Newcastle University

We updated our initial plans on how best to identify different Roma languages spoken by children and families. With Zaneta, our translator in Newcastle, we asked parents how they would say a list of everyday words in Roma. We then used the Romani Morpho-Syntax Database from the University of Manchester to work out to which Roma language they belong. Showing parents how many languages are in the RMS database helped to show how rich and complex the different Roma languages are.

This was more effective than our initial plan of asking parents which Roma language they spoke. It was a surprise for some parents to find that other Roma parents they knew in fact spoke a different Roma language to them: sometimes a slight difference, other times huge differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax.