World Roma Language Day was marked for the first time on November 5, 2009 in Zagreb, Croatia at the initiative of the Association for Development of Roma Education "Kali Sara", as well as the Committee of Experts European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) on 5 November 2015 as well as the UNESCO Assembly on November 7, 2015. Year accepted November 5 as World Romani Day.
The Romani language (originally: rromani chib) is the mother tongue of the Roma. It is part of the Indo-language group, more precisely classified either in the central Indo-language or in the northwestern Indo-language. It is also often classified as its own language branch due to the large number of related linguistic variants.
According to ISO standards, the language is grouped into macro languages and consists of seven sub-languages or large dialects. The largest dialect is the Vlach-Khrom with about 1.5 million speakers, followed by the Balkans, the Carpathians, the Synchrom, the Welsh, the Kal-Finnish and the Baltic.
Roma alphabet
The Roma alphabet is a term that encompasses several Latin alphabets used for writing the Roma language and its dialects. The Roma language was not a written language until the 20th century, although the first written document in Roma dates from 1542.
Depending on where the language is spoken, so does the Roma alphabet, and standardized Roma spelling is now in place.
