All the Romani subgroups EXPLAINED by a Romani person

If you’ve ever wondered about the different subgroups of Romani people and often ran into a lot of contradictory and confusing information, you are not alone. It’s definitely a complex subject, even for Roma ourselves. I hope this video can serve as a basic overview of most Romani subgroups around the world and how they are related to each other. Romani people are a diverse people and this can help show that while also promoting our unity as a people!

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:40 Overarching groups
01:52 Non-Roma groups
02:54 Western Europe
04:23 Northern Europe
05:46 Central Europe
07:11 Eastern Europe
13:11 The Balkans
15:35 Conclusion

#romani #history #gypsy #india #culture #ethnicity #romany #cigano #gitano #roma #anthropology #education #southasian

[maxixe]

Minor thing, but I love how the graphics that show the highlighted countries are placed over the globe rather than just manifesting in thin air. It's those little details that really show how much effort was put into this!

[juliawidmaier]

Gosh, the amount of anthropological work that was put in to connect the different groups is amazing. It's wonderful this information is available.

[ina]

I love your channel, Florian! As a Brazilian myself I've never heard of Juscelino Kubitschek being of romani origin, no one never told me about this when I was at school (and I bet no one talks about this even nowadays). So I think it's sad in a way that I only learned about this by chance when I found your channel, because I think we Brazilians should be aware of this!
Romani culture is very present here (well, at least where I live). There are several romani celebrations in my city along the year, but still, we non-romani mostly have access here to a romanticized view of romani people, and there is a lot of prejudice in regards to romani culture and people.
It's intersting to note that here in Brazil, romani culture was incorporated in an Afro-Brazilian religion called Umbanda, which mixes African (Yoruba/Iorubá), Native (mostly tupy-guarany/tupi-guarani), Christian and often Romani cultures/practices/beliefs. So for most Brazilians, this is the first source of knowledge about romani culture and people.

[florida.florian]

Hope y’all enjoyed this video, it took a long time to make and edit but i’m proud of how it came out! There’s so much diversity among Roma and many different groups but it can be very confusing figuring out the difference and connections between each one, hopefully this video helped provide some clarity and teach you something new! If you’re Roma let me know what subgroup you belong to and a little bit about your history!

[jashandeep]

Hey Florian, I am from punjab, India. I saw all your videos, my language punjabi and it's vocabulary is quite similar to Romani. We are just basically cousins. ❤ so much love and appreciation for you and your wonderful community/groups and sub groups. ❤

[nubianprincess]

Black American here. We have a large population of Irish Travelers, and Rominchals here in Virginia. I appreciate you presenting a longer video on the Roma people. Thank you!!

[DT-xzhb]

THIS is what the internet was made for. Thank you for always educating us Florian ❤

[zamjam_]

I just found your
channel and I'm in love. I'm Jewish with Romani family—my maternal aunt married a Sinti man from Switzerland and I feel so honoured to have grown up around this beautiful culture :)
As a Jew I also have noticed we've shared a lot of similar historical struggles, such as being part of the diaspora of non-European groups living under centuries of racism. Seriously we need to team up more often :) Keep up the amazing work my guy 🫶🏼💙❤️💚

[mafuteru]

Im finnish roma and as a child I remember seeing all kinds of different roma around the world on TV. I would often ask my family, how come they're roma but they don't follow the same rules / dress code as us? (finnish roma have vry distinct clothing) My family didn't really have the knowledge to answer me so the moment I saw this video in my recommended I got so excited. Wonderfully educational video! The visuals + pace of the video were very pleasing as well :}

[teucer]

"we also have a Romani name, but I will not be sharing that" honestly after everything your people have been through, I respect you setting boundaries even if they're not the same boundaries my culture would tend to set. I'm glad to learn what you choose to share, and part of that is learning to respect that I'm not entitled to learn everything.

[agender]

My ancestry is Magyarországi Romák, my grandmother was always being asked by First Nations people here in Canada whether she was First Nations or not (she always said with a big smile how much that flattered her). Sadly, however, we don't know a lot about whether the family was Romungre, Lovari, Boyash, or possibly another subgroup. Her mother (who was adopted into a German family) was so impacted by anti-Romani racism growing up that she refused to talk about the family heritage at all out of a deep shame about it, and pretended she wasn't Romani. My grandmother really wanted to find out more, since all she knew was that her biological grandfather was Hungarian Romani and not even what part of Hungary the family was originally from, but sadly her mother's adoptive parents wouldn't tell her anything out of respect for her mother's wishes for it not to be a topic of conversation. She said her grandparents were very positive about Romani people and really wanted to tell her, but they didn't want to further traumatize their daughter after the horrible socialization she had had growing up from cruel German kids (and adults) by bringing it up, and although her grandfather was still alive when her mother died, by that time he had dementia and she wasn't able to have those kinds of conversations with him. She moved to Canada as an adult with her German husband before having my dad and my uncle.

My dad was never all that interested in finding anything out, but my uncle and I have contemplated a trip to Europe to try and track down our family, as we both share the same interest my grandmother had. However, it's a really daunting task with such a small amount of information as we have from my grandmother, who has since passed away. We don't even have her grandfather's surname, since only her mother and adoptive grandparents knew that. She always spoke so sadly about how traumatized my great-grandmother was about our heritage, and how much she regretted not being able to connect with a heritage that she could see so visibly every time she looked at her mother or in the mirror. She was always curious about other Romani people and Romani cultures, and learned as much as she could to try and connect with that part of her heritage, but I think she always missed not having that cultural connection and knowledge of her own biological family and where they came from from specifically.

I wish she had lived to see your youtube channel, I know she would have clicked on every video, excited to learn more!

[gloriasteinbach]

Im a dutch sinti and i can honestly say me and my mother learned so much from your channel about our history!
Much of the knowledge about our ways and why we do things we do and how our language came about and evolved was a blur to us please keep making these videos they're also very educational to us !

[Paula-]

I am African American and I have always loved learning about all these groups of romani peoples. I knew the were a lot because a friend who had a Romani boyfriend wrote words out for me to learn many years ago. While you were talking I actually remembered some of the group names. Your history, and culture, music is so beautiful I feel so lucky to know a little about the Romani and you are doing this such amazing work educating the world.

[bliss]

You are doing incredible job for your people! I hope that one day the Romani will get the recognition they deserve for countless contributions to world’s culture. Keep up the God’s work Florian, love from a Ukrainian

[PossibleBat]

Honestly, you are doing an amazing job by immortalizing Roma culture and history, specially considering most Roma do not have a written history and it’s all spoken history, which I understand the retaliation against written history for Roma, because their history has been manipulated for many racist reasons, but still, having "documents" backing you up is necessary, or otherwise you risk being forgotten in history.

[ebr]

As a non Romani person, but always curious, I had no idea there were so many different subgroups of Romani people, this video is very educational and I am glad it found my way. I go to sleep with more knowledge and am very grateful of you for that !
Very well thought and greatly executed ! Thanks

[voidface]

I went to Madrid for a week once to study at one of their flamenco conservatories.
I don’t believe our teacher/professor was romani (she might have been!), but she made sure to tell us how important romani were in the creation of so many of these old spanish traditions. She was very thorough in her explanation, and I wish I could still remember all of it, but sadly it has been nearly 10 years.

Essentially, the style of singing in flamenco started out as a mix of romani styles, middle-eastern styles, and whatever the local style was.
The music itself is also created through this mix as well as the dance (though it might be tougher to see that as both have obviously evolved quite a bit)

But it really is something I think about quite a bit.

I’m not romani myself, but whether people like it or not, romani have always been here and they will continue to be here. Meaning they have helped shape so so so many different cultures.

With that said, thank you for this video!

[headerahelix]

I'm black and love learning about your culture, thank you for sharing. some folks would love to destroy us but we all persist and continue to preserve our rich cultures 🩷

[Bildgesmythe]

Thank you so much. Always great to learn subjects never covered anywhere else.

[BoredBookAddict]

I really love this vid. Really shows how widespread and diverse the Romani are. Not much sources I could find online and I am glad to be learning from an awesome guy like you. Greetings from the Philippines.