Models of language planning

Romani is an oral language with only a recent, limited tradition of literacy. There is no education system in which Romani is the primary language; Romani-language literacy is always acquired, if at all, after literacy in the state language, and usually at individuals' own initiative, usually without institutional support. Norm selection in Romani is complicated through the fact that Romani is a contact language with considerable dialectal variation. There is no single dialect that enjoys either general prestige or power and which would make a natural candidate upon which to base a standard norm. Moreover, Romani is not spoken in a coherent territory, but spread among different countries with different state languages. Not only is there no centralised government or other institutional agency to assume responsibility for the implementation of a norm, there are also few internal resources – financial, logistic, or professional – that can be allocated by Romani communities themselves to help pursue codification attempts. As a result, standardisation, codification and implementation measures, and the allocation of resources in particular, are generally negotiated, decided upon, and evaluated in circles that are external to the community of speakers. Given the decentral character of codification efforts, a major theoretical question is the extent to which compatibility between various codification models can or should be achieved, and the prospects of successful implementation of any norm.