Romani language standardization

Efforts to standardise the Romany language have culmulated in the writing of a 46 or so letter alphabet which was approved by the International Romany Congress in 1990.

However, there is opposition from Romany writers, and it is finding it hard to catch on.

Like Slavic tongues, Romany is set to be divided by a language understood to the ear and not to the eye, evolving the dialects into fully fledged new languages in time.An article explores the pros and cons as reported from the 5th Romany Congress.

Media Roma Films Productions spokesperson Tomas O' Carthaigh welcomed the standardisation, but suggested cyrillic as a good base alphabet, in a similar way to the way Serbian is phoetically spelt in Cyrillic, and pronouncable and therefor understandable in all Slavic tongues.

Many languages such as the Kurdish Language are written in Latin and Cyrillic, the only obstacle being the education of the young in their use, a problem in many eastern European states since Communist times.