Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

Biljana Sikimi}, Belgrade

KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

Abstract: This paper attempts to provide an anthropolinguistic insight into the Romanian vernaculars spoken by Karavlachs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Karavlachs of Bosnia all Orthodox Christians, sometimes considered Gypsies by locals and their network of settlements have been the subject of several ethnographical studies since the end of the nineteenth century. Following the civil wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, the network of settlements changed drastically. Fieldwork conducted in June 2006 in the town of Bijeljina and the village of Lopare showed that today the Karavlachs live in several scattered enclaves in the north of Republika Srpska: Batkovi} (Bijeljina region), Lopare (Mt. Majevica), Ostru`nja (Doboj region) Sitne` and Devetinja (Banjaluka region), and to the northeast in small settlements near the town of Vlasenica. The inhabitants of the fair-sized Mao~a settlement about 150 houses in the Mt. Majevica area moved to the village of Batkovi} or fled to Serbia. On the other hand, Batkovi} village has a longstanding tradition of seasonal workers or gastarbeiters in Austria and Sweden. Local Romanian vernaculars (ludarete) have never been supported by the school system or media and today have a restricted home usage or are employed as a sort of secret language. Within the same Romanian vernacular, Karavlachs have developed several secret words to replace local ethnonyms easily understood by other groups, outsiders (e.g. Muslims > Carsta, Croats > oaca, Serb > Blotu). Linguistic analysis of collected folklore texts connected to the traditional custom of Lazarica, sung in Serbian, sheds some light on the road possibly travelled by the Karavlach from the Romanian language regions to Bosnia. Key words: Romanian vernacular, ethnic mimicry, perceptual dialectology, secret language

228

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

This paper forms part of the discussions and field reports on the ethnolinguistic vitality of the small ethnic group of the Bayash, submitted at the Balkan linguistics conferences in Sofia in 2002 and St Petersburg in 2004 (Sikimi} 2003, 2005a). Here we present a brief insight into the current situation of Romanian vernaculars spoken by the Karavlachs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, based on fieldwork conducted in 2006 in the village of Lopare. The Karavlachs of Bosnia all Orthodox Christians, sometimes considered Gypsies by locals and their network of settlements have been the subject of several ethnographic studies, if very few linguistic ones, having been discovered by the academic public in the late nineteenth century. The most comprehensive and controversial is an ethnographic study by Teodor Filipesku, published in 1907 in a reliable scientific journal of the time: the Glasnik zemaljskog muzeja u Sarajevu (the Herald of the National Museum in Sarajevo). The scientific dispute over Karavlach ethnicity began in the early 20th century between Serbian ethnologist Tihomir Djordjevi} (1907, 1907a) and Romanian researcher, Isidor Iean, over data contained in the latters monograph of 1906:
Mr Je{an mentions Orthodox Romanians in the Vlasenica district and their well-preserved nationality. They moved to this region a long time ago, perhaps during the time of the Romanian struggles against the Turks on the left bank of the Danube But Mr Je{an should know that these are not Romanians but Romanian Gypsies, of whom there are many in Serbia and Bulgaria. Weigand personally discovered them 1889 in Albania, somewhere between Elbasan and Berat.

Tihomir Djordjevi} here refers to a well-known study by Gustav Weigand Die Aromunen (1888). According to another Romanian author, Teodor Filipescu (1907: 239), Bosnian Karavlachs of the early 20th century would not agree to being described as Gypsies, and this firm opinion on the Karavlachs ethnic origin is shared by Filipescu himself (The Karavlachs are Romanians by origin and not Gypsies). Linguist Gustav Weigand (1908: 174175) also disputes the opinions of Iean and Filipesku, partly because of a long conversation he had with a Karavlach from Mao~a. The debate on the ethnic origin of the Karavlachs and Bayash continued at intervals throughout the 20th century. This debate has recently been analysed from the Romanian perspective by anthropologist Otilia Hedean (2005: 1624). Post-war ethnologists call the Karavlachs Gypsies, Romanian Gypsies, Vlach-speaking Gypsies etc. (cf. Pavkovi} 1957; Filipovi} 1969: 47, Radovanovi} 1994: 183184, 191, 198 etc. passim), but lately authors refrain from explicit ethnic attributes (Popovi} 2002; on the

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

229

tinkers of ^ipulji}, Drlja~a 2005). Nevertheless, as they had declared themselves in the census as Serbs and not as Roma, Karavlachs were mentioned as such by some Bosnian NGOs in 2000: (http://www. aimpress.ch/dyn/trae/archive/data/200011/01105-006-trae-sar.htm)
There are several other Roma communities in Republika Srpska. The MauroVlachs are Orthodox Christian Roma of Romanian origin. They have been living in what is now Republika Srpska for over 300 years. They are fairly well integrated into the local community and have their own homes and stable settlements. The survey shows that one member of each family works in Western Europe. They are quite well off and their children attend school. The largest communities are at Mali Sitne{ near Srbac, Devetina near Hrva}ani, Batkovi} near Bijeljina, and Ostru`nja near Doboj mistakes in the names of Bayash settlements have been corrected.

This paper will consist of three sections: 1. The current ethnolinguistic situation of Romanian Karavlach vernaculars and a reconstruction of the Karavlach network of nodes, based on data obtained by the methods of perceptive dialectology. 2. The usage of the Romanian vernacular as a secret language and even a developed lexical subsystem to cover several salient terms (in this case ethnonyms) 3. The linguistic analysis of collected folklore texts connected to the traditional custom of Lazarica, sung in Serbian, which sheds some light on the road possibly traveled by the Karavlach from the Romanian language regions to their present settlements in Bosnia. 1. Karavlachs in Northern Bosnia Filipesku (1907) mentions nineteen Karavlach settlements in Bosnia, most of them in the north and some not easily identifiable today, over a hundred years later. Some of Filipeskus settlements were very small even in his time, the majority just neighbourhoods of some larger non-Karavlach settlements and known under different names.1
1 Filipeskus list of Karavlach settlements in Bosnia (1907): Purkovi}i (probably close to Kalesija); Simi}i (an hours walk from Vlasenica, close to the river Ti{}a); Kne`ina (close to the river Bio{tica, Vlasenica region), Jadar (south of Srebrenica, close to the villages of Bre`ani and ^i~evac), Kusonje Ljeskovica; Kamenica (close to Kusonje, by the river Drinja~a); Lopare; Modran; Batkovi}; Mao~a (these four settlements are in the Bijeljina region); the following seven settlements are in the Te{anj region: [pionica; Nemila; Vozu}a; Ostru`nja; Pra~a; Stanari; Pribini}; the village of Slatina (close to Banjaluka) and Sitnje` (Srbac region).

230

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

231

These diffuse speech communities were seen as such even later, in the mid-twentieth century, by the famous Bosnian romologist Rade Uhlik (1955: 58):
One small migration wave of Romanian Gypsies reached Bosnia. These newcomers, known as Karavlasi, or Kalavrasi established about twenty settlements in northern and eastern Bosnia, mainly in the Tuzla and Banjaluka districts. They were never a numerous population, until World War II about one thousand and few hundred people. After the war, less than a thousand remained in the Bijeljina region as a compact community, and the rest, scattered in small communities, have almost disappeared. Although Karavlachs dislike Gypsies and want to draw a clear line between them, they are nonetheless considered Gypsies.

Ethnographer Milenko Filipovi} (1969: 4748) in his study of the Majevica Mountain region mentions a small group of Romanian Gypsies, called Karavlachs in the village of Lopare. According to his 1966 field research they came from the Ardeal region (Erdelj), their ancestors being lingurari (wooden spoon makers) and gonari (wooden tub makers). Filipovi} (1969: 48) cites the year 1725, under the Austrian occupation, as the first historical mention of Karavlachs in the Bijeljina region. According to one item of information provided by Teodor Filipesku (1907: 350), the Karavlachs settled in the Vlasenica region in 1804, when one of their ancestors crossed the River Sava at Mitrovica, therefore from Austro-Hungary. The linguistic data we obtained in the village of Lopare indicate that the settling would have certainly taken place in several waves and from various directions, which is also a view shared by Filipesku (1907: 339). According to field research by anthropologist and geographer Vojislav Radovanovi} from 1947 to 1949, there were Karavlachs in northwest Serbia who had been moved there from Bosnia. These are to be found at ^oke{ina: the families of Kraji{nikovi}, Kosti}, Marinkovi}, Mitrovi}, settled there from Bosnia in 1876 as they fled from the war raging near Bijeljina, and from the settlement of Bela Reka the families Mitrovi} Vlach Gypsies from Lopare village and Jovanovi} from Lopare, settled there in the second half of the 19th century (Radovanovi} 1994: 184, 198, 199).2 For these anthropological and geographical reasons, the dialectological description of the Romanian speech of ^oke{ina village given by Emil Petrovici (1938) is entirely relevant to at least some of the
2 Historian Milorad Ekme~i} (1996: 281284), in his study on the Bosnian uprising (187578) mentions the attack of the Serbian army on the town of Bijeljina during July 1876. The war operations of the Serbian army in northern Bosnia lasted till the middle of September 1876. On refugees from Bosnia and attempts to forced return from Serbia during 1877 see Ekme~i} 1996: 312313.

232

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

Karavlach speech variants in Bosnia. There is a certain limitation as a published transcript of the Petrovici interviews speaks of their moving there from the town of [abac in northern Serbia. Thanks to the colonization of the Banat by the Bayash/Karavlachs following World War II, the Romanian speech variants of ^oke{ina can nowadays be studied in the south Banat village of Omoljica (Sikimi} 2007b). After the civil wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, the network of Karavlach settlements again changed drastically. Some remnants of scattered groups from Bosnia were recently studied in the outskirts of the town of Priboj, in southwest Serbia (Sikimi} 2006).3 Our fieldwork took place on 78th June 2006 in the town of Bijeljina and in Lopare in the Mt. Majevica area. The Karavlach community in the suburb of Lopare practically disappeared in the Holocaust of World War II. Some who were small children at the time survived to later rebuild the settlement (Filipovi} 1969: 48). In June 1944, as a plaque at the entrance to the settlement testifies, 58 Karavlachs were killed in the village of Lopare. Forty years ago, while ethnologist Milenko Filipovi} was doing research there, there were 14 houses, including some more recent settlers from Ostru`nja near Doboj and Mao~a on Mt. Majevica.4 The Karavlachs in the suburb of Lopare today say that Karavlachs live in several scattered enclaves in the north of Republika Srpska, the first and the largest being the village of Batkovi} near Bijeljina; the second, a small community of only seven houses in Lopare near Mt. Majevica, Ostru`nja near Doboj, the two villages of Sitne` and Devetinja in the Banjaluka region, and several settlements to the northeast near the town of Vlasenica, the largest settlement now being Drinja~a. The inhabitants of the former sizeable settlement of Mao~a (Mt. Majevica) about 150 houses moved to Batkovi} or fled to Serbia. Batkovi} village and the Banjaluka region also has a long tradition of seasonal guest workers (gastarbeiters) in Austria and Sweden.
3 In recent years many papers and one collection of works appeared (Bayash in the Balkans, Identity of an ethnic community, Belgrade 2005) based on fieldwork between 2002 and the present. The research data are still not avilable to the academic public because they were published only in Serbian, but contain transcriptions of conversations in Bayash Romanian vernaculars translated into Serbian (Sorescu Marinkovi} 2005, Sikimi} 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2007b). Sorescu Marinkovi} 2007, Sikimi} 2005a, 2006c, 2007a are available in English. 4 The field research of the Karavlachs was initiated and organized by historian Zdravko Antoni}, to whom the author of this work is especially grateful. Linguistic analysis of Karavlach speech patterns is based on six hours of audio material.

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

233

The Bayash/Karavlach migrations, therefore, must be viewed as a consequence of local conflict and wars and not only of the nomadic and semi-nomadic way of life of this community. 2. Perceptual dialectology data From a dialectological point of view, the Karavlach vernaculars in Bosnia belong to the group that we can call Balkan Bayash Romanian vernaculars, described for the first time by Romanian linguist Emil Petrovici in 1938. His description of the ^oke{ina vernacular in Western Serbia, close to the border with Bosnia, is likely to be valid for all the Bosnia Karavlach contemporary vernaculars. According to Asenova/Aleksova (this volume), Balkan Bayash or Rudari vernaculars are mixed; there is a variance of opinion among Romanian linguists and anthropologists as to their dialectological origin (cf. Radi}/Tomici 1986; Calota 1995; Saramandu 1997; Hede{an 2005). The reliability of perceptive dialectology data obtained through interviews with the members of this small community is borne out by the observations of Filipesku (1907: 352):
Karavlachs from the village of Purkovi}i do not marry women from their own village, they take girls from other Karavlach settlements, this is the reason why all the families have relatives throughout the Karavlach settlements in Bosnia.

The reliability of the trans-border knowledge the Karavlach and Bayash community had of themselves, without any media or institutionalized support, was in some measure due to the great mobility of members of these groups, strict endogamy until very recently notwithstanding territorial dispersion and the tradition of seasonal migrations, defined as semi-nomadic. From fieldwork since 2002 among Romanian-speaking groups in South Slavic vernacular surroundings, we can reconstruct a sort of Bayash continuum along the River Sava, similar to the River Drava continuum described by SorescuMarinkovi} in this collection. For the Karavlachs (we use this name for the Bayash group from Bosnia) the Sava is not a boundary, the same Bayash ethnolinguistic type being found on both sides of the river which forms the border between the now two separate countries: Croatia on the one side and Bosnia and Herzegovina on the other. The case with the River Drina is similar, with Karavlach/Bayash settlements being found on both sides, but only in its northernmost regions, today two different countries, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

234

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

The following discussion was held in the small Karavlach community of Gudura on the outskirts of Lopare, today consisting of less than twenty people. The speakers are a man M born in the settlement of Lopare and a woman W from Kalesija, approximately 30 km to the southeast. The informants, as might be expected of spontaneous statements from the perceptive dialectology aspect, see local differences as lexical (scaunu vs. stol; via vs. baira). In this interview, the researcher raises a lexical question (the term for comb) which is key for the classification of Bayash vernaculars (Weigand 1908: 175; Petrovici 1938: 228). However, this perceptive distinction of two local speech patterns is spontaneously initiated at the outset by the informants though a dialectologically significant difference in the stressed -e-, when the following syllable contains an -e-, ori- (<e): lemne vs. lamni, cf. Petrovici 1938: 228 and SoreskuMarinkovi} in this volume. (The researchers interventions are in round brackets):
1 W: Ali izme|u nas ima razlike, pri~e. Izme|u, ja ovo odakle sam ja, mi druk~ije pri~amo. Oni ka`u lamne, lemne, a mi ka`emo lamni. (Aha, pa to je velika razlika.) M: Ona ka`e, zna{ {ta je drvo? (Lemn.) M: E, lemn. Dobro, ti ka`e{ u orginalu. A mi ka`emo lemn. L. W: A vidi{, oni ka`u stolci scaunu, a mi ka`emo stol. Druk~ije imamo dosta rije~i. (Kako ka`ete ~e{alj?) W: Taptenili. (A vi?) M: Pepteni. W: Oni ka`u u`etu via, a mi ka`emo baira. Baira, ja. W: But there are some differences among us, how we talk. Between, me, where Im from, we talk differently. They say lemne for lamne (wood), but we say lamni. (I see. Thats a big difference.) M: She says, do you know what wood is? (Lemn.) M: Right, lemn. Good, you say that in original. But we say lemn. L. W: But you see, they call a chair scaunu, and we say stol. We have a lot of different words. (How do you say comb?) W: Taptenili. (And you?) M: Pepteni. W: They say via for rope, and we say baira. Baira, yeah.

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

235

The two existing variants of Karavlach speech mentioned in the conversation are perceived by local speakers as variants confronting a third variant. The Romanian vernacular of the researcher (given in round brackets), is perceived as the original, despite the fact that the researcher was not a native speaker of Romanian and was always trying to adjust to the local Romanian vernacular. Possession of the original, true, authentic Romanian language is automatically attributed to the person of prestige status, such as a researcher from Belgrade in a small Karavlach community. This linguistic prestige was not accorded to the same researcher in the compact, autochthonous Romanian communities in Serbia, and especially not in the Banat (Sikimi} 2006d). Here we would like to point out the implications of recognised socio-linguistic opinion, especially for small, diffuse language communities, that dialect or language contact often leads to the structural assimilation of one variety into the other, or the assimilation of both. There are various ways of explaining which linguistic structures undergo such convergence and which do not. One predicts that what is perceived by the speakers as salient in one variety is taken over more easily and faster by the other than what is perceived as less salient, while more salient features of the assimilating variety may be given up more readily that less salient ones. With the other words, dialect features which are perceived by the speakers as salient are taken up and given up more easily and faster than those which are perceived as less salient (Auer/Barden/Grosskopf 1998: 163). 3. Romanian as a secret language The local Romanian Karavlach vernacular, under the endnonym ludarete, is a relict of the old ethnonym Rudari, now unusual because it is a homonym for a S/Cr word meaning miners. It has never been supported by the school system or media and today has a restricted home usage or is employed as a sort of secret language. (The term is still present among the Bulgarian Bayash.) Within the same vernacular, the Karavlachs also developed several secret words to replace easily understandable local ethnonyms (e.g. Turks > Carsta, Croat > oaca, Serb > Blotu). The complex ethnic situation in Bosnia is precisely defined at lexical level, in contrast to the identification of Serbs in Serbia as the selas, peasants, in opposition to the Bayash. This special lexicon is used in socially delicate situations, mainly conspiratorially but also with an expressive function. The Karavlach secret term blot has been confirmed as regional in Romanian, cf. Bulgar/Con-

236

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

stantinescu-Dobridor 2003, 2003 (s.v. bleot, bleata) in the meaning of stupid person, fool, boor. Semantically comparable data come from Aromanian sources (Liaku-Anovska 2000: 52). The Aromanians call Bulgarians and Macedonians zdanganj boor, rude person, impudent person. (The single term for Bulgarian and Macedonian is vargareshce, Liaku-Anovska 1995: 219). Other testified Aromanian terms are: subtsari Greeks: thin, shallow brain; portsi shi l a voshi Serbs: pigs and loathsome; purintsa: Muslims: those who do not eat meat. (For the etymology of the lexeme and its prevalence in south-Slav secret languages see Vu~kovi} 2004); mocani Romanians: shepherds, boors, rude people, impudent people.
2 A fost o ara promiena, ca toi era carsta. tii ce e carsta? Turci. tii? Nu tii ce e carsta? (Nu.) Pa, turci. Muslimani. (Aa se spune?) Lud a reate. La noi zici lud a rete c a rsta . C a rstat s a z a ce. Carstaali, Turci. Nu putem s-zacem turci ca da ce ca tu tii turci cand zacea, ca intre noi, zace, uite carstatu. Carstatu. Razumeti. -acuma, vezi, Bilja, a fost i oaca, normalno. (oaca e Hrvat?) Ja, ja. Hrvatska, da. (i cum spunei la sarbi? Selaci, sau?) Blotu. Blotu. (A blotu e sarb?) Da. Blotu. Botu zace la sarb. (Daca spui sarbu el razumete.) Da, razumete, da zace blotu, nu tie. i noi, acuma, tii, o ara a fost samo sarbi, a fost, da ajuta, Stano, Bosanski Novi. Noi am fost jedno patru-cinci blo. tii, cu bloi lucram in brigada noi, a fost un carstat cu noi, jedno asa a fost. It was a small change, all of them were carsta. Do you know what carsta means? Turks. Do you know? You dont know what carsta means? (No.) Well, Turks. Muslims. (You say it like that?) In Ludari language We in Ludari language say carsta. Carsta we say. Carstaali, Turks.We cant say Turks because you understand when someone says Turks, among us we say carstatu. Carstatu. You know. And now, you see, Bilja, there were oaca, all right. (oaca is Croat?) Yes, yes. Croatia, yes. (And how do you call Serbs? Selaci, or?) Blotu. Blotu. (And Blotu is Serb?) Yes. Blotu. Botu we say for a Serb. (If you say Serb he will understand?) Yes, he will understand, and if you say Blotu, he doesnt know. And we now, you know, there were just Serbs, they were, help me, Stana, Bosanski Novi. We were about four-five blo. You know, we were working in a brigade with bloi, and there was one Carstat with us, about six of us.

Although perceived as secret, the term [okac is in fact a common regional term for a specific Croat group (for a detailed cultural interpretation of this ethnonym see Filipovi} 1967). In the next example, in the same utterance the secret term for Serbian women (bloata) and the usual one for Croat women (Rvatia) are used. The local term for a

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

237

Muslim woman is cadana, which cannot be perceived as being secret either; it is also registered by Filipesku (1907: 236) with the meaning Turkish girl. From the sociolinguistic standpoint the local perception of the term oaca as a secret one is important, it fits into the system. This is an example for the expressive function of the secret lexicon. The words in bold letters are recent lexical borrowings which illustrate the level of hybridization in Karavlach Romanian speech:
3 Io ma uit, intreb io, pa reepie, o bloata, era bloata pravo, nu era rvatia, nego bloata. Avea mo`da, u ono vreme, a jedno cinzaci i doa i trei d-ai, aa. Mo`da aa doba mea era atunci. I am looking, I am asking, at the reception, bloata, she was a real bloata, she was not a Croat, but bloata. At that time, she might be about fifty two, three years old, something like that. Perhaps about my age at that time.

Serious social insecurity is a good context for using the codes of conspiracy. The Karavlach system is obliged to hide the recently borrowed term milicija (police) as a salient one and considered to be not secret enough, although phonetically adapted to the Karavlach system. Because the secret term poieni policemen registered only in the plural is denied by our informants as being polysemic, it can be interpreted as a semantic shift meaning keeper of the field > policeman. (In S/Cr the terms poljak, poljar, a person who works in the fields in the meaning keeper of the field, comes from the same base). A similar semantic equation has been confirmed with the Bayash in Baranja, Croatia (pandur policeman = lugar forester, cf. SorescuMarinkovi} in this volume, transcript number 3) and is certainly connected to the traditional craft of the Bayash, which is the making of wooden objects.
4 Aia, sora mea mandra, a-nceput pliznala, a-nceput aia, prva pomo}, itna, noi zacem poieni miliaia, poienili, miliaia, da. (N-am auzit.) E, poieni. Nu zacem: ete vine miliaia, zna~i i oni znaju, nego poienili, aia sa tie. (A {ta bi to ina~e zna~ilo vama, jel ima jo{ neko zna~enje?) Zna{ {ta zna~i? Da-t ka`em. Kad ka`e{ evo milicije, zna{, isto milicija. A poieni miliaia. (A da li ta re~ poieni jo{ ne{to zna~i?) Ni{ta vi{e. (Nema neko drugo zna~enje?) Da ne bi oni doznali to. Da ne bi oni znali. Da se pri~a o-njima, da oni idu vamo. Zacea: vin poienili, miliaia. That, my beautiful sister, the shooting started, this started, first aid, emergency squad, we say poieni, police, poieni, police, yes. (I havent heard it.) Yes, poieni. We dont say here come the police, that would mean they could also understand, we say poieni, we understand. (What might it also mean to you, does it have any other meaning?). You know what it means? I will tell you. When you say here comes the police, you know, the same, police. But poieni police. (But this word poieni does it have any other

238

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

meaning?) Nothing else. (No other meaning?) So that they dont find out. So that they dont know. That were talking about them, that they are coming this way. They say: here come the poieni, police.

As is usual for semantic information obtained from field work, this term is explained in context, quoted as it is used, thus marking the necessity of concealing its true meaning: ete vine miliaia; Kad ka`e{ evo milicije Here come the police; when you say Its the police. In all these examples, it is clear that this is not the use of Romanian as a secret language within the family (as is the case in those Bayash communities in Serbia where it is used only by the older generation to hide something from the children), nor its use in public, as a secret language not understood by the non-Bayash. The opportunities to use Romanian in this way in Serbia are limited to communities where there are no other Romanian language speakers (Romanians, Vlachs). On the other hand, they are almost unlimited in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. 4. Tracing the Karavlach road to Bosnia: ethnolinguistic evidence Filipesku gives a detailed description of Romanian traditional customs still existant in 1907. He noted the custom of pouring water for the dead after 40 days only in Mao~a, where water is poured over a hempen ligature used to bind the deceaseds legs. Among customs of the calendar cycle mentioned by Filipesku 1907, we should point out a fragment related to \ur|evdan, when a piece of turf a clump of earth with grass is dug up and then stood on. This custom is practised at Easter in numerous Romanian speaking communities in Serbia. The same custom is practiced among the Vlach Roma communities of some Serbian Banat settlements: as a field research of June 2008 showed, in the Romanian villages of Riti{evo i Stra`a it is today practiced only by the Vlach Roma; in the Serbian village of Bavani{te it is also practiced only by the Vlach Roma (Sikimi} 2007c: 164). This custom, which is still linked by calendar to \ur|evdan, has been preserved in Lopare to this day, under the common Romanian term brazda. From the ethnolinguistic point of view, Karavlach girls and women are well known to practise the traditional custom of Lazarica, but sing only in the local Serbian vernacular. Linguistic analysis of this reduced and deformed fragment of the Lazarica song yields a form of the instrumental atypical in the local vernaculars of Lopare. In fact this form Da nas lepo daruje, sas belice parice is typical of the Prizren Timok zone and some vernaculars of the

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

239

Kosovo-Resava dialect spoken in northeast Serbia. We can assume that the entire text was adopted somewhere in that region and transferred to north and northeast Bosnia.5 I must add that the Bayash in northeast Serbia living among Romanian-speaking Vlachs still remember and even practice Lazarica or the Lazara custom in Romanian language.
5 Lazariili iate. Iate, i asta a jocat. Pa postu Patului. Pa postu Pa}ului, majke. (Se pazete obi~aj?) Ja, da, da. P-aicea iati, obi~aj. (i ce canta?) Ova ku}a bogata. (In sarbete canta? Poi sa cani?) Nu canta ea, canta doi ini ali. A ea joca. (Cu ce?) Cu, dan tambura canta. A-a, ea joca aa, sangura joca. Ea joaca aa. A muma sa canta dan gura. i tat-su, eti. i dan tambura canta tat-sau. A ea joaca. Muma-sa i tat-su canta d a n gur a i d a n tambur a . Ova ku}a bogata, puna ramna dukata. Ponajvi{e goveda, okreni se, lazarko. Ovom gazdi za zdravlje, da su `ivi ove gazde, i ove gazde gazdarice. Da nas lepo daruje, sas belice parice. Da nas lepo daruje, sas berice jajce i bijele parice. (Se merge la Lazareva subota?) Mearge tot postu pa}ului. Ii placa tot postu pa}ului. (Cand se incepe?) S-inceapa la. La Todorova subota. La Todorova subota. Ai}a tot postu placa. Do Lazara. Lazardan je zadnji dan. Lazarke. E, ea-a jocat svi pet sedmica. There are lazariili. There are, this one too was dancing. During Lent. During Lent, my son. (Do you still keep this custom?) Yes, yes, yes. Over here there is this custom. (And what do they sing?) Let this house be rich. (Do you sing in Serbian? Can you sing this?) She doesnt sing, two other people sing. She dances. (To what?) To, they play the tambura. No, she dances just like that, she dances by herself. She dances like that. And her mother sings. And her father, so. And her father plays the tambura. And she dances. Her mother and her father sing and play the tambura. This house is rich, filled to the top with gold coins. Even more cattle, turn around, lazarko. For this lords health, long live this lord and lady, and this lady of the house. To make us a fine present of white coins. To make us a fine present of a white egg and white coins. (They go on St Lazaruss Saturday?) They go during all of Lent. They go during all of Lent. (When do they start?) They start on. On St Theodors Saturday. On St Theodors Saturday. Here they go during the whole of Lent. Till St Lazaruss day. St Lazaruss day is the last day. Lazarke. She was dancing all five weeks.

The transcript continues to show consistent phonetic differences in the speech of the two informants in Lopare village. The folklore text is conservative in linguistic terms. The transcript shows that the folklore text, in this example the Lazarica song tends to be translated from
5 A dialectological picture of Serbian speech patterns on Mt. Majevica is provided in Radovanovi} 1999, 2000 and 2002.

240

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

one dialect into another, here from ekavian into jekavian (belice parice / bijele parice). There is also important supporting information from Donja Tuzla in 1904, reported by Filipesku (1907: 224), that the Karavlach women as Lazaricas women singing the Lazarica songs sing very beautiful folk songs and dance folk dances, for the most part old-Serbian. 5. Whose tradition? To study the intangible heritage of a mobile group such as the Karavlachs is to see the customary analytic methods of Slav ethnolinguistics and ethnolinguistic geography in an entirely different light. Information obtained from the Karavlachs of northern Bosnia tend to make the established isoglosses of traditional south Slav rituals and customs rather relative.
6 Ona je, jadna, ali ban i ban zaradate. Da lumea ban, naki}e, marame, krpe, aa da mancare, svega. (i cand pleaca lazariili, la fiecare casa? La svaka ku}a?) La svaka ku}a ide. Toata casa joaca, unde go vine. Placa in Priboi, placa in Tobut, placa Lipovi. Placa Iablania. (Cum pleaca atunci, cu auto?) Cu autobusu. Placa, autobuzu placa. Cu caru, neko kola uzima pa sjedaju, pa. Da, ea i tat-su i muma-sa. Eto. (i svako dan se face asta? Samabata, duminica?) Da, da. Toata zua placa. Ide svaki dan. Donese para najvi{e. (Jel to i ranije tako bilo?) Ja, od starine. Da, i prije, da. (Ali prije nije moglo da se ide, pe{ke se i{lo, kako se i{lo?) Prije, a sad, eto malo. Eto, sad ide. (A vi kad ste bili dete, jeste i{li?) Ja sam igrala. Da, i ja sam igrala, e da sam ovde mrtva igrala, kam pusta sre}a. Poor thing, but she earns a lot of money. People give her money, jewellery, scarves, clothes, something to eat, a bit of everything. (And when the Lazaricas go round, they go to every house? To every house?) To every house she goes. She dances in each house, wherever she comes. They go to Priboi, they go to Tobut, they go to Lipovi. They go to Iablania. (How do they go, by car?) By bus. They go, they go by bus. By car, someone takes a car, they sit, so. Yes, she and her father and her mother. Thats it. (And they do this every day? Saturday, Sunday?) Yes, yes. She goes every day. Goes every day. She gets a lot of money. (This was the same in the past?) Yes, since olden times. Yes, even then, yes. (But long ago you couldnt go, people used to go on foot, how did they go?) Then, but now, it is so. You see, she goes. (And you, when you were a child, did you go?) I danced. Yes, I danced too, eh, and if I could only dance dead here, wouldnt that be great

It is evident that the Lazarica custom, with its emphasis on the quantity of money the Lazarica-girl usually gets, means one thing for the

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

241

Karavlachs and another for the local Christian Orthodox. This may also be the reason for the extended duration of the custom to 5 weeks instead of only a day. In the Karavlach settlement of Slatina, near Banja Luka:
The spring custom called Lazarica in the Slatina region coincides with the time of the settling of Karavlachs in the village of Slatina. They brought this custom with them and started practising it immediately. The autochtonous people in the villages of this region accepted the Lazarica custom as their own (Popovi} 2002: 125126).

Tihomir Djordjevi} (1907: 380), points out that the Karavlachs of Slatina are settlers from Serbia. Another local monograph of the region north of Banjaluka mentions that the Karavlachs from the village of Sitne{ practised the Lazarica custom for decades in all the villages of the region, and that this way of earning money was maintained until 1970 (Ko{uti} 1995: 2728).6 According to map II115 in a comprehensive study by Plotnikova 2004 (Ethnolinguistic Geography of South Slavia) the Lazarica custom in Bosnia is attested in four settlements, and each time described as a ritual performed by Gypsy women. 7 Similar ethnolinguistic conclusions on the relatively recent introduction of the Lazarica custom to Bosnia are evident from other studies aimed at reconstructing cultural isogloses of Balkan spring rituals against snakes (Plotnikova 2006, Sikimi} 2001). From our fieldwork in Bosnia, from Karavlachs currently living in Serbia and some recent local or regional monographs, new nodes may be entered on this map for northwest Bosnia, while following Plotnikovas idea that the Lazarica custom is practised only by Karavlach girls (cf. Kajmakovi} 1974: 96, village of Sitne`, Ko{uti} 1995: 9596). 6. Concluding remarks To describe the current situation and reconstruct the genesis of the speech and traditional culture of diffuse speech communities such as the Bayash/Karavlach in the fragmented Balkans remains a complex task for
6 On Bayash and Roma girls practicing Lazarica custom in Serbia cf. Ili} 2005, Golemovi} 2002. 7 The settlements are: point 37 Vu~jak (Filipovi} 1969a: 80) ritual procession of Gypsy women; point 38 Bosnian Posavina (Serbs), Filipovi} 1969a: 140, ritual procession of Gypsy women; point 39, Majevica, Serbs, Filipovi} 1969a: 183, ritual procession of Gypsy women; point 40 Spre~a near Zvornik (Serbs) Filipovi} 1969a: 30, ritual procession of Gypsy women.

242

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

Balkan linguists. It stands in direct correlation to the reconstruction of voluntary and involuntary displacements of the Bosnian Karavlachs in the 20th century, some of them across the ocean to North and South America, internal migrations (Sikimi} 2006 has already described the linguistic situation of Bosnian Karavlach secondary settlements in Serbia Priboj and Koceljeva), seasonal worker migration to Western Europe beginning in the early 1960s, and finally displacement due to the civil wars of the 1990s. The compendious analysis of data from fieldwork among Romanian-speaking communities outside Romania in the Balkans enabled the introduction of the concept of mental continuity, aimed at defining Bayash group endogamy and their distant group awareness, all influencing the exogamy of small settlements. Research in the field followed the logic of private chaining of separate settlements, the logic of mental continuity in the Bayash community in Serbia today that exists regardless of the individual physical distance dividing their members. This mental continuity, in the light of the new borders now being drawn in the Balkans and of massive movement by entire Bayash settlements to the countries of Western Europe, is seen as trans-border (Sikimi} 2005, 2005a, 2006c, cf. also, from the sociological point of view, recent studies by Dorondel 2007, erban 2007). Knowledge of ones fellow countrymen is shown through recognition and knowledge of members of the same small ethnic group, even those working temporarily in foreign countries. Nowadays marriages between members of settlements hundreds of kilometres from each other are very common, some of them living in different countries, including Romania, after the collapse of Yugoslavia. In reconstructing the possible Karavlach roads to Bosnia and the annual roads of semi-nomadism, one more thing should be observed: active exogamy in quite small communities could support various lexical, phonetic or even morphological innovations without the moving of the community as a whole. While very much aware that the ethnographic truth surrounding the Karavlach may become a matter of dispute and that the results of field research may be misused, or seen at the present juncture as just another cleaving of the Roma ethnos, the author remains convinced that each transcript of a true conversation is a great contribution, a research obligation in the ethical sense. Any further analysis and interpretation will reflect the current degree of knowledge and awareness of both scholars and the public. Today, the articulation of language rights is a significant issue in sociolinguistics. Language policy and planning are developing in three different but closely related academic directions: the language ecology movement, the linguistic human rights movement and minority lan-

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

243

guage rights in national and international law. The exercise of a language right in a real life context is connected to its implications for wider social and political stability, the disjuncture between legal arguments in favour of minority language rights and the actual language policies of many nation states, and the disjuncture between claims for macro-language rights and micro-language practices. May 2005: 320 points out that:
the micro-language claims necessarily require the codification and homogenisation of language groups and related languages and thus ignore the often far more complex, fluid, and at times contradictory, micro-language practices of individuals from within those groups.

The lack of academic (not only linguistic) interest in the Karavlach is just a reflection of the lack of interest on the part of the parent country (if this parent country is also parent to its official language), local minority organisations, both Romani and Romanian language scholars, and Romanists in general. This may be due to personal prejudice or to the real complexity of the task, primarily for linguists who need to be proficient not only in South Slavic and other Balkan and/or Hungarian languages and Romanian dialects, but also to be thoroughly grounded in Roma Studies. The Bayash/Karavlach roads traversing the Balkans are far from being reconstructed; there is a serious lack of historiographical research that might shed new light. Purly linguistic data and classical dialectological and sociolinguistic research are insufficient for the study of nomadic and seminomadic peoples. Thanks to recent fieldwork among the Rudari of Bulgaria by Asenova/Aleksova (in this volume) and Bayash guest-workers in Germany (Leschber, this volume) we can hope that this challenging task will be finally achieved.
References
Auer/Barden/Grosskopf 1998 P. Auer, B. Barden, B. Grosskopf: Subjective and Objective Parameters Determining Salience in Long-term Dialect Accommodation, Journal of Sociolinguistics 2/2, 163187. Bulgar/Constantinescu-Dobridor 2003 Gh. Bulgar, Gh. Constantinescu-Dobridor: Dicionar de arhaisme i regionalisme, Bucureti. Calota 1995 I. Calota: Rudarii din Oltenia, Studiu de dialectologie i de geografie lingvistica romaneasca, Craiova, Sibila. Drlja~a 2005 D . Drqa~a : ^ipuqi}ke kalajxije , Bawa{i na Balkanu , identitet etni~ke zajednice, Beograd, 311320. Djordjevi} 1907 T. R. \or|evi}: Dve rumunske kwige o Rumunima u Bosni i Hercegovini, Srpski kwi`evni glasnik XVIII/5, Beograd, 377380. Djordjevi} 1907a T. R. Gjordjevic: Die Zigeuner im Vlasenicaer Bezirke in Bosnien, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. New Series, Vol. I, No. 2, 146149.

244

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

Dorondel 2007 S. Dorondel: Ethnicity, state and access to natural resources in the southeastern Europe. The Rudari case. Transborder identities. The Romanian-speaking population in Bulgaria (S. erban ed.), Bucureti, 215239. Ekme~i} 19963 M. Ekme~i}: Ustanak u Bosni 18751878, Beograd. Filipesku 1907 T. Filipesku: Karavla{ka naselja u Bosni, Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja XIX, Sarajevo, 77101, 215241, 335357. Filipovi} 1967 M. S. Filipovi}: O imenu [okac [okci, Zbornik za dru{tvene nauke 47, Novi Sad, 135151. Filipovi} 1969 M. Filipovi}: Majevica sa osobitim obzirom na etni~ku pro{lost i etni~ke osobine majevi~kih Srba, Sarajevo. Golemovi} 2002 D. Golemovi}: Romi kao va`an faktor `ivota srpske obredne zajednice, Kultura 103104, Beograd, 158165. Hede{an 2005 O. Hede{an: Jedan teren: Tre{njevica u dolini Morave, Bawa{i na Balkanu. Identitet etni~ke zajednice, Beograd, 13106. Iean 1906 I. Iean: Romanii din Bosnia i Heregovina in trecut i prezent, Comunicari facute Academiei Romane in edina din 19 nov. 1904 adaugate i intregite, Arad, Tipografia George Nichin. Ili} 2005 M. Ili}: Izgubljeno u prevodu: Romi u diskursu Srba iz Tre{njevice, Bawa{i na Balkanu. Identitet etni~ke zajednice, Beograd,121144. Kajmakovi} 1975 R. Kajmakovi}: Semebrija etnolo{ka monografija, Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja Bosne i Hercegovine u Sarajevu, Etnologija, n. s., XXIX, Sarajevo, 5122. Ko{uti} 1995 D. Ko{uti}: Srbac, naselja i stanovni{tvo, Srbac. Liaku-Anovska 2000 K. Liaku-Anovska: Socialno-folklorni interakcii vo vla{koto semejstvo, Skopje. Liaku-Anovska 1995 K . Liaku - Anovska : Socialnata pripadnost na narodnite raska`uva~i Vlasi, Skopje. May 2005 S. May: Language rights: Moving the debate forward, Journal of Sociolinguistics 9/3, 319347. Pavkovi} 1957 N. Pavkovi}: Karavlasi i njihovo tradicionalno zanimanje, ^lanci i gra|a za kulturnu istoriju isto~ne Bosne 1, Tuzla, 103126. Petrovici 1938 E. Petrovici: Romani din Serbia occidentala, Dacoromania IX, Cluj, 224236. Plotnikova 2004 A. A. Plotnikova: tnolingvisti~eska geografi `no Slavii, Moskva. Plotnikova 2006 A . A . Plotnikova : Vesennie zaklinatelne formul izgnani gadov u `nh slavn (v arealno perspektive), Slavnski i balkanski folklor. Semantika i pragmatika teksta, Moskva, 319372. Popovi} 2002 V. Popovi}: Slatinski kraj u pro{losti, Lakta{i. Radi}/Tomici 1986 J. Radi}, M. Tomici: Toponimia localitaii Stri`ilo din nordul Serbiei, Studii i cercetari lingvistice XXXVII/3, Bucureti, 245249.

Biljana Sikimi}, KARAVLACHS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA TODAY

245

Radovanovi} 1994 V . Radovanovi} : [aba~ka Posavina i Pocerina , Antropogeografska ispitivawa, M. Radovanovi}, Beograd. Radovanovi} 1999 D . Radovanovi} : O odnosu majevi~kog govora prema ijekavsko{}akavskom (isto~nobosanskom) dijalektu, Srpski jezik 4, Beograd, 607621. Radovanovi} 2000 D. Radovanovi}: Suglasni~ke grupe {t/{} i `d/`} u majevi~kom govoru, Srpski jezik 5, Beograd, 419425. Radovanovi} 2002 D. Radovanovi}: Jotovawe u majevi~kom govoru, Srpski jezik 7, Beograd, 339346. Saramandu 1997 N. Saramandu: Cercetari dialectale la un grup necunoscut de vorbitori ai romanei: Baiaii din nordul Croaiei, Fonetica i dialectologie XVI, 1997, Bucureti, 97130. Sikimi} 2001 B. Sikimi}: Sveci creva motaju, Kult svetih na Balkanu, Liceum 5, Kragujevac, 3987. Sikimi} 2002 B. Sikimi}: \ur|evdan kod vla{kih Roma u selu Podvr{ka, Kultura 103104, Beograd, 184193. Sikimi} 2003 B. Sikimi}: Banja{i u Srbiji iz balkanske lingvisti~ke perspektive, Aktualni problemi na balkanskoto ezikoznanie, Sofi, 114129. Sikimi} 2005 B. Sikimi}: Banja{i u Srbiji, Banja{i na Balkanu, identitet etni~ke zajednice, Beograd, 249275. Sikimi} 2005a B. Sikimi}: Linguistic Research of Small Exogamic Communities: the Case of Banyash Roumanians in Serbia, Jazki i dialekt malh tni~eskih grupp na Balkanah , Biblion Verlag, Sankt-Peterburg Mnhen, 257266. Sikimi} 2006 B. Sikimi}: Karavlasi u selu Brnare kod Priboja, Mile{evski zapisi 6, Prijepoqe 2005 2006, 221230. Sikimi} 2006a B. Sikimi}: Svadbena terminologija kod Bawa{a (rumunskih Cigana) u selu Tre{wevica kod Jagodine, Issledovani po slavnsko dialektologii 12, Arealne aspekt izu~eni slavnsko leksiki, Moskva, 4563. Sikimi} 2006b B. Sikimi}: Elementi rumunske tradicionalne kulture u Vranjevu kod Novog Be~eja, Actele simpozionului Banatul trecut istoric i cultural, Novi Sad Panciova 2005 2006, 156162. Sikimi} 2006c B. Sikimi}: Transborder ethnic identity of Banyash Roma in Serbia, TRANS, internet journal for cultural sciences 16, Wien 2006, www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/14_4/sikimic16.htm Sikimi} 2006d B. Sikimi}: De la Torac la Clec: informaia minimala de teren, Caiete de teren. Torac metodologia cercetarii de teren. (A. SorescuMarinkovi}, ed.), Novi Sad, 173201 Sikimi} 2007 B . Sikimi} : Dve mawine : Srbi i Bawa{i u Ma|arskoj , Etnografija Srba u Ma|arskoj 5, Budimpe{ta 2006 2007, 101112. Sikimi} 2007a B. Sikimi}: Gurban in the village of Grebenac: between participants memory and researchers construction, Kurban in the Balkans (B. Sikimi}, P. Hristov, eds.), Belgrade 2007, 181195.

246

THE ROMANCE BALKANS

Sikimi} 2007b B. Sikimi}: Tragom terenskih istra`ivanja Emila Petrovi}a u Srbiji: ^oke{ina, Lokve i @drelo, Probleme de filologie slava XV, Timioara 2007, 443454. Sikimi} 2007c B. Sikimi}: Idem svuda po inostranstvo sa mojima decama, Dru{tvene nauke o Romima u Srbiji, Odeqewe dru{tvenih nauka SANU, kw. 29 (Qubomir Tadi}, Goran Ba{i}, eds), Beograd, 143168. Sorescu Marinkovi} 2005 A. Sorescu Marinkovi}: Napolitanci iz Mehovina, Banja{i na Balkanu, identitet etni~ke zajednice, Beograd, 175200. Sorescu Marinkovi} 2007 A. SorescuMarinkovi}: The gurban displaced: Bayash guest workers in Paris, Kurban in the Balkans (B. Sikimi}, P. Hristov, eds.), Balkanolo{ki institut SANU, Belgrade, 137151. erban 2007 S. erban: Politics against ethnicity. The case of Rudari from Varna district, Transborder identities. The Romanian-speaking population in Bulgaria (S. erban, ed.), Bucureti, 241276. Uhlik 1955 R. Uhlik: Iz ciganske onomastike I, Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Sarajevu, n.s. 10, Sarajevo, 5171. Vu~kovi} 2004 M . Vu~kovi} : Porinta Tur~in u tajnim zanatlijskim jezicima, Srpski jezik 9/12, Beograd, 417427. Weigand 1908 G. Weigand: Rumanen und Arumunen in Bosnien, Jahresbericht des Instituts fur rumanische Sprache 14, Leipzig, 171197. Weigand 1888 G. Weigand: Die Aromunen III, Leipzig.