Dreaming Is Getting Harder

November 5th is International Romani Language Day, so here are 10 facts about the Romani language!

1. Roma call their language Romanes, or Romani chib. In the Romani language, “Romanes” can loosely be translated to mean “in a Romani way”, while “Romani chib” means “Romani language”. The word, “chib” comes from the Sanskrit word for tongue. 

2. Romani has over 80 dialects. To date, linguists have documented the existence of over 80 Romani dialects. The diversity of Romani is not at all surprising, considering Romani people have migrated to and settled in numerous countries and even continents. 

3. Romani maintains a fair amount of Indic lexicon.  Romani people originally migrated from the South Asian continent, so our language began, and is still classified as an Indo-Aryan language. Many dialects still retain a great deal of Indic words, many of which are Sanskrit in origin. In fact, simple Romani phrases are mutually intelligible among speakers of Hindi and Punjabi. 

4. There is no official Romani alphabet. Because Romani speakers are widespread geographically, and because the language itself has come in contact with numerous other languages, there is no single alphabet used to write Romani. Romani is written in various Cyrillic alphabets, the Greek alphabet, Gaj’s Latin alphabet, the regular Latin alphabet, Hayots aybuben (Armenian) and even in Devanagari. 

5. Many countries have tried to abolish Romani.  Austria, Hungary, Spain, and various other European nations have, at times, made speaking the Romani language illegal. Under communism, numerous attempts were made to abolish various aspects of Romani culture, which included our language. Even today, many young Roma are strongly discouraged from speaking Romani at home by public institutions, such as schools. This has resulted in the near loss or complete loss of several Romani dialects. 

6. No one knows how many people speak Romani. Lack of data regarding the worldwide number of ethnic Romani people makes it incredibly difficult for linguists to determine just how many people speak Romani. Estimates can vary quite a bit. The most accurate estimate is that roughly two-thirds of all ethnic Roma speak some form of the Romani language. 

7. Not all Romani people can understand each other.  The Romani language is unique in that it has been shaped by, and adopted the grammar and lexicon of various European languages in a relatively short span of time. However, because many Roma settled in south and eastern Europe, their dialects never became influenced by the languages of central and western Europe. Furthermore, numerous Roma have migrated to North and South America, so their dialects have been influenced by English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese in a different way than that of French, Spanish, or English Roma. Because of this, many Western European Roma can understand one another, but cannot understand Eastern European Roma. 

8. Romani contains several “mixed languages”. Para-Romani is the umbrella term that is given to Romani dialects that have adopted the grammar structures of non-Romani languages. For example, Romano-Serbian is a Para-Romani language that primarily uses Romani words, but also uses Serbian grammar. One of the most well-known and best documented Para-Romani languages is Anglo-Romany, which combines Romani lexicon with English grammar. 

9. Romani has two cousins. The Romani language refers to the many dialects spoken by Roma who migrated into Europe, but it is not the only language that belongs to the “Gypsy” diaspora. Lomavren is spoken by the Lom, a people who were initially part of the Romani diaspora, but settled in the Caucasus Mountain region, mostly in Armenia. Domari is the language spoken by the Dom, who left the South Asian continent several hundred years before the Roma. 

So all three of them took an English class. My boss is in her own and the other two are together.

So I hear about assignments and am just like ew, gross. I used to feel like the fact that I got my undergrads online somehow made me less because maybe they weren’t good enough. Used to, until I started learning things about the common core offered at my present school.

Especially the English classes where people don’t learn about outlines or what a lit review is etc. I have seniors in my classes that have never had to write a lot review and I’m just like... then how will you write one for long research papers?

Anyway, the above picture is something that is told to them in both the classes. Personally, there are two things to make sure you do in papers, imo. Don’t write like you’re monotone and you’ll likely find a decent thesis hook for the END of your first paragraph. Nobody expects your first sentence to be a golden polished turd.

The other thing is this: the most important line in your whole paper is not the beginning, it is the end. Your last line of your paper is what readers will remember it by so it should be pretty memorable. A mic drop, if you will.

Gotta put these tags here because, wow, loving how you put words into my mouth.

“More compassionate foods.” What makes food “compassionate”? Is it the lack of suffering? Because, here’s a spoiler alert for you, there is NO way to produce food that is free of death and suffering. Not a single one. All forms of agriculture involve the deaths of animals, whether it’s in slaughter houses or fields.

Farming is also very well known for exploiting people, particularly poor brown people, underpaying them and putting them into unsafe work conditions so that Susan can have quinoa to go in her “poke bowl.” And that’s not even getting into how all those massive, unnatural fields filled with pesticides are affecting the environment, with many animals losing their natural habitats so that fields can be made and agriculture itself directly causing massive issues like soil erosion and mass insect death. Animals are caught in farming equipment, killed by pesticides, or caught in traps and killed to keep them from eating the crops. The natural habitats of countless creatures, from deer to wolves to the tiniest beetle, are razed to the ground to grow more crops, killing a lot of the animals that live in those areas and displacing the ones that survive.

As far as I’m concerned, the destruction of natural habitats and the permanent alteration of ecosystems is less “compassionate” than indigenous people using unobtrusive methods to catch meat and feed their communities.

And what about transporting that food to indigenous communities in places like the Arctic Circle? Because, let me tell you, that’s not only expensive but it’s also awful for the environment considering how much fuel is needed for those trips and all the energy that goes into keeping the food as fresh and healthy as possible.

Indigenous communities have been surviving off of their hunting and fishing practices for thousands of years, treating local animals respectfully and doing everything possible to ensure that the animals they hunt are in as little pain as possible. And what do they do hunt? Provides for the entire community. A good catch can feed an entire tribe, leather and fur keep the people warm, fat keeps fires going, bones are carved into tools and jewelry and art pieces, etc. Whatever the tribe doesn’t need gets traded for something that they do need. Nothing goes to waste.

Who are you to decide what “needs” to die? Who are you to decide that all indigenous hunting practices are forms of “cruelty and unnecessary violence”? Who are you to decide that the life of random animals is more important than keeping indigenous cultures alive, cultures that colonizers have been spending centuries trying to kill? Who are you to decide that it’s okay for our cultures and traditions to die just to appease your feelings, just to appease the feelings of outsiders who care more about animals than they care about people? Are you indigenous? Are you part of a culture that depends on hunting? Have you ever had to hunt for your family, to put food on the table and clothes on your loved ones’ backs? Have you ever watched as traditions in your culture survived for centuries, maybe even millennia, only to wither away because outsiders decided that they weren’t as important as the life of a fox or rabbit?

This absolute goober: “stop making excuses”

Personally, I’ve found that if people can say “just” or “only” in a sentence, it’s most often from a place of privilege. “Just” eat better. Okay, what’s better? Better for who? We’re physiologically variable. The diabetic has to make choices that they can dose for with insulin being a pretty large expenditure for their life. Most of the diabetics I know use expired insulin because of the cost. People without gallbladders have to consider the fat content of their food. As we age we lose the abuility to process milk (not everyone but most) because we no longer produce sufficient lactase for the breakdown of lactose. Nobody talks about it much but rectal and corectal cancers are becoming more prevalent and killing more people each year most likely due to food consumption and the fact that people are being forced to shit their brains out on a daily because they don’t have access to foods rich in fiber.

And water? Yeah totes. You know most native reservations don’t have good clean drinking water? How about flint that is going on like six years of a water crisis that is illegal in every way possible. I live in Idaho. The water here is naturally very hard and is disgusting. I changed my dog to bottles water because I have the ability and her bowl would get deposits around the water line. You can’t just say “just drink water and you’ll lose weight”. Yeah it’ll help unless your water is poisoning you.

And food stamps are great if you live in an area that has things that are good for you. Food deserts are real. Op had a lot of great points and you’re trying to shit on them because you can’t relate to what they’re saying. Good for you but millions of Americans can. I’m glad you qualify for food stamps. Lots of people don’t. There is a growing issue of people being homeless because they can’t afford homes but they can afford everything else for a “normal” life. How do you eat better if you don’t have a stove? Bread at fast food places, even subway, have gobs of sodium and sugar baked right in. We forget that because we can’t taste it.

Look. Perhaps I went off track a bit but my point is that op is right. What’s more is that there is a very clearly defined war on poverty happening in our country and the best way to deal with it is not to deny it. If you can’t relate to what op is talking about, neat but also, is it because you really can’t relate or is it because you’ve been conditioned by our society to think that you deserve what you’re getting? We as humans deserve to have basics available to everyone. Basic good food and drinkable water. And you know what, time too. Time is the most precious currency because you can’t get it back and we live in a system that feels entitled to the majority of ours.

Any suggestions followers?

You could also do public service type stuff like Americorps or the peace corps but it’s a two-year commitment, so keep that in mind. We generally speaking, in class, will lament over how the idea of the anthropologist is regularly romanticized and it is never really what you end up doing.

With that said, again it depends on what your interests are. If you like advertisement or marketing, consider doing business stuff.

If you like helping people, consider looking at NGOs

There’s also a book by Riall Nolan (a couple I think) that looks at doing applied anthropology and tells you more about the non-academic process.

One main highlight from it is that if you’re applying for non-academic work, more often than not it won’t have “anthropology” in the title so you’ll need to find a way and description of your skills that kind of sells you to the interviewer. This is commonly referred to as your elevator talk/speech. It’s quick, to the point, and encompasses your main attributes. 

I really like what this physicist, Lamar Glover, has to say in Behind the Curve. 

+ this part from Spiros Michalakis:

Me:

for example, mount rushmore, before they carved a bunch of white guys into the side of it was called the six grandfathers 

and south america has some wonderful old architecture that people seem to forget about such as Machu Picchu

and Central America has the pyramid of the sun in mexico

and in North America there is Cahokia, which i think the blurb below can sum it up better than me

“long before Europeans were aware that the New World even existed, the outskirts of modern day St. Louis were home to a metropolis now known as Cahokia. Built by the ancient Mississippian culture, the 5 square mile site reached its peak sometime around 1100 A.D., when it may have supported a population of 10,000-20,000 people—roughly the same as London. The city included sprawling public plazas and residential neighborhoods, but its most striking feature was its roughly 120 terraced earthen mounds, which often served as tomb complexes or platforms for important buildings. The largest, the so-called “Monks Mound,” still stands some 100 feet tall and was once topped by a temple or palace.”

Now, about the point being made that native american culture is closed off to outsiders, that is true, and rightfully so seeing as we tried to commit genocide against them. but it’s not so much closed off that you cannot learn about it. The closest tribe to my university invited all the students (in which the majority is white) that wanted to go to one of their pow wow’s to learn and be respectful of their culture. they also invited us to do some smudging with them if we wanted to. my university offers many courses on native american cultures that you can take. my town has an expansive canoe museume of the history of the first nations people in this area: “The Canadian Canoe Museum is a unique national heritage centre that explores the canoe’s enduring significance to the peoples of Canada, through an exceptional collection of canoes, kayaks and paddled watercraft (…) The museum’s artifacts range from the great dugouts of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest to the singular bark canoes of the Beothuk of Newfoundland”. and only about a half an hour away from me is petroglyphs carved in caves from the Algonkian or Iroquian speaking people between 900 and 1100 AD.

to say that the america’s are young is wrong. it is an old land with “historically rich” things all around us, but lots of the time it’s pushed under the rug because colonialism makes us think it is a new nation. if you don’t think you can learn about the america’s history before colonialism, you’re not looking hard enough.  

Then an opportunity literally fell into my lap to spend 3 weeks in Peru. No way in hell was I going to turn it down. But at the time, I thought: of course. I finally get a chance to leave the US, and I only get to go to South America.