LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE OF ROMA CHILDREN IN A LANGUAGE THAT IS NOT NATIVE

Generative-transformation theory (Chomsky, 1965) distinguishes between linguistic competence and the linguistic performance. Linguistic competence is unlimited opportunity to create new sentences and performance is a summary of the actual language expressions of the speaker. The paper is focused on the linguistic performance of Roma children from the socially disadvantaged, marginalized Roma community in Slovak language. Slovak language is official language in the Slovakia and it is not the mother tongue of Roma children.

The Roma are the minority in Slovakia. They came to Europe from India as a strongly different cultural group (different socialization standards, clothing, language, music, temperament, faith, tradition and customs). The Roma have lived in the area of Slovakia for several centuries (the first known reference is from 1322); in some historical periods they were violently assimilated, could not develop their culture and language, carry on with their values and norms, and reciprocally influence the majority society. They were still able to preserve elements of their own ethnical identity (for example language) in such conditions. On the other hand, social exclusion influenced the growth of concentrated settlements, cross-generation reproduction of poverty and affiliated bad living conditions, and low level of education.

In Slovakia, the statute of being a minority together with all its rights was acknowledged to Roma community only in the year 1991. Nevertheless, the vitality of this community, as described by Giles and Johnson (1987) in ethnolinguistic theory, has remained very low.
The State Educational Programme in Slovakia defines socially disadvantaged environment (poverty or disadvantage culture) as environment, which given the social and linguistic conditions insufficient to stimulate the development of mental, emotional and self-control qualities of the individual, does not support the effective socialization and does not provide adequate incentives for the development of personality. Children who live in adequately stimulating environment and whose social environment can be evaluated as filling the cultural and socialisation norms of major society, gradually verifies the ontogenetic tasks.

But the totally different life situation is the situation of the child living in social exclusion in marginalised Roma community. Roma child cannot speak Slovak which is a school language. Even the native language causes problems because the Romani word bank is insufficient for the needs of communication at school. Language code is evaluated as limited (Bernstein, 1960), caused by lack of stimuli in environment; semantic network is weakly structured; and terms are not differentiated and insufficiently defined.

The authors found the difference in vocabulary of the Roma and Slovak children entering school. The Slovak children from adequately stimulating environment acquired higher scores. Re-test was conducted after the first year at school. The results showed continued disparity in the vocabulary of Roma children in the Slovak language. Progress in the development of vocabulary is significantly higher among Roma children from socially disadvantaged background.