Romani – for education only? Using corpus linguistics tools to analyze attitudes toward a minority language

Verbs having the languages as accusative object.

Ill. 1 (above): Vietnamese versus Romani. Ill. 2 (below): Yiddish versus Romani.

Legend for CNC

EDU = Paedagogics ITD = Interdisciplinary MEM = Autobiography LAN = Linguistics SCT = Lifestyle [tabloids] LIF = Lifestyle

INF = Information science THE = Show business X = Uncategorized NTW = National press MUS = Music PSY = Psychology MIX = Lifestyle [magazine] POL = Politics, military SPO = Sports

REG = Regional press INT = International

The co-located verbs reflect what political role this language currently plays in the Czech Republic.

The Roma language is mentioned in Czech media either with other minority languages or in an educational context, and more often so than other minority languages, here illustrated by Yiddish and Vietnamese.

-> -> ->

Table 1: Document genre where “romština” is found in the Czech National Corpus, subcorpus SYN7.

The result of both corpus searches reflects the long on-going discussion on a need for education in the language. This may of course reflect the view that the mixed ethnolect many Roma speak, or the translanguaging, in the Czech Republic for historical reasons is considered inferior to any

”proper” language, and as well as a discourse on standardization in order for it to be taught

“properly” (cf. English, German or Polish) but also that there are advocates for its teaching.

Corpus linguistic tools can assist in analyzing the attitudes toward Roma and their language through, for example a collocation analysis and a genre overview such as this, where the most prominent discourses are revealed through specific terms. Even cases of erasure then become obvious, when the amount of co-located verbs are not abundant.

4. Conclusion

2.1 Corpora used

• CNC: SYN v.7, 1990 to 2017 – 5,100,437,261 tokens.

• Sketch Engine: CsTenTen17, November 2015 to November 2017 – 12,586,415,546 tokens.

2.2 Collocations and context in the Czech National Corpus (CNC)

Romština as lemma is primarily co-located with other minority languages, like Yiddish,

Vietnamese or Finnish, but also in language policy discussions. It is clearly used in the news, but also in educational literature. As accusative, the top collocated verbs are ovládat (command,

know), vyucovat (“teach/give classes”) and ucit (teach, or with the particle se meaning learn).

2.3 Collocations in the web corpus CsTenTen

Mainly co-located with other minority languages. Co-located verbs are much more often

educational than e.g. Polish and Yiddish, but more similarly used to the other large non-“white”

minority language Vietnamese. Yiddish has a close relation to the verb ucit (“teach” or “learn”), whereas Vietnamese obviously is written and used, but not studied, in the Czech context.

3. Discussion

1.1 Background

Roma, Travellers and Gypsies:

• in the Czech Republic since 14th or 15th century – even got the epithet “Bohémiens” in French

• often polyglots:

1. language of Indo-European origin 2. the majority local language, or

3. mixing them into an ethnolect – one reason they are often a typical “Other”.

Romani, Romanés – in Czech romština:

• difficulties in standardization of the different dialects,

• seldom visible in the media at all,

• but the spread of Internet usage is positive for the future.

1.2 Research question and aim of this paper

How can corpus linguistic tools assist in analyzing the attitudes toward Roma and their language?

Humans make use of many cognitive, semiotic, and modal means, but corpus linguistic methods are useful for analyzing textual discourse. Here, the noun for Romani is used to search in corpora from the Czech National Corpus (CNC) and Sketch Engine, to find its collocations and contexts.

2. The collocation candidates and context of romština 1. Romani in the Czech Republic

Romani – for education only?

Using corpus linguistics tools to analyze attitudes toward a minority language

Irene Elmerot, irene.elmerot@slav.su.se

Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German