Language Research

ROMA

The state has declared on numerous occasions that the problems of education in Romany stem from the minority's unwillingness to be educated in Romany rather than from the inefficiency of the educational system. However, blame has often been put on the state for not providing quality educational facilities and personnel to the Roma neighborhood schools, as well as not providing for the training of Romany-speaking teachers. An interesting regulation regarding language use is the prohibition of the use of any other language other than Bulgarian during visitation hours in prisons, and allowing the use of a translator at the expense of the imprisoned. A significant number of Bulgarian Roma faces this problem. This is due to the fact that older Roma sometimes do not speak Bulgarian, while prisoners are rarely able to afford a translator, the communication possibilities for the Roma inmates are limited.

The 1996 Law on Radio and Television seemed to put an end to any hopes for broadcasts in minority languages as it included a requirement that broadcasts could be transmitted only in Bulgarian. The amendments to the law introduced in 1997, however, did not address the issue of minority media, and limited the law to the State radio and television, thereby indirectly opened the possibility for the creation of regional and local minority media. It was not until July of 1998, that the Bulgarian Parliament added a provision allowing for the broadcast of programs in foreign languages aired for "Bulgarian citizens whose mother tongue is not Bulgarian". However, the unfavorable economic situation of the Roma, and the lack of support from a mother country -in contrast to the case of the Turkish minority- is not likely to allow the creation of Roma broadcast channels in the near future.

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Updated (August 2003)

NAME CHANGES

Bulgaria's attempt to assimilate its Turkish minority by changing their names from Arabic-Turkish to Slavic-Bulgarian in the 1980s was considered to be one of the most extensive and certainly the most rapid assimilation campaigns in European history. In a little more than a month (between December 1984 and January 1985), nearly one million people (around a tenth of Bulgaria's population) were forced to change their names.

The process of renaming involved submitting an application to the relevant local authority "asking" to change one's Turkish name to the ethnic Bulgarian one. In order to ensure compliance, teams of party activists, policemen and civil servants went from house to house soliciting the applications.

The villages were surrounded by tanks and personnel carriers and cut off from the outside world. Borders were closed and an entry of unauthorized personnel (especially foreigners) into the campaign zone was prohibited.

Resistance of the Turkish minority was sporadic and disorganized. Stunned by suddenness of the state's decision and faced with seemingly overwhelming odds, most Turks had no other choice but to accept the changes.

The overnight renaming was backed up by a package of measures in the course of next few years. Speaking Turkish in public places was banned and fines were imposed on the transgressors.

Source: JEMIE, In Search of a Homogeneous Nation: The Assimilation of Bulgaria's Turkish Minority, 1984-1985, Vesselin Dimitrov, The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, December 23, 2000, http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/JEMIE01Dimitrov10-07-01.pdf

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