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2.2. Online Plurilingualism
As indicated by mentioning the online video language course on the website of
the Romanian NGO Romathan, Romani gains communicative importance in
oral language use and when the web is used interactively. This is inter alia also
demonstrated by the use of Romani on and via the web pages of the Swedish
Radio Romano – Nevimata thaj aktualitetura pe romani chib, ‘Roma radio –
news and topicalities in the Romani language’. The web pages of Radio Romano
are embedded into the website of Sveriges Radio/Radio Sweden and are accessible via the menu item Språk ‘language’ in
the general menu of the website. The specific menu for navigation on the web
pages of Radio Romano is provided in Romani. Written information on the
pages is presented in Romani and to some extent also in Swedish. The archived
broadcasts offered on the website are primarily in Romani with Swedish and
other languages, mainly English, only used by and with interviewees with no
competence in Romani. In contrast to the websites described so far, which
primarily target the speakers of dominant languages for political purposes, these
web pages above all aim to inform plurilingual individuals with competences in
Romani, Swedish and also English. Instead of an additive multilingualism with
symbolic function, language use in cases like Radio Romano has to be described
as integrative plurilingualism with a primarily communicative function.
The communicative function also prevails in numerous Roma chat rooms which
are characterised by interactive language use and, as it is almost the rule in chat
rooms used by speakers of dominated, non-standardised languages, by orate
style as well as spontaneous writing. 91 As indicated by the texts on the welcome
page of in German and Romani,
Herzlich Willkommen im Roma-Chat!/T’aven saste taj bachtale, ‘A warm welcome
to Roma Chat/Be healthy and happy’, the chat rooms hosted by the website
are plurilingual. Actual language use in online chats of ethnic groups usually
comprises all languages of the repertoire of the respective speech community.
Language mixing or rather linguistic hybridisation in the form of spontaneous
loans and communicative code switching are as common as changes in the
primary language by situational switching. 92 If the primary language in a chat is a
dominant language, a national language or an international lingua franca, Romani
is often restricted to symbolic functions – see the welcome formula presented
above – of identity flagging, and the expression of solidarity and affiliation. In
91
Whereas the dichotomy between oral and written refers to the form of communication which is defined by
the respective acoustic and visual channels, the dichotomy between orate and literate refers to style. Both
orate and literate style occur in written as well as in oral form: orate style in written form means spoken
language written, literate style in oral form means written language spoken, etc.
92
As most chat rooms require registration to guarantee privacy, no specific examples are presented in this
paper.
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