Documenting Zargari – A missing link in understanding Romani

With fewer than 500 speakers, Zargari is perhaps the most curious of all Romani varieties. Zargari’s presence in Iran is the result of eastwards migration of speakers of a European variety of Romani originating in the Balkans during the Ottoman period. Zargari is in unique simultaneous contact with Azeri Turkish and Persian, both of which have had a considerable impact on Zargari’s lexicon and grammar.

The project’s team, including Ioana Aminian Jazi, Prof. Yaron Matras, Prof. Saeed Rezaei and two Iranian community assistants, Shirin Erfani and Abolfazl Zargar, aims to achieve a comprehensive language documentation coupled with the investigation of Zargari’s linguistic features and multi-layered contact influences.

By leveraging the extensive Dialects of Romani Database (DRD), this project seeks to create a new digital resource for Zargari to allow a functional-typological comparison with the other Romani varieties. To encourage interaction between the scientific and civic communities, we are utilizing various output strategies ranging from scientific articles, video clips, a community dictionary and a documentary film. The documentation outcome will be secured in the ARCHE data repository by ACDH-CH, ensuring long-term preservation and accessibility and published on the project’s website and Youtube.