Speculative" as there are sharply conflicting studies, at least until more detailed studies come out regarding the mutation's prevalence in subcontinental populations, as I'm sure they will. I just don't think two lines mentioning a Jatt mutation really cuts it with no detail, more should be divulged. Like actual population studies for one. I also think my study and the mention of R1awhich is a quandary which cannot be counted out (R1a is the most common male lineage in northern India, not just Jatts, of which Romani populations have literally none; this is unreconcilable to me) and should be incorporated back in, which was really the most head-on direct study of Jatt/Roma comparison I have come across. Also, the presence of Hindi words kind of contradicts the "origin" in Punjab, unless they dipped back down to Rajasthan before their sojourn. The presence of a few distinct Punjabi (and Dardic, Persian, Slavic, etc) loanwords simply indicates their migration to me.
Notwithstanding, this is a fascinating topic. PS This may warrant a "duh" from you, but are you a Romani? And have you seen the PBS Romani documentary film with Johnny Depp in it? Interesting stuff. Anyway, I will do the heading, fell free to reply. 3swordz ( talk) 14:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I also have a few images regarding Haplotype H's prevalence, in addition to "Haplogroup H is frequently found among populations of India (approximately 27%[8]), Sri Lanka (approx. 25%[8]), Nepal (approx. 12% in Kathmandu and 6% in Newars[6]), and Pakistan (haplogroup H1-M52 in 4.1% Burusho, 20.5% Kalash, 4.2% Pashtun, 2.5% other Pakistani)[7]." and 47% of Roma lineages is H, with no R1a. PU/PUN=Punjab, GU=Gujarat, etc. here here. In a nutshell: H is extremely scarce in Punjab, R1a is scarce in Romani, no detail of Jatt PCG prevalence (not unduly present, and extremely brief mention with no explained basis for naming), the discovery in only a single Pakistani family (sample size?), cultural/linguistic/genetic affinities farther south, etc. This is my basis for using "speculative," and calling the source under question. (Keep in mind that the new study doesn't necessarily trump the old one; one dealt with common haplogroups and the other with a gene. 3swordz ( talk) 18:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
On the other hand, as far as I saw, the Rajastan nomads are really to dark as compared with the Romanis.
We don't know actually how mixed are the Romanis with the Europeans and when exactly this mixage happened. And coming back to probabilities, is hard to believe that the Romanis mixed with Europeans in some hundreds of years more than the Jatts mixed with the "native" Indians in 3500 years, especially considering that the cultural distance between Romanis and Europeans is greater than the one between Jatts and other Indian groups.
Considering the general Jatt look, they maybe whiter than "pure" Indians, but for me, as European, they are still brownish on the average. And, if a group of Jatts would come to Romania today and, for some reason, they would have some conflict with Romanians, you can be sure that they would receive the "fucking crows" tag.
The skin color comparisons I've made were between "dressed" Romanis and "dressed" Jatts, I haven't seen farmer Jatts. And my general impression is that on the average Romanis are a little lighter than Jatts.
Yes, I have also thought about this aspect of the Romani haplogroups, the absence of R1a, even if they traveled almost exclusively in R1a areas. This would rather support a reduce mixage with other peoples. Even if they would assimilate more women than men, it is still very improbable that they wouldn't have acquired some R1a lineages. So, the Romani genetics puzzle is even more complicated :)
Indeed, small human groups evolute faster because the new genes/mutations spread faster the smaller the group is. (That was my digression :) )
About the reliability of the study, I don't know about South Asian academics, but the study was done at the University of Leeds which is a very respected university. But I also hope to hear some more details to clarify things.
The Romanis were not that itinerant. There have been only a couple of important migration in their history, triggered by some events (usually violent events). Other than that, the Romanis of Romania have been here for hundreds of years, the Romanis of Germany (the Sinti) or the Romanis of Spain (Iberian Kalos), just the same. I thing that their nomadism is exaggerated just like their darkness.
I do agree that the other genetic findings should be put into it, I trimmed the paragraph not to undermine those other aspects, but because I think that details aren't needed. I think it's enough to say that the Romani haplogroups don't match the Jatt ones, but I don't think that supplemental details about those haplogroups help. Especially since the article is already to large.
It has been a nice discussion:) Kenshin ( talk) 11:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Since the article is protected for whatever reason, I thought I would go ahead and explain why I changed a line. As it was the oppening line of the Contemporary Issues section was poorly worded. It said something to the extent of "the government tried to blame the gypsies for crimes committed in urban areas" and finished off with the phrase "Roma emergency." First, the government didn't "try" to do anything, it did explicitly blame the gypsies for crimes in urban areas. Putting the word try in there sounds more like the Italian government doing a concsious frame job or something to that extent. No matter what is happening or how objectively awful it may appear we should probably avoid such loaded language and show of bias and stick to basic, straight forward demonstrable facts. We have no idea why the Italian government has been motivated to say what they've said and we have no idea what, if any, truth exists in what they have said. It's better to just put what they said, include any counter criticism and move on. Save the exposition for the op-eds. Second, is really picky, but why put Roma Emergency like some Italian form of Spanglish? It should either just be Emergenza Roma (or emergenza nomadi as the article I cited called it or emergenza di sicurezza-emergency of security another term that gets used) or simply national security risk or emergency. Roma Emergency sounded really awkward to me. Anyway, that's the reason I made the change, feel free to disagree with me if you want.
Okay I don't want to start an edit war here. The first time I changed it I thought I had made the typo myself when I changed the first sentence. But now I see that someone changed it again to "Italy's Roma population" instead of "Italy's Gypsy population." I don't know the ends and outs of who gets called Romani or Roma, I just know the term that most people use, Gypsy. Maybe that's not the best term but if it's more correct they should just be called Romani. Here it's confusing to say Roma. If the sentence reads that the Italian government have declared Italy's Roma population a national security risk, what information is conveyed in that sentence? Okay so the handful of people on this planet who use Roma as a term for a subset of Romani people, might get that sentence. To everyone else that sounds like the Italian government is cracking down on the citizens of Rome. Roma population, Roma is the capital city of Italy, am I the only one who would be confused by that sentence? Use Romani if you want to be old school or stick with the title of the article but not Roma.
And in fact I went ahead and changed it to Romani. That should make sense and hopefully avoid any offense taken to the word Gypsy.
It was always gypsy so why should we start calling them differently now? They even refer to themselves as the gypsies. Norum ( talk) 21:52, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
Why is Christos Patsatzoglou in the picture when his article doesn't mention him being a Romani? Spiderone ( talk) 10:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, he does look like a gypsy though. He doesnt really Greek, he seems to be much darker. Norum ( talk) 01:07, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Please can you remove Category:Europe from this page. IMHO, it should not be in such a high-level cat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.89.70 ( talk) 22:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
In terms of contemporary fiction, I see a great deal in common with the Tuatha'an in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, in at least the stereotypical view. Does anybody see the same thing? Pueblonative ( talk) 22:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)