Comprehensive Conference Summary: Sixth International Romani Language Day Conference

The sixth annual International Romani Language Day conference convened in Berlin on 5 November, organised by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Cultural Studies (ERIAC) in partnership with the Council of Europe and AREA. The gathering brought together Romani scholars, poets, authors, journalists, educators, policymakers, and cultural activists to address the critical state of Romani language preservation and its intrinsic connection to Roma identity, culture, and survival across Europe. Yet the conference operated within a profound contradiction: how to preserve a language whilst protecting it from the very forces—state institutions, academic extraction, gadje appropriation—that have historically weaponised Romani knowledge against Roma communities.

The Language Crisis and Historical Context

UNESCO designates Romani as an endangered language, with only 3.5 million of 13–15 million Roma actively speaking it. Historical persecution—violence, forced assimilation, and suppression under historical governments across Spain, Finland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia—has systematically eroded language transmission. But the crisis isn't merely loss through neglect; it's loss through weaponisation.

In the early Nazi regime, linguists and anthropologists "researched" Romani language and culture as part of the racial science apparatus that would justify the Porajmos—the systematic extermination of 500,000 to 1.5 million Roma. The Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research Unit, led by Dr Robert Ritter, conducted extensive "research" on Roma and Sinti, documenting language, genealogy, and cultural practices. This data was used to identify individuals for forced sterilisation, deportation, and extermination. Gadje scholars documented Romani dialects not to preserve but to classify, catalogue, and ultimately eliminate.

This history haunts contemporary preservation efforts: many Roma communities guard their language as sacred precisely because its exposure has been used to identify, track, and destroy them. Contemporary youth predominantly speak majority languages, treating Romani as foreign as French or Spanish. Yet for some Roma, particularly elders with a living memory of genocide, language loss may feel safer than language exposure. The conference's push for documentation, standardisation, and institutional integration collides with this protective instinct—a survival strategy born from centuries of gadje betrayal.

The Sacred Language Dilemma: Protection Through Secrecy

The conference's central contradiction remains largely unaddressed: many Roma communities actively resist language documentation and institutional preservation because gadje knowledge of Romani has historically facilitated violence. Language secrecy isn't ignorance or shame; it's a strategy. When police, social services, immigration authorities, and fascist groups can understand Romani, they can surveil, infiltrate, and target communities more effectively. The language functions as a protective boundary, a space of privacy and resistance within hostile societies.

This creates an impossible bind: preserve the language through documentation and risk enabling future persecution, or maintain secrecy and watch the language die through attrition. The conference appears to have chosen documentation without fully reckoning with the risks. Google Translate integration, for instance, makes Romani accessible to anyone with internet access—including neo-Nazis, police, border agents, and child protection services that disproportionately remove Roma children from families. The convenience for diaspora Roma trying to maintain connections is undeniable, but so is the surveillance potential.

Some Roma intellectual traditions hold that certain knowledge—particularly language, ritual practices, and cultural codes—should remain internal, transmitted orally within families and communities, protected from gadje appropriation and misuse. Academic linguistics, with its imperative to document, analyse, and publish, fundamentally conflicts with this epistemology.

Romani Language Initiative: Achievements, Strategy, and Unasked Questions

ERIAC launched the Romani Language Initiative in 2019 with support from the German Federal Foreign Office—the same German state apparatus whose predecessor regime orchestrated the Roma genocide. This partnership, whilst providing crucial funding, embodies the contradiction: can the descendants of perpetrators be trusted to support preservation, or does their involvement constitute another form of extraction?

Key accomplishments include:

• Development of three adult language textbooks aligned with Council of Europe curriculum frameworks
• Creation of a database of Romani language experts (translators, educators, interpreters)
• Network of European universities promoting Romani language programmes
• Integration of Romani into Google Translate
• Professional interpretation services at ERIAC events
• Annual International Romani Language Day conferences

The initiative emphasises harmonisation over standardisation—respecting all dialect variations whilst developing shared linguistic elements for transnational communication. Testing across 20+ countries purportedly demonstrated mutually intelligible written forms without erasing regional diversity. But who was tested? Educated Roma with institutional access, or communities living in settlements without electricity or running water? Which dialects inform the textbooks? Whose grammar becomes standard? The summary provides no answers, suggesting these power dynamics weren't interrogated—or were deliberately obscured.

Literary Renaissance and Cultural Visibility: Whose Platform?

Eight Romani women authors are emerging from anonymity, supported through public literary events, including a poetry night in Skopje organised by Barricani Penjo. The formal opening of Romani PEN—building on PEN International's century-long commitment to protecting writers and combating censorship—establishes a platform for authentic Roma representation.

But eight to nine women from a population of 13–15 million is a devastating statistic, not a victory. It reveals how thoroughly Roma have been excluded from literary production and how marginal these gains remain. The summary doesn't address economic barriers to literary production. Writing requires time, education, and financial stability—luxuries many Roma lack due to systemic poverty, employment discrimination, and housing insecurity. The emerging authors likely come from relatively privileged positions within Roma communities. Their perspectives matter, but they cannot speak for the majority. The conference's focus on literary visibility risks substituting symbolic representation for structural transformation.

Multilingual Publishing and Youth Engagement: Assimilation's Trojan Horse?

Bilingual publishing strategies pair Romani with major European languages (English, German, French, Turkish) in children's books and literary works, enabling youth to learn Romani grammar whilst reading in familiar languages. Examples include the children's book Hussein, documenting Roma name changes in Bulgaria—a history of forced assimilation through linguistic erasure—and a planned Romani-Turkish series.

But this approach accepts language loss as fait accompli. If Roma youth learn Romani as a "foreign language" alongside German or French, Romani becomes supplementary to their "real" linguistic identity—something to be studied rather than lived, archived rather than inhabited. The strategy treats symptoms without addressing causes: why don't young Roma speak Romani? Because their parents and grandparents were beaten for speaking it in schools, because it marks them for discrimination, because economic survival requires fluency in majority languages, and because the material conditions of Roma life have been systematically destroyed.

Bilingual books are better than no books, but they're also a form of managed decline. They allow institutions to claim they're supporting Romani language whilst the structures producing language loss—poverty, segregation, police violence, educational discrimination—remain untouched.

Educational Integration: Progress, Barriers, and the Assimilation Mandate

Whilst small-scale positive initiatives exist—optional Romani courses in Balkan primary schools showing increased student motivation and identity development—institutionalisation remains absent. Major barriers include teachers actively discouraging Romani language use, creating psychological harm and contributing to dropout rates; Romani language education remaining marginal and segregated rather than mainstream; lack of trained Romani language teachers and teaching materials; insufficient government funding and political resistance; and schools sending the damaging message: "You don't belong here."

But these "barriers" are features, not bugs. European education systems were designed to assimilate, to produce compliant national citizens who speak state languages and internalise state values. Schools have always been instruments of cultural genocide against Roma. The myth that Roma don't want education is false; dropout results from discrimination and lack of accommodation.

The conference's proposed solution—integrating Romani language into existing school structures—accepts those structures as legitimate. It doesn't ask whether schools, as currently constituted, can ever serve Roma liberation or whether they're fundamentally tools of domination. When Romani history and culture are included in the general curriculum, non-Roma children supposedly benefit through improved intercultural understanding. But this framing treats Roma inclusion as a favour to the majority—a learning opportunity for gadje—rather than a right for Roma children.

Migration, Diaspora, and Language Maintenance: Crisis as Accelerant

Roma migration to Western Europe—driven by war (particularly Ukraine) and economic circumstances—creates specific challenges: refugee children cannot receive Romani instruction; textbooks aren't translated; family communication deteriorates; adaptation upon return becomes difficult. Positive developments include Germany's school-based classes and after-school activities, France's municipal support programmes, and Ukraine's government-supported codification initiatives.

But the summary treats migration as a natural disaster rather than a political outcome. Roma don't migrate randomly; they flee war, poverty, and persecution produced by specific political and economic systems. Ukrainian Roma refugees are displaced by a war rooted in imperial competition and nationalist violence. Economic migrants leave countries where austerity, EU structural adjustment, and neoliberal shock therapy have destroyed livelihoods.

Furthermore, the "positive developments" in Germany and France are patchwork charity, not systemic change. After-school programmes don't address why Roma children are segregated into substandard schools, why their families live in informal settlements subject to violent evictions, and why they face constant police harassment. Municipal support in France exists alongside the routine destruction of Roma camps and deportations. These contradictions—offering language classes whilst demolishing homes—reveal the limits of liberal inclusion.

Council of Europe Support and Policy Framework: Benevolent Paternalism or Structural Change?

The Council of Europe was the first major European institution to provide comprehensive Romani language support through professional interpretation and translation services, partnership agreements, recognition of Romani as endangered requiring special protection, development of curriculum frameworks for member states, and working groups with experts negotiating language standards. Recommendations include making Romani available as a school subject in all countries where Roma reside, investing in cultural heritage recognition, and providing mentorship support for refugee families.

This institutional support is historically unprecedented and provides crucial resources. But the Council of Europe represents European nation-states with their own interests in managing Roma populations. Recognition of Romani language affirms the Roma existence, but it also enables more sophisticated governance. When states can interpret and translate Romani, they can better administer Roma communities—track them through social services, monitor them through policing, and regulate them through bureaucracy.

The summary notes that "money allocated for Roma support historically hasn't reached communities effectively" but doesn't explore why. This isn't administrative incompetence; it's structural. Funding flows through state agencies, NGOs, and institutions controlled by gadje. Roma organisations must compete for grants, demonstrate "capacity," and produce reports in formats and languages dictated by funders. This creates a class of professionalised Roma intermediaries—educated, institutionally connected, fluent in bureaucratic discourse—who become gatekeepers between funders and communities.

Regional Success Stories: Exceptions Proving the Rule

Greece's recent Romani language broadcasts on Hellenic TV, Ukraine's Council of Europe–ERIAC partnership developing standardised written Romani, Bulgaria's Professor Christo Kuchukov's 800+ published works, and North Macedonia and Slovakia's active participation in language development efforts are framed as progress. But their exceptionality reveals how rare meaningful support remains. One professor publishing 800 works over a lifetime represents individual heroism against systemic neglect, not institutional commitment. Greece's broadcasts are significant, but Greece also has a long history of anti-Roma violence, forced evictions, and police brutality. Cultural recognition coexists with material oppression.

Digital Infrastructure and Media Representation: Visibility Without Power

Digital platforms offer opportunities through social media (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook), youth engagement, and authentic representation. However, mainstream media visibility remains limited to negative stereotyping. The enthusiasm for digital platforms reflects neoliberal faith that technology solves political problems. Yes, social media offers visibility, but it doesn't address the material conditions driving language loss: poverty, housing insecurity, employment discrimination, and police violence.

Moreover, social media platforms are a surveillance infrastructure. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok collect data, track users, and cooperate with law enforcement. When Roma use these platforms to organise, share language, or build community, they're also making themselves visible to hostile state and non-state actors. Neo-Nazis use social media to identify and target Roma activists. Police use it to track movements and associations. The contradiction between visibility and safety remains unresolved.

Panel of Distinguished Contributors: Who Speaks for Roma?

The conference featured Romani scholars, poets, authors, and activists including Delia Agora (teaching Romani culture and language from Romania), Kim Yong (editor and author of 20+ books on Romani language and Holocaust history), James Damian (author and activist), an Oxford theology professor working on Romani language courses for BBC and Universal Studios, a film director from Skopje working in poetry and cultural activism, a radio journalist working on Romani language media, and a feminist organisation founder working on music, film, and children's literature across multiple languages.

These are accomplished individuals doing vital work. But they represent a tiny educated elite within Roma communities. The conference brought together professors, published authors, and film directors—Roma with institutional access, linguistic capital, and professional credentials. Their perspectives are valuable, but cannot represent the majority of Roma who lack such access. Where were the voices from informal settlements, from communities facing immediate eviction threats, from Roma who've never attended university? The conference's composition reveals whose knowledge is valued and whose remains invisible.

Strategic Vision and Unresolved Challenges

Long-term objectives include ERIAC becoming a training platform for Romani language teachers across Europe, expansion of initiatives to national and local levels, development of digital learning platforms adapted to new technologies, advocacy for legal frameworks protecting Romani language rights, creation of inclusive curricula with permanent Council of Europe support, and intergenerational engagement through language and cultural initiatives.

Persistent challenges include a lack of institutionalisation, insufficient funding, scarcity of trained teachers and materials, political resistance among member states, and limited awareness at the EU and UNESCO levels. Money allocated for Roma support historically hasn't reached communities effectively.

But these challenges are symptoms, not causes. The fundamental unresolved question is whether language preservation is possible within systems designed to eliminate Roma. Can you preserve a language through institutions that have historically weaponised it? Can you protect culture whilst accepting the economic structures that destroy the material conditions for its transmission? Can you achieve Roma liberation through partnerships with states that continue to marginalise, surveil, and dispossess Roma communities?

Conclusion: The Contradictions We Inherit

Language recognition affirms that Roma exist and are integral to European civilisation. When Romani language is protected, it affirms Roma humanity, dignity, and cultural heritage. Without it, communities risk losing their ability to transmit culture, history, and identity to future generations. This is true and urgent.

But the path chosen—institutional partnerships, academic documentation, state-supported curricula—carries the DNA of past violence. The same mechanisms that once catalogued Roma for extermination now claim to preserve them. The same states that forced assimilation now offer conditional recognition. The same academic disciplines that served racial science now produce textbooks and databases.

This doesn't mean the work is worthless. The scholars, activists, and artists at this conference are doing vital labour under impossible constraints. The textbooks, the poetry nights, the Romani PEN, the children's books—these matter. But they exist within a contradiction that cannot be resolved through better methodology or increased funding. The contradiction is structural: you cannot preserve what you simultaneously surveil; you cannot protect what you make legible to power; you cannot liberate through institutions designed to dominate.

Real language preservation would require transforming the economic, political, and social conditions that make Roma survival precarious. It would demand not inclusion in existing systems but reconstruction of those systems to centre Roma autonomy and self-determination. It would require reparations, land rights, political power, and economic justice. It would require gadje institutions to relinquish control, not merely offer partnership. It would require accepting that some knowledge should remain sacred, protected, inaccessible to those who've proven they cannot be trusted with it.

Until conferences grapple with this—until they name the contradiction rather than manage it—they risk becoming rituals of concern that document decline whilst calling it preservation. The question isn't whether Romani language can be saved within current structures, but whether those structures are designed to ensure it cannot. The answer to that question determines whether this conference represents a step toward Roma liberation or another iteration of the violence it claims to oppose.

The work continues, as it must. But let's not mistake activity for progress, or documentation for safety, or institutional recognition for freedom. The language remains endangered not despite these efforts but, in some ways, because of the systems that frame them. That's the contradiction we inherit. That's the truth we must speak.