Crimean Roma

V. TOROPOV Crimean Roma Language and folklore 2009 V. Toropov Crimean Roma Language and Folklore 2009 Toropov V.G. Crimean Roma: Language and Folklore. — Ivanovo: ―Unona‖ Publishing House, 2009. — 340 pages. (8 pages of illustrations) The book is a collection of all scholarly-known records of Crimean Roma language belonging to the period of the second half of the XIX — the beginning of the XXI century. The book contains lists of words and texts of various contents. Each record is published in the original language, accompanied by a translation/retelling and commentaries. The texts, together with reviews, will help readers to better understand different aspects of philology, culture and ethnography belonging to Crimean Roma. The edition was supported in the frame work of VORBA (Viable Opportunities for Romani Books Access) project, with the kind assistance of Next Page Foundation, funded by the Open Society Institute — Budapest. Izdanija adale knižkakiri esas podd΄eržani proekt΄esa ―VORBA‖ (Pal dila te oven o knižkes e Romane čhibakere) E lošame Nekst Pejğ΄ Faundejšenakere jardym΄esa, Oupen Sosajeti Institut΄eske – Budap΄ešti – lovenge Acknowledgements: L.N. Cherenkov (scientific editor) Prof. A.V. Stepanov (translator) Angela Tropea (editor) Prof. G.M. Vishnevskaya (editor) Prof. A.V. Vishnevski (editor) M.V. Diomina (editor) Prof. V.A. Godlevski (musical notes) ISBN 978-5-89729-118-2 © V.G. Toropov, 2009 (author‘s text) © A.V. Stepanov, 2009 (translation) © V. B. Volchenkov, 2009 (pictures) 2 ON THE REASONS FOR WRITING THIS BOOK The author of this book devoted almost thirty years to the studies of such fragile and volatile phenomenon of the human culture as the language and the folklore of a small ethnic group – Crimean Roma – that emerged in the Crimea out of the people who had come here from what are now Moldova and Romania. The time when Romani people appeared in the Crimean Khanate has not yet been established precisely, but some sources suggest that Roma might have lived in the Crimea as far ago as the first half of 17th century. The Roma shared both the troublesome history of other Crimean inhabitants and their complicated fate. In the 18th century the Crimean Peninsula and the North coast of the Black Sea became part of the Russian Empire. Since the time when the Crimean Khanate was annexed in 1784, the Russia‘s policy was aimed at expelling the Muslim population from its native soil and at settling the Balkan Greeks, Jews, Bulgarians, Roma, and other mostly Christian people in the territory. The policy of deportation was continued in the 19th century, the result being the emigration of some Roma into the Ottoman Empire. The first half of the 20th century in Russia was the time of deep social upheavals. The 1917 revolution turned over the century-old way of life of all the Crimea inhabitants. But the cultural policies of the Soviets in the 1920s and 1930s left the local Roma almost untouched. Neither their written language was created, nor national schools were opened. The famine years of the first third of the 20th century made this ethnic community move to the areas where life was less hungry: to the Kuban′ River area, to the Republic of Georgia, or to other parts of the Soviet Union. In 1938 Roma schools in the USSR were closed and studies in Romani were banned. This is how the process of russification of this community started. The policy of Roma genocide that the Nazi occupants conducted in the Crimea between mid-1942 and early 1944 led to new waves of Roma emigration from the peninsula, and to almost complete extermination of those Roma who stayed there. Only few people escaped their death. But the return of the Soviet power to the Crimea in the spring of 1944 brought yet another repression. The Tartars and those Roma who were lucky to survive but who had been officially registered as Tartars were declared to have aided the Nazi and were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Since that time either the studies into the history and languages of those ―punished people,‖ or even the very mentioning of them in the press were banned. 1944 was the year of a complete break-up of the centuries-long Tartar-Roma contacts in the Crimea, including linguistic ones. Crimean 3 Tartar language that for many decades had been serving Crimean Romani a donor language, lost its position to the Russian one. Since that time the Roma have had to adapt to Russian language and culture. The Oriental stratum of their heritage has been falling into oblivion, and the Muslim folklore topics have been substituted by Christianized Eastern Slavic ones. In other words, in just a few decades‘ time and in front of the eyes of a single living generation, the Crimean Roma lost a large stratum of their culture, namely their language, the folklore, and music. That is why in 1979 the author (thus displaying significant civic courage) began collecting and publishing Crimean Romani memorabilia that otherwise might have been lost completely in the course of time. For this book the author gathered some pieces of Crimean Romani from various past-time publication, as well as from his own collection. His numerous informants were native bearers of this variety of Roma speech. The texts reflect both the old-time and current everyday life of that ethnic group, its religious beliefs, its ethics and aesthetics. Some fairy-tales, stories on different topics, and songs, as well as the collection of separate phrases and words that made up this book still preserve the specific aroma of the old Roma way of life. These materials seem to be indispensable for all sorts of further research. City of Ivanovo, Russia. 2007 4 ON THE CONTENT OF THE BOOK This book presents the most complete collection of Crimean Romani pieces that are quite different in form and content. This includes records of texts, words and phrases published previously as well as texts recorded by the author but so far unpublished. The earliest entry that the author managed to find is some Romani material published in Russia in 1875. Unfortunately it doesn‘t contain any texts but goes no further than words and phrases. The next entry is a fairy- tale that illustrates Crimean Romani of 1959 – the time after Roma-Tartar linguistic connections ended. The most recent period in the history of the language (1979-2003) is represented in the collection by a great number of different texts that deal both with real facts of Crimean Roma life and also with fictional or fabulous events. The author recorded the first group of texts between 1979 and 1986, when he lived in the Krasnodar District. To meet more Crimean Roma the author travelled at that time across both the Krasnodar District of Russia and Western Georgia, where he specially visited the cities of Suchumi, Kutaisi, Očamčira, Poti and Kobuleti. He also travelled to some Ukrainian cities like Mykolayiv, Kerch, and Simferopol′. The second group of texts was recorded in 1993 during the author‘s short visit to the area around the Russian city of Novorossijsk. Finally, the third group of texts consists of records made by the author during his three trips to the Krasnodar District area in 2002 and 2003. Besides texts in Crimean Romani there are also some texts of a folklore origin in Russian that Roma told the author in Russian. Another group of the folklore pieces was compiled out of texts in Tartar yet representing some Crimean Roma heritage. These are the lyrics of a song written by all probability before 1944. A modest gallery of images of some folklore characters is also presented in the book. A young artist, Vladislav Borisovich Volchenkov helped the author to draw them on the basis of informants‘ stories, historic realia and their own imagination. Each text is published in its original language – Romani, Russian, or Tartar – and is followed by an English version. Some Romani texts were translated as close to the original as possible, while others were re-told without any significant loss of details of their plot. Arkadii Vladimirovich Stepanov from Ivanovo State University did translations and retelling. The author and the translator provided texts with some commentaries to help the reader understand them easier. 5 Every text in this book is supplied with a brief commentary that usually includes ―a passport of the text,‖ a comparison of a plot of a Roma‘s text with Russian folklore texts, notes on the most typical peculiarities of each informant‘s speech, as well as some other commentaries of ethnological nature. A brief essay on Romani musical folklore is also placed in the book. Song lyrics are supplied with notes. The collection of texts is preceded by a historical essay outlining the stages of evolution of Crimean Roma and their language. Varieties of this language are discussed, and some individual peculiarities of Roma speech witnessed by the author are described. The influence upon Crimean Romani of Crimean Tartar language, as well as that of Georgians and Russians is depicted most extensively and in detail. Attention is given to vocabulary peculiarities; short characteristics are given of the grammar categories existing in the language that were discovered by the author during his research. 6 READING TEXTS IN CRIMEAN ROMANI All phrases constituting folklore texts in Crimean Romani are phonematic recordings of oral narrations done by native speakers of the language. The only exception is borrowings from Russian that are given in phonetic transcription, i.e. in the way they were once pronounced. A modified Latin alphabet was used to write Romani words: a b c č čh d e f g ğ h i j k kh l m n o p ph r s š t th u v x y z ţ Crimean Romani vowel phonemes are represented by the following signs: <a> <e> <i> <o> <u> <y>.

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