In this site www.geocities.com/romanivonnie you will find Romani songs with English translation, links to videos on our Indian roots, pictures of Romanies, and other interesting articles.
Please could you post this message to help the Romani cause.
A book written by a Rom titled 'We are the Romani people' has been reproduced with kind permission of the author and is now available for free in a PDF file on this website www.geocities.com/daveauss/ for all of you to download.
Te aves baxtalo
Lacho deves
Yvonne Slee
Australia
Hi Andre,
I can send you the file if you give me your email address or tell me how I can get in touch with you outside the group. I don't know why the link doesn't work.
Regards
Vonnie
Hallo,
Habe 4 interessante Dokumente über die Romani-Sprachen entdeckt, die einige von euch sicherlich interessant finden. Habe selbst noch nicht reingesehen, aber werd ich gleich machen...
• Norbert Boretzky (1996),Arli: Materialien zu einem südbalkanischen Romani-Dialekt
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~harald2/grammars/arli_sketch.pdf
• Petra Cech & Mozes Heinschink (2002),Vokabular der Dolenjski Roma aus Novo Mesto und Bela Krajina Slowenien
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~harald2/grammars/dolenjski_roma_vokabular.pdf
• Yaron Matras (2004),Romacilikanes: The Romani Dialect of Parakalamos
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~harald2/grammars/romacilikanes_sketch.zip
• Lev N. Tcherenkov (1999),Eine kurzgefasste Grammatik des russischen Kalderaš-Dialekts des Romari
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~harald2/grammars/kalderas_sketch.zip
Romani History
A new theory on Romani history based on ongoing research into recorded and factual evidence is being prepared by Ronald Lee and other scholars, including Ian Hancock, Marcel Cortiade and Adrian Marsh. Using language studies, blood groupings, DNA tests and the factual evidence in the writings of the period by Firdausi and other scholars at the Ghaznavid court of Mahmud and later, the Persians, Armenians, Turks and Greeks, the theory suggests that a group of Indians numbering in the thousands were taken out of India by Mahmud Ghazni in the early 11th century and incorporated as ethnic units, along with their camp followers, wives and families, to form contingents of Indian troops to serve in the Ghaznavid Emirate in Khurasan as ghazis and in the bodyguard of Mahmud and his successors. The existence of such troops is well documented in contemporary histories of the Ghaznavids, as is their participation in the battles in Khurasan. The theory goes on to explain that in 1040, the Ghaznavid empire was overthrown by the Seljuks and that the Indian contingency, numbering around some 60,000, were either forced to fight for the Seljuks and spearhead their advance in their raids into Armenia, or fled to Armenia to escape them. In any event, the Indians ended up in Armenia and later, in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. These proto-Romanies remained in Anatolia for two to three hundred years and during that time they abandoned their military way of life and took up a nomadic lifestyle based on artisan work, trading, animal dealing and entertainment. Gradually, small groups wandered westwards across the Bosporus to Constantinople and from there up into the Balkans to reach Central Europe by 1400, leaving local groups in all the regions they had passed through. Roma made their home in almost all countries of Europe where it has been, and still is, the failure of all of the governments of those countries to provide protection for Roma against persecution and massive discrimination by the police, local authorities and the local population that are the causes of the present conditions. Under the Geneva Convention on Refugees, this is tantamount to official persecution and allows Roma to seek refugee status in signatory countries. Little action is taken to prevent massive job discrimination in the workplace, housing and public sectors. In Romania and elsewhere, employment ads in the local papers are allowed to state: No Roma wanted or words to this effect. Roma are in effect living in a state of Apartheid in the New Democracies. In the Czech Republic signs appear in windows of discotheques, cinemas and restaurants stating: No dogs or Gypsies allowed! Now that Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland are EU members and the other new democracies that have large Romani populations are in line for EU membership in the near future, it remains to be seen whether conditions will improve for the Roma, or will proposed improvements be endlessly delayed or even abandoned. If the evidence of the treatment of Roma in some of the long-established EU countries is any example, such as the deplorable refugee camps in Italy, the campsite problems in Britain, prejudice and actual persecution in Germany, Austria, France, Britain, Italy and elsewhere, the future of Sinti and Roma in Europe is not all that promising. The problem is not so much one of ethnic or national rights of Roma as minorities, where the present focus now lies, but of fundamental human rights as guaranteed under the United Nations Charter of Human Rights.
Yvonne Slee
Remember all the victims
Article Last Updated: 01/07/2007 11:44:26 PM MST
Regarding “History's tyrants" on Page A14 of the Dec. 30 Tribune, as horrific as it is to revisit this list, I noted a common omission from your list.
Adolph Hitler was responsible for the elimination of more than 12 million civilians, you mentioned only the Jewish deaths. It is estimated that more than 6 million Jewish people were murdered along with almost 2 million non-Jewish Polish people, half a million Gypsies, a quarter of a million disabled, Freemasons, Communists, homosexuals, Africans, Jehovah's Witnesses, trade unionists and many others.
All of these people should be remembered. We must never forget.
There was this woman a gadje academic Shannon Woodcock born in Brisbane she wrote to me and really just wanted to use me. She's doing studies at that mean Holocaust museum in Washinton US and is part of it. She told me she was specialising in Romani Holocaust studies and is writing a book, furthermore she was coming to Australia in February and wanted to meet up so I would introduce her to the local Romani community here that was her plan. Anyway, I found out from other Roma she is well known and was doing this to just promote her own career. It makes me sick and I hate people like her who use the saddest issue without any regard or respect for us and use it as a stepping stone for her career. The Jews in the museum who are against all of us Romanies because of that Elie Weisel guy who wrote a book called 'The night', are teaching her what to write about the Romani Holocaust, she's using their info doing research at their libriary. That freaks me out. Then after that she'll lecture in the Melbourne Le Trope Uni in 2008 full time.
This mean Holocaust museum will not let any Romanies have a voice, they've taken our rights away. Ian Hancock, the Romani professor use to speak for us and did a great job, we need him to do this again, but because of the spiteful people running the museum we have no Romani voice representing us there so they do what they want!
It's bad what's happening.