Romanian Roma

Romani people (Roma; Romi, traditionally Țigani, 'Gypsies') constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, they number 621,573 people or 3.08% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 percent to over 10 percent of the population, because a lot of people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Roma.A șatră or village peopled by members of the Romani community of RomaniaPurported bulibașa (head of a Romani community)Romanian president Traian Băsescu (left) at a meeting with the representatives of the Romani minority organizations (right)Type of houses owned by wealthy Romani familiesNazi era image. Posed photo of some NSDAP leaders in 1941, with Romani flower sellers.Gábor Hungarian speaking gypsies from Transylvania Romani people (Roma; Romi, traditionally Țigani, 'Gypsies') constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, they number 621,573 people or 3.08% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 percent to over 10 percent of the population, because a lot of people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Roma. The Romani people originate from northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian regions such as Rajasthan and Punjab. The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali. Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma. In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora. In Romani, the native language of the Romani, the word for people is pronounced or depending on dialect ( or in the singular). Starting from the 1990s, the word has also been officially used in the Romanian language, although it has been used by Romani activists in Romania as far back as 1933. There are two spellings of the word in Romanian: rom (plural romi), and rrom (plural rromi). The first spelling is preferred by the majority of Romani NGOs and it is the only spelling accepted in Romanian Academy's Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române. The two forms reflect the fact that for some speakers of Romani there are two rhotic (ar-like) phonemes: /r/ and /ʀ/. In the government-sponsored (Courthiade) writing system /ʀ/ is spelt rr. The final i in rromi is the Romanian (not Romani) plural. The traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, is 'țigani' (cognate with Serbian cigani, Hungarian cigány, Greek ατσίγγανοι (atsinganoi), French tsiganes, Portuguese ciganos, Dutch zigeuner, German Zigeuner, Turkish Çigan, Persian زرگری (zargari), and Italian zingari). Depending on context, the term may be considered to be pejorative in Romania. In 2009-2010, a media campaign followed by a parliamentarian initiative asked the Romanian Parliament to accept a proposal to change back the official name of country's Roma (adopted in 2000) to Țigan (Gypsy), the traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, in order to avoid the possible confusion among the international community between the words Roma — which refers to the Romani ethnic minority — and Romania. The Romanian government supported the move on the grounds that many countries in the European Union use a variation of the word Țigan to refer to their Gypsy populations. The Romanian upper house, Senate, rejected the proposal.