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Romani Resources? | ||
Tags: Romani/Romanes | Resources | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes  Studies: Uzbek | Message 9 of 20 16 May 2010 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The book by Ronald Lee, cited above, is the only actual textbook I'm aware of in English; there's also another very useful book for Kalderash Romani entitled "A Handbook of Vlax Romani", by Ian Hancock, published by Slavica Press in the U.S. It's more of a reference grammar, but very useful. I suspect that the Vlach dialects are pretty distant from anything spoken in the Crimea, though.
The German publisher Harrassowitz publishes a number of very scholarly books on Romani dialects; their webpage is here: http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/ The Romani books are listed under Balkan studies. Unfortunately, audio materials are hard to come by. The German Kauderwelsch series of phrasebooks has a volume for Romani that has separate audio, as does a French book entitled "Parlons Tsigane", by Vania de Gila-Kochanowski, published by Editions L'Harmattan. Finally, a book of sorts was published in France in the 1970s by A. Barthelemy, entitled "Zanes Romanes?" It was translated into English and sold with an accompanying cassetted by the Western Canadian Romani Alliance, in Vancouver, as of several years ago. Although the subtitle was "40 Romani Lessons", the book essentially consists of face-to-face Romani and English dialogues/texts, with minimal explanatory notes, and accompanying audio. So it might be useful as a supplement, but I still think the Lee book is probably the best introduction to the language. He has his own website, by the way, at http://kopachi.com/index.html You can find a good portion of the book displayed by GoogleBooks at http://books.google.com/books?id=ENqAjucuu4MC&printsec=front cover&dq=learn+romani&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false There are various other descriptions of individual dialects, but these are more oriented toward linguists than potential learners of the language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5381 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 10 of 20 20 May 2010 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Although not a language book, as a general description of culture and history, I recommend "Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey" by Isabel Fonseca. Very interesting reading!
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| mirab3lla Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom lang-8.com/220477Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5444 days ago 161 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Spanish, FrenchB1, Mandarin | Message 11 of 20 24 May 2010 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you or your friend can understand a bit of Romanian, then here is a link to some books . There are books for Rromani children that learn their language at school in Romania (the first seven books on the list). However, the Rromania language has a lot of dialects, so it would be ideal if your friend could find someone who has it as a native language, rather than learn it from books. Edited by mirab3lla on 24 May 2010 at 8:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| endation Triglot Newbie United States mattgrabermusic.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6300 days ago 28 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew, Spanish Studies: French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 20 24 May 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I second this recommendation! It's a very good book if you're interested in the history and culture. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 20 05 June 2010 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The book by Ronald Lee is for the Romani spoken by Roma in North America, correct? If one were to learn Romani
from this book, would they be able to converse with those in Eastern Europe? The reason I ask is my uncle is coming over from Poland for a visit, and he's bringing his immediate family (he married a Romani woman) and I'd like to see if I can learn and use it with them. His children are bilingual in Romani and Polish and they all speak a bit of German (no English). I don't speak Polish so I want to make sure that our communication is as clear as possible and I want to make sure that the Ronald Lee book will allow that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 14 of 20 05 June 2010 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Do you have a strong reason for picking Romani rather than Polish? Polish has some difficult dialects, but it's nothing compared to the dialect situation in Romani... and there's way more material for learning Polish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5482 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 15 of 20 05 June 2010 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
If I were interested enough to learn Polish I would, but I'm the type of person that would learn Mongolian just for the heck of it, so having an opportunity to speak Romani is good enough for me. Since his wife is originally from Romania, she speaks Vlax, so I'm wondering if that Romani taught in Ronald Lee's book is similar enough to Vlax Romani. They don't feel very comfortable in Polish according to my uncle (although they are technically bilingual), so I want to connect with them in the best way possible because they may be moving here soon (the purpose of their visit is to see what it's like). They are around my age and I've never had cousins that I'm really close to so it'd be nice to get to know them. Edited by ruskivyetr on 05 June 2010 at 7:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 16 of 20 06 June 2010 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, ruskivyetr, my Romani-learning friend would be so jealous if she heard about your situation!
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