Beschreibung: 

The present book is concerned with the language and culture of the Boyash “Gypsies” in southern Hungary, who speak archaic dialects of Romanian and call themselves baiasi. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, the Boyash communities were almost unknown in the countries in which they lived. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, Boyash communities were almost completely disregarded in the countries in which they lived. Over the past couple of decades, several research projects have looked at these communities in Serbia, Croatia and Hungary, leaving Boyash groups in other countries largely unstudied. This study, then, aims to undertake a linguistic and sociolinguistic comparison of the vernaculars spoken by the two sub-groups of the Boyash in Hungary: the Munceni and Argeleni. The Argelean vernacular is the only one for which standardization efforts have been made. Hungary has emerged as the only country in which Boyash lessons at high school have improved the possibilities for preserving the Boyash language and have had a considerable impact on the prestige and emancipation of the minority language. This study tries to analyze the aforementioned dialects and their sociolinguistic situation on the basis of field recordings carried out among Boyash speakers in southern Hungary in the villages of Alsószentmárton and Gilvánfa and in the city of Pécs between 2010 and 2014. We would like to thank, first of all, the speakers of these vernaculars who, through their stories and accounts, have revealed the richness of the archaic Romanian dialects spoken in Hungary. Special thanks go to Dr. Anna Pálmainé Orsós from the Department of Romology at Pécs University, Faculty of Humanities, who facilitated our access to the places of research time and again. Further thanks go to László Ambrus (Gilvánfa), Edit Orsós Foreword Boyash_Kern_6_RZ.indd 7 22.05.19 21:438 The Boyash in hungary (Gilvánfa), Beáta Dafinka Gyorgyovics (Alsószentmárton), Erzsébet (Pérszá) Sándorné Petrovics (Alsószentmárton), János Orsós (Gilvánfa), Pera (Gilvánfa), and to all those who assisted us and made this book possible. For their useful comments concerning the content of this book we would like to thank Annemarie Sorescu (Belgrade), Michael Metzeltin (Vienna) and Gabriella Schubert (Berlin), for corrections in English Christine Young (Vienna), for the assistance with the enclosed DVD Mehdi Aminian and for their warm cooperation at the Austrian Academy and Sciences in Vienna, Robert Püringer, Udo Fon, Herwig Stöger and Lisbeth Triska. We are delighted to inaugurate the new book series VANISHING LANGUAGES AND CULTURAL HERITAGE (VLACH) published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences with this volume. We dedicate it to all our informants in gratitude for their contribution to gathering valuable field material. We also hope to motivate other researchers to contribute to the comparatively new field of Boyash studies and to continue the documentation and analysis of vanishing languages.