The Divine Liturgy, in the language people pray in

Which Romani?

There is no such thing as “the” Romani language

Romani is a family, not a single tongue. Linguists sort it into five main dialect groups — Vlax, Balkan, Central, Northwestern and Northeastern — plus a handful of isolated varieties in Britain, Iberia and southern Italy. Seven of those varieties carry their own ISO language codes.

This translation belongs to the Central group: it is Carpathian Romani (rmc), and within that, the dialect spoken in central Slovakia — the Romani of Klenovec and the Gemer region. That matters locally: Slovakia already has a New Testament in eastern Slovak Romani, and a whole Bible in Carpathian Romani. Neither is the speech of the villages this mission serves, and the difference is not academic — it is the difference between a text people follow and a text people pray.

A language that came from India

Romani is an Indo-Aryan language. It left the northern Indian subcontinent around a thousand years ago and it never stopped being Indian — it was by studying Romani that European scholars first worked out where the Roma had come from. Its closest living relatives are Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi, and the family resemblance is not buried in the grammar. It is sitting in the plainest words of the Liturgy.

A Roma man from Klenovec and a man from Delhi or Lahore cannot hold a conversation — a thousand years and half a continent of borrowed vocabulary lie between them. But they will both recognise the word for water, for house, for brother, for name. Every word below is in the text of this Liturgy; the count is how often its root appears.

The Trinity, in this Liturgy, is named half in Indian and half in Slavonic: le Dadéskero, le Čhavéskero thaj le Svetos Duchóskero — Father and Son from words the Roma carried out of India, Spirit from the Church Slavonic of the Byzantine rite they were baptised into. A thousand years of the journey is in one line.

What changes from village to village

Every line of this translation is a choice, and the translator recorded the alternatives in footnotes as he went — what the Serbian and Romanian Romani liturgies say, what the older people in Klenovec say, what they say a valley away in Gemer. These are the interesting differences: not spelling, but a different word chosen for the same prayer.

• Bachtalophenďonote 1

  “Blessed”, literally “beautifully said”

  Serbian Romani:

  Bahtarďo

  Romanian Romani:

  śukarphendo

• Amiňnote 2

  “Amen” — kept distinct because amen already means “we” in Romani

  Serbian and Romanian Romani:

  also avoid amen

• prepáčinennote 4

  “have mercy” — Romani has no everyday word for it

  Serbian Romani:

  bahtalipe — “make us happy”

  Romanian Romani:

  miluisar — borrowed from Church Slavonic

• holanote 7

  “wrath” — one of the words that barely changes anywhere

  Eastern Slovakia:

  choli

  Serbian Romani:

  holi

  Romanian Romani:

  xoliatar

• Pokeresštašnonote 11

  “was crucified” — built on the word for cross

  Klenovec:

  keresto — the cross

• neboskenote 17

  “of heaven”

  Klenovec:

  cinlagi — known now only to the oldest

  Romanian Romani:

  čéri

And one that shows what is at stake in getting it wrong. Just before the Creed the priest calls Vudar! Vudar! — “The doors! The doors!”. The translator marks it with a warning: clipped in ordinary speech, vudár is heard as budár — the toilet (note 16). A vowel length is the whole difference between reverence and a joke at the back of the church.

Scripture in Romani

The Roma have had parts of the Bible in their own speech since 1837, but almost always one variety at a time, and almost always from outside the Orthodox Church. These are the landmarks — not a complete inventory, since portions exist in many more varieties than are catalogued anywhere publicly.

1. 1837Caló (Spain)rmr

   Gospel of Luke — the first Gospel in any Romani variety · George Borrow, British and Foreign Bible Society

2. 1912Arlija (Balkan)rmn

   Gospel portions

3. 1933Latvian Romani (Chúkhno)rml

   Gospel of John, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments · Jānis Leimanis

4. 1984 / 1995Kalderash (Vlax)rmy

   Psalms, then the New Testament · Matéo Maximoff, French Bible Society

5. 2014Eastern Slovak Romanirmc

   New Testament — E Nevi Zmluva pal o Romanes · Slovo pre svet / The Word for the World

6. 2021Carpathian Romanirmc

   The whole Bible — Le Devleskero Lav andre romaňi čhib · The Word for the World Slovakia

7. 2024Central-Slovak Romanirmc

   The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom — this translation · Martin Halík, Kresťanská rómska misia

Which is why this one matters: it is the Divine Liturgy rather than Scripture, it is Orthodox, and it is in the dialect actually spoken in the villages where it is sung.

Download the songbook

• Spevník v1.1 — print editionPDF · A5 · ready to print and bind · 268 KB
• Spevník v1.1 — e-bookEPUB · for phones and e-readers · 27 KB
• Spevník v1.1 — source documentDOCX · the working file, with footnotes · 139 KB

The thesis behind the translation

The academic work behind the translation: what the Liturgy asks of a language, which choices the Romani of central Slovakia makes possible, and where it has to borrow. Written in Slovak.

Halík, M. (2024). Liturgia sv. Jána Zlatoústeho a možnosti jej prekladu do stredoslovenského dialektu rómčiny. Rigorózna práca, PBF PU, Prešov.The PDF is not published here yet.

Other Romani translations

This work does not stand alone. Two earlier Orthodox translations into other Romani dialects were consulted throughout, and the footnotes refer to them often.

• Romanian Orthodox Divine Liturgy in RomaniArhiepiscopia Râmnicului, 2016
• Serbian Romani SlužebnikSerbian Orthodox Church, Novi Sad, 1993 — printed only

How you can help

A service book is not finished when the translating stops

It is finished when a grandmother in Klenovec can hold it open and sing her part without being handed a Slovak book she only half follows. Three things stand between here and there, and none of them is translation.

• Printed books

  The PDF is free and ready for a printer. What a parish needs is enough bound copies to go round, so a congregation can sing together instead of listening to one person read.

• Romani readers

  Native speakers of the Central-Slovak dialect to read the draft and mark what sounds wrong. This is the scarcest of the three, and the most valuable.

• Voices

  Singers to record the responses, so that people who do not read can still learn their part by ear — as most of this congregation always has.

Questions

What is this translation?

The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom — the principal Eucharistic service of the Orthodox Church — translated into the Central-Slovak dialect of Romani by Martin Halík, with Ján Hero as linguistic consultant, and published by Kresťanská rómska misia (Christian Roma Mission). So far as we know it is the first translation of the full Divine Liturgy into this dialect. It is served with the blessing of the local Orthodox bishop in the Roma communities of Markovce and Klenovec in Slovakia.

Which dialect of Romani is it in?

Carpathian Romani (ISO 639-3: rmc), specifically the Central-Slovak dialect spoken around Klenovec and the Gemer region. Romani is not one language but a family of dialects, conventionally grouped into five: Vlax, Balkan, Central, Northwestern and Northeastern. Carpathian Romani belongs to the Central group. This is deliberately not the eastern Slovak Romani of the 2014 New Testament, because eastern forms are not the everyday speech of these villages.

How is it different from the Romani Bible translations that already exist?

Those are Scripture; this is a service book. A New Testament in eastern Slovak Romani appeared in 2014 and a complete Bible in Carpathian Romani in 2021, both from The Word for the World. Neither contains the Divine Liturgy, and neither is Orthodox. This translation supplies the text a Roma congregation actually sings during the service, in the Byzantine rite, in their own dialect.

Can our parish use it?

Yes. The text is published free to read online, and as an A5 print-ready PDF and an EPUB, so a parish can print and bind copies. It is a working version and corrections are genuinely wanted — write to martin.halik@krm.sk. If you serve in a Romani-speaking community and want to use it liturgically, please also speak with your own bishop, as this translation is served with the blessing of ours.

Is the translation finished?

No, and that is the point. Version 1.1 carries 34 translator's notes recording choices still open — where Serbian or Romanian Romani says something different, where the older people of Klenovec use a word the young no longer know. It is corrected line by line by the people who sing it.

How should I cite it?

For the scholarship behind the translation, cite the rigorózna práca: Halík, M. (2024). Liturgia sv. Jána Zlatoústeho a možnosti jej prekladu do stredoslovenského dialektu rómčiny. Rigorózna práca, PBF PU, Prešov. For the liturgical text itself, cite the translation and its version number.

How can I support this work?

The mission needs three things for this text: money to print and bind service books for the parishes, Romani speakers willing to read the draft and correct it, and singers to record the responses so that people who do not read can still learn the parts. Christian Roma Mission is a registered Slovak mission working in Roma communities; donations go to the parishes where this Liturgy is sung.

How to cite

This is a named piece of scholarship, not an anonymous web page. If you quote the translation or write about it, please cite it — in whichever of these forms your work uses.

@mastersthesis{halik2024liturgia,
  author      = {Hal\'ik, Martin},
  title       = {Liturgia sv. Jána Zlatoústeho a možnosti jej prekladu do stredoslovenského dialektu rómčiny},
  school      = {Pravoslávna bohoslovecká fakulta, Prešovská univerzita v Prešove},
  type        = {Rigorózna práca},
  year        = {2024},
  langid      = {slovak}
}