Sorry for that.
First of all, thank you for inviting me to take part in this conference.
And I hope that the results from the conference
will be helpful not only to the scientists
but also to the Roma communities in Slovakia.
So, my presentation is called Psycholinguistic Research Focused on Romani Language.
The presentation will have the following parts:
What is the Romani language and research on Romani, at the beginning,
some theoretical linguistic research,
sociolinguistic research, and psycholinguistic research.
What is the Romani language and what kind of research
has been done on Romani so far?
We know that Romani is a New Indian language
related to Hindi and Punjabi.
It was created outside of India.
It is related to some Indo-European languages.
And there are influences from different European languages,
and non-European as well, Armenian, Greek, Slavic langugages, Romanian.
And we now that Romani is not standardized, there are many dialects,
which are related between themselves.
So, there were a lot of theoretical research on Romani.
And mainly, Milena Hubschmannova, Norbert, Boretzky,
Bubenik, Peter Bakker, Matras, Friedman, and Elšík
were doing research on the theoretical linguistics.
And I'm not going to go into details what exactly
they did research.
So, there was also sociolinguistic research
and in the field of sociolinguistics,
there were descriptions of dialects
and starting from the beginning of the 20th century,
John Sampson, Gilliat-Smith, Kopernicki,
Kenrick, Kostov, Hancock, Kepesky, and Šaip Jusuf,
until new times, Matras, Igla, Elšík, Halwachs, Sarau, Heinschink,
Petra Cech and myself we were doing a research on describing different dialects,
and in the field of sociolinguistics, there was also another direction.
It was standardization of Romani.
And the following authors
were working in the field of standardization of Romani,
Ljungberg in Sweden, Gilja Kochanowski in France,
Hubschmannova in Czechoslovakia, Ian Hancock in America,
Courthiade in France and in Romania,
Sarau in Romania,
Rajko Djuric in ex Yugoslavia, Halwachs in Austria,
and myself in Bulgaria.
So, all these people were doing different level of work
on standardization of Romani.
So, another direction in the field of sociolingustics
was code-switching and code-mixing.
By code we have in mind the language,
language-switching, language-mixing,
and Peter Bakker, Hubschmannova, Matras, Elšík, Friedman,
Kyuchukov, and Sonnemann, in German,
wrote recently a book
about code-switching, code-mixing with Slavic languages, particularly.
Romani with Slavic languages.
My work was mainly on code-switching and code-mixing
among Muslim Roma in Bulgaria,
and I was doing research mainly with children,
how the children mix the languages.
Turkish, Romani, Bulgarian.
Psycholinguistic research - what is psycholinguistics?
And which are the areas of psycholinguistics?
So, there are many directions in the field of psycholinguistics,
but some of them are connected to early language acquisition,
language socialization, bilingualism,
and second language acquisition.
So, the psycholinguistic research with Romani started in 1980s and 1990s,
the first author was Zita Reger from Hungary,
who published at the end of 1970s and at the beginning of 1980s
some articles on language problem of Roma children from Hungary.
and Milena Hubschmannova also did publish, I think, just one article
on the language problems of the Czech Roma children
and their bilingualism.
However, there was no systematic studies,
no longitudinal studies in 70s, 80s, until 90s.
At the beginning of the 90s, I started to do research and publications
on educational and particularly language issues of Roma children,
and in 1994, I published my first article in The International Journal of Psycholinguistics
in Osaka, Japan.
So, this was also, fortunately, I don't,
it seems the pictures didn't show,
there was a picture of my first dissertation on psycholinguistics,
but no, I cannot show them, I don't know what happened, they disappeared.
I published my disseration in,
I defended the dissertation in 1995 at the University of Amsterdam,
and this was the first psycholinguistic disseration
on Romani language, Roma children, whatever.
So, then
what kind of studies I did in the field of Romani language?
And what kind of research I did?
My very first research was with 2 boys and 2 girls in Sofia,
from the Roma settlement which is called Fakulteta,
and this was the first longitudinal study
and I was testing - recording, actually - the conversation between mother and children,
two times per month during two years, it was
two years longitudinal study.
And then I was looking how the children learn the
Romani phonology, morphology, syntax,
and what kind of code-switching they make with Bulgarian language,
and I was also doing research with my nephews,
and they were speakers of Romani and Turkish,
and I was observing the code-switching with Turkish language.
Exacly how this was influencing the language acquisition,
all this folkore, songs, this was also another very big study,
and then, I was doing another study with parents.
Roma mothers who have babies between 8 months and 16 months,
and 20 parents with children between 16 months and 30 months.
And we did a questionnaire with the mothers,
we were observing how the children learn the verbs in Romani language.
From psycholinguistics we know that the children learn easily the nouns,
the names of objects.
But the verbs are acquired later.
So, we saw that with the growth of the age,
their knowledge is growing as well.
And we were observing how the children learn the W questions.
These are the questions,
the W words.
Like who, where, what, how,
these are very difficult grammatical categories for the children in this age.
This grammatical category, the W questions, the W words,
are very difficult for the children.
But we saw that the children, with the growth of their age,
also learned normally very well.
So, another study which I did was with 130 children in Bulgaria.
120 in kindergarten and 10 children in primary school.
And all these children were divided into three age groups.
Group 1: 4 - 5 years, group 2: 5 - 6 years old,
and group 3: 6 - 7 years old.
And one group of ten children
were from grade 4, so 10 - 11 years old,
in the primary school,
and they were tested with different test measuring comprehension and production in Romani.
So, the figure 1 shows how the children
understand one-word receptive tests.
Children were shown different objects, pictures,
and they were asked to tell them
and we see that with the growth of the age, the children
better understand the Romani language.
So, these are the results from one-word expressive tests.
The children had to produce,
the children were shown the pictures and they had to produce
speech, naming the pictures.
So, again, with the growth of the age,
their knowledge in their mother tongue is growing up, increasing.
Again, we tested the knowledge of verbs.
Verbs are very important in every language
and they are were difficult for learning.
So, again, the figure shows that the children
with the growth of the age, they acquire the knowledge of the verbs.
And how the children learn to ask questions?
This is the figure here, again, we see that they are developing quite normally,
learning how to ask questions.
And communicative role-taking.
We were showing to the children pictures where there is, for example, mother and child,
and we were asking the child to tell the story from the position of the mother.
And second time to tell the story from the position of the child.
In order the child to be able to tell the story,
from the point of mother or from the point of the child,
the children have to have very rich vocabulary.
And we see here from this graph that with the growth of the age,
their knowledge, their richness of the vocabulary is increasing.
So, there was another test
which I did together with Slovak and Bulgarian Roma children,
and these were first grade Roma children.
And we were testing the knowledge of the children about three tenses,
present, future, and past tense.
We had six verbs
but these verbs were not very...
They are not used very often in everyday communication.
For example, the verb sneezing, or the verb laughing.
And, the result showed that both groups of children
when they are 6 or 7 years old,
they don't know exactly these two verbs, sneezing and laughing.
In both countries.
But at the same time, we did the test with Bulgarian,
ethnic Bulgarian children and ethnic Slovak children,
and Bulgarian and Slovak children knew those two verbs.
I was participating in one scientific conference in Slovakia, in Bratislava,
and there were a lot of psychologists there,
and then, I asked the psychologists
why do you think that Roma children don't know these two verbs?
And why the Slovak and Bulgarian children know these two verbs?
What could be the reason?
One of the psychologists answered to me
directly, saying that, well,
it is clear Roma children are mentally retarded.
This is why they don't know these two verbs.
I didn't know what to say, I was shocked.
So, it seems for some psychologists in Slovakia,
learning some verbs later
puts the children in the category of mentally retarded.
So, in different cultures,
different categories, different grammatical categories
are learned, acquired by different age.
So, it seems the people don't understand that.
Or they don't want to understand that.
All the tests which I did until here, about which I was telling until here,
were translated from English language into Romani language.
So, I did adapt those tests.
And, unfortunately, there are no standardized tests
and unfortunately, there is no standardized test in Romani language
for measuring
the language acquisition, the language development of Roma children.
I was in United States for a conference,
and there, I presented some of the results which I presented here,
and I was telling about this case in Slovakia
when I was presenting the tenses and the verbs,
and how the psychologists reacted to me,
and then, there was one very famous American professor there,
and she asked me: Why you don't create a test in Romani language
having in mind the structure, the specificities of Romani language.
And then I told her, well, I don't have experience creating tests,
I'm not a specialist in test creating,
and then she suggested that we together can create a test in Romani language, having in mind
the structure of Romani.
And then we created this test
which has nine grammatical categories, subtests.
Testing nine grammatical categories.
And we started with W questions, words, for example,
Who what has on the head?
Two questions, yeah?
And there was also three words at the beginning of the sentence,
who, what, how.
And there was four W words at the beginning:
who, what, how, where.
And we did this whole test with these all nine grammatical categories.
We tested children from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia,
Serbia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, England,
Sweden, and Russia.
So, I was saying no way that the children will know these
so different, so difficult grammatical categories, I was so scared.
And then, the second test was like this.
And start the Wh complement tasks,
where the mother said to the son to get her a big pot,
but he got her a big glass instead,
what did the mother say to her son to get?
So this was the question, like this.
So, and these were the passive verbs.
The father kisses the girl,
the father and the daughter kiss the baby,
but the father was kissed by the girl.
The passive verbs.
So for the children is quite easy to use active verbs.
Daughter kisses the father.
But the passive verbs - the father was kissed - is not so
popular among the children when they are 3 - 4 - 5 years old.
The next test was about the possessivness, possessive tests.
This was the favourite test of the children
because we had a horse, which is masculine in Romani,
and balloon, which is masculine in Romani,
and we were starting the test with the 'Yeah, look here,'
'there is a balloon, this is not your balloon,
this is...' and the child has to say 'the horse's balloon' in Romani.
And I was so much shocked that even 3 years old children
were answering 80% - 85% correctly to these questions.
And actually, this is the genitive case in the Romani language,
genitive case,
and to make the test little bit more difficult with the children,
we created two unknown object and subject,
for example, this creation,
we called him 'Boho'.
The instrument which he has in the hand
is suki. These words don't exist in Romani.
So we wanted to see if the children can transfer
the known things, grammatical forms,
to unknown object and subject.
In Romani, there is the aspect of the verb.
So, there is one man who is going over the river,
this is a non-complete action,
and there is a second painting, second figure,
where the action is completed.
So, usually, we start with one of them, for example,
if we say, look at this boy,
he's over the river,
he is doing what? The child has to say the verb.
And then, we ask what he did here,
the child should use the completed action,
so the verb in completed action,
which is very difficult.
Then we have the tense.
And we were using three tenses: present, past, and future tense.
And we were playing with the children,
like, we tell the child one verb, singing, to sing,
and ask the child to give us the past tense of the verb to sing.
And then we say to the child look,
there is here another verb, which you don't know,
and this is a made-up word, doesn't exist in Romani,
and, for example, this is the action which the man does,
we call it 'kreminel' in Romani language,
and we ask the child how it will be in future tense.
Now he is kreminel, and tomorrow what he's going to do? And the child has to answer.
Fast-mapping adjective tests.
As you can see, there are two objects in black,
and there is one object in red, or pink,
and of course, the child doesn't know the names of this pink object
and the other black object.
So, we, again, make some kind of new words which do not exist in Romani,
and then we ask the child with this adjective, black or pink,
and we ask it
with the female or male ending
and we explain to the child that the two black objects are masculine,
but one of them, the child knows the name, cup,
and the other one, we make up this new word, we create it somehow.
When I was doing this research in Sweden,
there was a man at the Institute of Minority Languages, a Roma man who is working there,
he was fighting with me that I am crazy, putting the children in stress,
asking the children these kinds of crazy questions, what is this?
Hristo, what are you doing?
I said to him, well, sometimes in life we do crazy things.
And this is another kind of fast-adjective again.
So, the colours of the cat and the dog don't exist in Romani.
So, for example, the donkey and the dog in Romani language are masculine.
And I make up some colours,
for example, the colour of the dog,
of course, the children know the colour of the donkey,
and they I say to the child,
tell me, this definite article for masculine,
and made up new word which is new adjective.
I say to the child, please, show me the
which is masculine article,
and then I say the colour in masculine.
This made up colour which does not exist in Romani.
And there are actually two objects,
the cat is in Romani
a feminine, and the dog is in masculine, and then the child should
listening only to the article
and to the adjective in the article,
the adjective together with the article
should understand what I mean, cat or dog.
There was also about these fast nouns
we made up some kind of objects
and the children were so good in that, I miss that as well,
and what are the results of the children?
So the study was done in Bulgaria and in Czech Republic.
Actually, we did it in many other countries,
but we compare here just two countries.
So, we can see that for Czech Roma children
Wh questions and possessivness were difficult,
and for Roma children from Bulgaria, the aspect was difficult.
So, there was also a repetition of sentences,
ten sentences,
and we had also repetition of numbers.
And we were asking, for example, the child,
repeat after me, two, five.
Or three, five, seven.
And there was this kind of average next time we were increasing
the number of the numbers,
and it was the same with the sentences.
We had two word sentences, three word sentences, four word sentences and
until 7 - 8 words in the sentence.
For many people this kind of test is craziness,
this is crazy, why you put the children in the stress, who needs that,
why will you need these tests?
Well, I usually answer with this:
If a four years old child, three years old child, five years old child
knows 80% - 90% of the tests,
that means that the children are normally developing children
as any bilingual child around the world.
So that means that Roma children are not mentally retarded.
If a Roma child knows
these kinds of very difficult grammatical categories in their mother tongue,
but they have problems with the second language,
then the children are not... The problem is not in the children.
The problem is in the school system,
because the school system is not prepared to work with this kind of children.
In the school system, we have one methodology of work,
and if you do not fit into that methodology,
then the problem is on you, this is what we think.
So, the contemporary school should rethink
the methods of work that the school turns to be a place for every child.
Not only for the children who have
the official language as their mother tongue.
And in the end, I should say that these kinds of psycholinguistic tests
and this kind of psycholinguistic research should be more
in order that the teachers, the psychologists, the pedagogues,
they should know more about these problems.
Otherwise, always the Roma children will be blamed that they are mentally retarded.
And very often in our societies,
the poverty of the Roma and Roma children
is put in the same level as their IQ.
If you poor, then you have lower IQ.
So, the poverty doesn't mean that you are stupid
or mentally retarded.
The poverty shows only the social status,
economical status of the family,
but not the intellectual development of the child.
Okay, I think we should stop here.
I have been speaking something like 45 minutes.
And I would like to show two books, of course, they are in Bulgarian language.
This one is Psycholinguistic Approach
to Education of Roma Children in Their Mother Tongue, Romani.
And the other book is about the... The title is Socio-cognitive Factors
for Literacy of Roma Children in Their Second Language
in the Conditions of Multilingualism,
and in the Conditions of Multilingualism.
This is a comparative study between Roma children in Slovakia and Bulgaria.
So, thank you very much for your attention.