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Romani-dominated chats elements of all other languages in the repertoire of the
respective speech community are prone to be inserted into utterances in Romani
which fully corresponds with natural communicative behaviour and defines the
interaction as plurilingual in the true sense of the word.
This kind of communicative behaviour is reflected on the website of Radio-
Romani-Mahala – Kosova-Mitrovica-Ibar: http://www.beepworld.de/
members97/romani-mahala/index.htm. This Germany-based website with
online radio broadcasts and the possibility to chat during the radio broadcasts
has been established by members of the diaspora community originating from
the Romani Mahala, ‘Roma quarter’ of Kosova Mitrovica. 93
Mitrovica [...] hosted one of the largest Mahalas in Kosovo before
June of 1999. Between 6000–7000 Roma lived there. The primary
southern Mahala on the banks of the Ibar River is now a gutted ruin.
With 650 destroyed homes, it is the largest still-destroyed residential
area in Kosovo. 94
The welcome lines of Radio Romani Mahala present phrases in Serbian,
Albanian, Turkish and Romani – Dobro nam došli dragi gosti/Mir së vini/Selam
Alekim/Šukar alen, lače avilen – thus reflecting the linguistic reality in the
former homeland: Romani as the language of everyday life and in-group marker,
Turkish as the former dominant and culturally highly valued language, Albanian
as the dominant language of the region and the immediate neighbourhood and
Serbian as the dominant language of the adjacent neighbourhood and of the
former Yugoslavia. In addition to this, the navigation bar of the introductory
page also uses the new dominant language of the country the Roma who run
Radio Romani Mahalla live in: German as well as English, the lingua franca of
the internet. The following excerpt from the navigation bar demonstrates this
repertoire extension:
• Video Igre Gratis 95 ...................‘Free video games’ ...............................Serbian
• Mitrovica Mahala News...........................................................................English
• Fotoalbum.......................................... ‘Photo album’..............................German
• Romane Gila Gratis......................... ‘Free Romani‘.............................. Romani
• Ramazan Iftar Vakt.....‘(Evening) Meal after sunset in Ramadan’.....Turkish
The chat is frequented by young people living in different European countries
and beyond. Many of them only know about life in the Romani Mahala of Kosova
93
Accessed 2012-02-26.
94
Accessed 2012-02-26. Source: http://www.balkanproject.org/roma/mitrovica.shtml.
95
The lexeme gratis, ‘for free’, is an element of German as well as of colloquial Serbian and of Romani.
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