Romani Grassroots Language Learning

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with Dr Santiago Betancor Falcón (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) about his 2025 paper, Autonomous language learning as political activism: Roma autodidacts as catalysts of the nascent Romani language revitalisation movement in Spain. The conversation focuses on minoritised languages, autonomous language learning, language activism, and, of course, Romani.

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Reference

Betancor-Falcon, S. (2025). Autonomous language learning as political activism: Roma autodidacts as catalysts of the nascent Romani language revitalisation movement in Spain. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 44(6), 647-662. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2025.2486831

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Transcript

Emily:

Welcome to the Language on the Move Podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Emily Pacheco and I’m a PhD candidate in Linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

My guest today is a Dr Santiago Betancor Falcón. Santiago is a lecturer at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. He holds a PhD in critical sociolinguistics and critical pedagogy. In addition to his PhD focus, his research interests also include applied linguistics, minoritised languages, autonomous language learning, and pedagogical innovation.

Today we are going to talk in general about minoritised languages, and in particular about a 2025 paper that Santiago wrote entitled, “Autonomous language learning as political activism: Roma autodidacts as catalysts of the nascent Romani language revitalisation movement in Spain”. Santiago, a warm welcome to the show, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Santiago: Thank you for having me.

Emily: Absolutely. So, to start off, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you became a linguist and educator?

Santiago: Well, I mean, I started studying languages when I was 18. That is when I entered college, and I haven’t stopped ever since. Over the years, I’ve studied many different languages, and you know, taking part in countless language exchanges with people from all over the world.

So, teaching languages sort of comes quite naturally to me. I also genuinely enjoy sharing my passion for languages, which is why I feel like this job suits me well.

And then, on how I became a sociolinguist, well, I’ve always enjoyed learning languages on my own, I’m a big autodidact. And I also really, I’m also really interested in politics and philosophy. So, I ended up doing my PhD on the politics of autonomous language learning. You see, there I mixed the two, I mean, all of my interest, all of my interest, really. And actually, I defended my thesis last December, so I’m quite happy about that.

Emily: Yeah, congratulations. Yeah, that was, so now we’re recording this in April. So just a few months ago, that’s awesome. Congratulations.

Santiago: Thank you.

Emily: Yeah, nice. So, it’s nice to hear about a bit of your intersections and your interest there,

how they’re kind of interconnected in your research. So, to kind of start our discussion today about your work and kind of what you researched in your PhD, can you tell us a bit about what language activism is?

Santiago: Okay, so language activism is any kind of activism or advocacy that aims to resist linguistic injustice. And when I say linguistic injustice, I also mean any kind of injustice that may be linked to language. It can be racism, classism, gender inequality, anything, anything really.

However, I mean, it’s true that in my research, I have mainly focused on trying to find solutions

to linguistic injustice in language education. And most recently, I’ve been theorizing autonomous learning as a form of language activism. Because I mean, I do believe that studying languages by yourself can be a way of, I mean, a way to fight for social justice. This can be particularly useful, I mean, this approach for revitalizing minoritized languages and supporting the respective speaking communities.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And kind of in line with that and what you’re saying on, you know, learning a language by yourself, it kind of goes to our next question and minoritized languages and why it may be challenging for people to learn a minoritized language. If you could talk a bit about that as well.

Santiago: Sure. Well, it depends on what kind of minoritized language we talk about, right? Because each language presents its own challenges. If you study, let’s say, Catalan, Basque, Irish, I mean, then these may not be too hard since the, I mean, those have institutional support and there are a lot of materials available online. There is also lots of content you can consume, videos, written materials, maybe like in those languages, I just mentioned, maybe even they have a literary canon, right? You can be all day reading in those languages. However, my interest has been mostly languages that are really in a dire situation, okay? Those can be, those can be very, very hard to learn for a variety of reasons.

I mean, the first one is that if the language is mainly oral and non-standardized, then you will probably have very few written materials you can work with and you will probably have to deal with enormous, enormous dialectal diversity, which sounds like fun for us linguists but in reality, you know, that complicates things to the average learner. Also, if there is no standard language or standard spelling system, then the speaking community probably doesn’t even know how to write in their own language. So, they probably just improvise and that means that you need to get used to that, right? You need probably, you will have to learn how to write or say the same word in many different ways, depending on the dialect or, of the person you are talking to, or the particular way they go about writing, right? So, it really depends on the person. You know, languages like Tamazight, right? For example, it can be very challenging because there are very few available resources and there are so many dialects that, I mean, you often don’t even know what to study, especially when you are self-studying, right? If you are learning directly from the community, well, you learn the way they speak, right? But if you are studying by yourself, you have to make choices and yeah, it’s very hard. You never know if what you are learning is something that the community will actually understand. It can be very confusing, what else? Also, I mean, if there is not much content in the language, you know, it may be hard to stay motivated, okay? Because this is not like French or Japanese that you can just learn the language perfectly by consuming content. You don’t even need to talk to people in real life to just, you know, consume content and learn it on your own. But you know, with minoritized languages, it’s different. You have to work with whatever you can get your hands on and, you know, you need to make the most of it. Also, you know, it often happens that the content and resources you do find, those may not be appropriate for your level, or you find them uninteresting. So, you know, that can, I mean, that’s a bummer, really. You know, finally, something to keep in mind is that when you learn a minoritized language and you start engaging with the community, you’re probably going to have to learn about and deal with the generational intergenerational trauma that’s linked to that language. Because, I mean, you know, you don’t become minoritized through hugs and kisses, right? Instead, minoritized-minoritized-minoritized-minoritized, what, sorry, I’m still learning over, after so many years. Instead, I mean, linguistic minoritization can be a, and often is a very violent process. Okay, for example, I’ve studied Neapolitan for many years, and this is a very stigmatized language. And its speakers have also suffered a lot of racism, classism, you name it, all kinds of violence, really. So, they tend to have a very low self-esteem in regards to their language. They think that, for example, in the case of Neapolitan, they think that it’s not a real language. I mean, in Italy language discrimination is a huge problem. Anything other than Italian is called a dialetto, right, like a patois, like dialect, not a “real language”. So, if you speak a regional language, that means that you’re poor, rural, uneducated, yada yada. So, you know, you go very excited to talk to them, because you love the language, you want to get to know people, and then they may react in a weird way, or they even ask you, why do you even learn our language, right, like what’s the point? I wouldn’t learn it, right, so that can be very, very discouraging when you learn about the situations.

And I mean, I could be all day telling you anecdotes of this kind that I’ve had in different languages. But yeah, you have to deal with the sociolinguistic situation of the language in the community. You also need to face the injustices, those speaking communities suffer, which is precisely why I believe that self-studying a language can lead to activism.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point to highlight about the sociolinguistic situation of a language and how that can influence, you know, the learning experience, even though people may think it’s great, we’re learning more minoritized languages, but then the speakers or users

of those languages, you know, may have some feelings and experiences that, you know,

are important to acknowledge and be considerate of when you’re learning a minoritized language.

And that greatly leads us into your paper that we’re going to discuss today, specifically

your 2025 paper entitled, “Autonomous language learning as political activism: Roma autodidacts as catalysts of the nascent Romani language revitalisation movement in Spain”.

And so, in this paper, you conceptualize autonomous language learning as activism, as you’ve

mentioned a bit already, and specifically within the context of learning Romani in your paper,

among the Spanish Roma community.

So, can you tell us a bit about Romani revitalization efforts in the Spanish Roma community in particular?

Santiago: Sure. Well, the first thing to understand is that Roma have been living in Spain for over 600 years. And they used to speak their own language, Rromani ćhib, the Romani language, but due to centuries of systemic discrimination, persecution, and even genocidal attempts, they slowly stopped passing the language down to the new generations. And even nowadays, antigypsyism is one, I would say, it’s one of the most extreme forms of racism in Europe. We often talk about racism against other ethnicities, and we are very aware that that’s not okay. But for what I see, especially in Eastern Europe, but really all around the world, people feel very comfortable attacking Roma people, and it’s just abhorrent.

So, over the centuries, the language deteriorated over time. First, it became a creole of Romani and another dominant language, so let’s say Romani and Spanish, but could also be Romani and Portuguese and Spanish, Catalan, Basque, etc. So, this creole sort of works. We call it a para-Romani variety. You get the grammar of the dominant language, let’s say Spanish. And then to that, the grammar you apply Romani vocabulary, so that’s how the mix works. And then it progressively, you know, this para-Romani, this creole, progressively got so diluted that nowadays Spanish Roma have only have a limited Romani lexicon that they may throw in when speaking Spanish, Catalan, or other languages.

And even that, right, this is already a dialect, this is a Spanish dialect. But even those few words they still remember, those are being eroded as well. So, you know, this process is what we call linguicide, okay. This is that, I mean, that is the murder of a language. And in this case, we could also say a partial ethnocide, since many parts of their cultural, their culture were killed along with the language.

However, the good news is that the language is very much alive abroad, and now many Spanish Roma are reclaiming their heritage language through autonomous and collective study.

Emily: Yeah, that is good news. That’s great news. And that’s what we’re here to talk about as well. And I think it’s good to see the efforts that have been happening there to revitalize the language, which is hopefully that can be applied to other language communities as well.

And so, in your paper, specifically, you present some qualitative data you collected

through interviews with Spanish Roma autodidacts.

So, could you share your experience conducting the interviews and tell us a bit about your participants even?

Santiago: Sure. And something maybe I haven’t mentioned is that they are autodidacts because they have no institutional support. So that’s why it’s grassroots activism, precisely because of that.

And now to answer your question, I mean, the first thing to understand is that a significant number of Roma people around the world, okay, Romani people, see the Romani language as a closed practice. Okay, meaning that they don’t want outsiders to learn it. And for the most part, they don’t teach it. In my case, everything I know about the language comes from materials created by Romani people and from Roma who, you know, they just trusted me and were willing to share their cultural language and knowledge with me. And for that I’m forever grateful.

Now, during my own self-learning of the language, I got to know quite a few wonderful Roma from all around the world. But specifically, especially from Spain, who, you know, people who had learned their language on their own, and were also teaching it too, teaching it to other Roma. In fact, the people I interview, the Roma I interview in my paper, they are all very important people within their communities. So, you know, they have a lot of interesting things to say. So, you know, when I asked them if they wanted to share their story, they loved the idea. And anyone who reads the article and the interviews will see that they are amazing people and their activism is truly an example for many other communities facing language endangerment and other forms of oppression.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely could feel that when I was reading your paper and there’s a lot of really good quotes from participants, based on the situation there and what they’re doing.

And so, to talk a bit more about that from your findings, it’s really interesting to see the autonomous learning and collective learning that occurred for your participants.

So, what were some of the learning strategies that they enacted and how did this shape their learning experience?

Santiago: Well, I mean, they had to work, I mean, they have, they had to work with very few materials, especially before the internet was even a thing. So, for example, some would look for, I mean, they would look for texts with translations, and they would study them non-stop. I mean, they didn’t have anything else. Also, they befriended Roma from other countries, and they would ask them questions. So, these people, you know, they couldn’t talk every day, especially before the internet, right? They would send letters and stuff like that. So, they would act as sort of mentors, but not really teachers. And, you know, over the years, little by little, they created their own materials. And as their level got better, they started interacting more and more with Romani speakers from abroad, especially on social media that really helped. And they would practice everything they had learned during their self-study with those speakers. Again, this was a very slow process. It took them years. And the beautiful thing is that once they learned it, once they learned the language, they started teaching other Spanish Roma how to speak it. So, you see, so that’s activism, right? Self-reclaiming your stolen language and then helping the community to also reclaim it. I think that’s powerful, very powerful.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, in your paper, you talk a bit about that sense of community, the impacts of that.

And so, my next question kind of is along those lines. And there was a quote from one of your participants that I thought really resonated with this question that I’ll read out for our listeners.

So, this participant says, “My circle started to expand; I began to meet and interact with Roma people from all over Europe. I’ve travelled practically from east to west. I have friends who are like family in every country. Borders have started to fade for me. The language has made me much more international, giving me a sense of belonging to a group that’s even broader than when . . . Back then, it was just Spain, you know? Now I realise [romanipen] is not just European, but global. My sense of ethnic belonging has opened to a much broader culture . . .”

So, you know, that quote can really show the psychological impact of studying Romani among the Spanish Roma learners, that sense of community again, the impacts of that, if you want to speak a bit more about that.

Santiago: I mean, yeah, they love their language and they cherish, they cherish it.

Again, language is one of the most important identity markers a community has. So, when you recover that, it means the world to you. Also, the great thing about learning Romani in particular is that it is spoken all across Europe, Russia, the Middle East and even the Americas. So, it really opened them up to a whole new world. And I mean, he said it very eloquently.

Also, other Roma explained to me in the article that this has been a process of self-discovery that has brought them a strong sense of dignity and love for who they are and their people. I mean, I think that’s fantastic. We need more of that, especially today. I mean, nowadays we still have a lot of antigypsyism. And so, you see, they are, by learning the language, they are not just reclaiming their heritage language, improving their mental health even as you mentioned. But they are also resisting ongoing discrimination, ongoing attempts to basically force assimilation, right? They are resisting forced assimilation. So, I think that’s also very powerful.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I do agree. And kind of, you know, you’ve been saying this throughout the conversation, but could you tell us a bit more about how self-learning Romani can be political and considered socio-political activism in particular?

Santiago: Again, whether you look at it individually or collectively, reclaiming the language doesn’t just strengthen people’s sense of belonging and self-esteem. It is a political act, and a very meaningful one. And I think that since we are not Roma, rather than just only talking about them, I would like to take this opportunity to just, you know, answer your question by reading one of the quotations from the interviews. And in that way, as you did earlier, in that way, we can use this platform to amplify their voices. Regarding your question on why they consider this a form of language activism, they consider their learning as language activism. One of the participants said, and I quote, “Spain has the obligation to make it possible for us to relearn our language since they were the ones who took it from us! Especially here in Spain, we’ve gone through 600 years of repression, from the attempts to genocide us, to the royal decrees banning our language. So, now, reclaiming the language is a totally rebellious, defiant act—a real statement!”.

And then he goes on about his, his and their goals, he says, “Our goals could be many: there’s the personal and collective fulfilment of recovering something important that was forcibly taken from us . . . And then, to also send a message to the government, ‘look, you had a responsibility, because of the historical debt you have with us, to support this . . . But see? We did it without you!’. They gave millions to the Catalans and the Basques, but what about us? As always, we did it on our own—without the help you should be giving us.  ‘We can handle this ourselves, you know? We’re rebuilding what you tried to destroy’”.

End of the quote.

Emily: Yeah, that’s really well said. And I think, you know, throughout this conversation about the Spanish Roma in particular, you can see a lot of the resilience to self-learning and, you know, that they have succeeded in their efforts and they’re going to try to revitalize the language. But the optimist in me hopes that one day they will have institutional support and the success of, you know, what they’re doing in their community will translate to future efforts. What do you think about that?

Santiago: Well, actually, that’s very important and they do acknowledge the importance of institutional support. You know, in general, Roma people, because of systemic racism and discrimination, they are very… They basically don’t trust non-Roma for very good reasons, right?

But they acknowledge that at some point, if this keeps growing at some point, I mean, they are also Spanish nationals, right? They have rights. And one of those rights should be the protection of their heritage. So eventually, hopefully, that will happen. There will be a transition to a more, you know, towards a standardized version of the language that can be taught in schools. Hopefully, in the future, that will happen. The problem is that right now, institutions, they tend to… They don’t really care. They are cynical about their… their supposed… I mean, their so-called support for the language and the community. So, what they explain in the interviews is that oftentimes institutions and ONGs even… They just try to, you know, to look like they’re progressive and they care and whatnot. But in reality, what they’re doing is using Roma for their own political gain and, you know, improving their self-image. So, so far, because that’s a situation, rampant antigypsyism and institutional indifference and also systemic discrimination.

Because that’s the situation that’s why they have to rely mostly on individual and collective activism. And they acknowledge… they acknowledge themselves that their own activism has been more successful and impactful than anything that any institution so far has done.

So, yeah, they are resistant.

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing a bit more of that situation with us and giving us some of these insights we’ve talked about today. It’s been really, really good. And just to wrap up our conversation today is, what is next for you and your work? Is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience today?

Santiago: Well, I mean, first of all, I encourage the audience to go read the full article.

I really think that what Roma shared with me in those interviews has enormous value.

Well, right now, I continue doing research on minoritized languages, such as Neapolitan and Tamazight. But, you know, I would love to keep learning Romani and do more research, especially in collaboration with Roma researchers. So, if there’s anyone out there who maybe needs help in any way or wants to work with me, please do reach out.

And to finish, I’d like to also encourage the audience to study languages and, you know, to use them as a way to make the world a better place. And that’s it.

As we say in Romani, te aven baxtale, sastipen thaj mestepen. I wish you all good health and freedom.

Emily: Thank you so much. That was lovely Santiago. Yeah, I definitely will put your LinkedIn or your contact in our show notes that go out with the Language on the Move blog and the transcript there. And so, if anyone is interested to collaborate, that would be great, that we could have a collaboration or connection come from this podcast episode. But yeah, thanks again, Santiago. This has been great. And thanks for joining everyone.

Santiago: Yes, thank you.

Emily: If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to our channel, leave a five-star review on your podcast app of choice and recommend the Language on the Move podcast and our partner, the New Books Network to your students, colleagues and friends.

Till next time!