Abstract
A lecture in a cycle Who are the Roma People?, organized by the Museum of Romani Culture, 19. 4. 2011 The lecture summarizes the results of a series of sociolinguistic researches on the situation of Romani in CR conducted during 2007-2010. The researches focused on the level of competence in Romani among Romani children, generational transmission of the language, its current usage and attitudes towards Romani.
The results confirm the assumption of language shift towards monolingualism in Czech among the group of (former) speakers of Central Romani varieties. Nevertheless, the process seems to spread more slowly than some of the scholars previously supposed.
Approximately 1/3 of children in our sample were able to speak Romani fluently. Although Central Romani is mostly not the dominant language that children learn in early childhood, it is still acquired over a longer period of time.
Even though the competence in and usage of the language is decreasing, it still carries a symbolic function for the group.