Romanians in Serbian Banat:
Dynamic Epistemology
Biljana Sikimić
Introduction
In defining the approach taken by the group of linguists from the
SASA Institute for Balkan Studies as anthropological-linguistic, weshould at once point out that this owes much to Slavistics and Balkanology, and the preference for field work inevitably emerges from experience
gained in classic Slav dialectology and ethno-linguistic geography. Boththese disciplines were until very recently structuralist in approach andessentially static, aimed at reconstructing a “pure” state of local speech,
an “ethnographic reality,” a sort of monolithic local – necessarily rural– community. By diverting attention towards the interviewee as an individual, anthropological linguistics automatically raises the problem of
the possibility of an individual representing the community as a whole;
the community itself becomes a problem. By speaking directly to interviewees, field research generally provides an insight into the dynamic
dimension of researching a community, but thanks to maximum demand
for an appropriate body of documentation, it does not exclude drawing
conclusions of a static nature either.
This article deals with the actual dynamics of learning from various
experiences gained in field research in Romanian speaking communities
in Serbia. On the other hand, as it seeks to provide better insight into the
topic of “Romanianness,” the geographical borders of the Serbian partof historic Banat will be crossed in several directions: towards the east,- 51 -

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Romanian part of historic Banat, then in Serbia towards the south, acrossthe Danube River to the area inhabited by the Romanian speaking Vlachsof northeast Serbia, and towards the west, across the Tisa River up to
Bačka, an area inhabited by the Romanian speaking Bayash.
It was only in the early 21st century that anthropologically inclined
researchers: Otilia Hedeşan, Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković and theauthor of this article, begin to write of “three groups of Romanian language speakers” in Serbia (Romanians of the Banat, Vlachs of northeast
Serbia and the Bayash). Following direct encounters in the field, Sorescu-Marinković expands these three “Romanian speaking” groups into
women from Romania married in Serbia and – mainly seasonal – migrant
workers from Romania, while Sikimić adds bilingual Roma in Romanian
Banat settlements to the Romanian language domain. This article adds
Aromanians as a new reality in the Banat, a “hidden minority,” their
Aromanian language/dialect a “heritage language”; and settled Vlachs,
mainly part of the labor migration, in Romanian villages of the Banat.1
The article concludes by showing how a Romanian identity is “negotiated” in transcripts of a field interview carried out in the Romanianvillage of Ritiševo/Ritişor in the Banat. Auto-reflexivity and insight into
the immediate influence of the researcher on his/her collocutor is one
characteristic of the analytical method used by the entire research teamfrom the Institute for Balkan Studies, and is part of conscious movementin the direction of dynamic epistemology.2 The methodology, besides
1 Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković, “Comunităţi românofone din Serbia. Identitate lingvistică sau ceva mai mult?” in Români majoritari/Români minoritari: interferenţe şi coabitări lingvistice, literare şi etnologice (Iaşi: Academia Română,Institutul de Filologie Română “A. Philippide,” 2007), pp. 863–876; Biljana Sikimić, “Tragom terenskih istraživanja Emila Petrovića u Srbiji: Čokešina, Lokvei Ždrelo,” Probleme de filologie slavă XV (Timişoara, 2007), pp. 443–454.
2 In her new monograph on the Balkans, published in Serbian translation,
Marija Todorova draws attention to the fact that “cultural and social groups” onvarious analytical levels (local, regional, national, transitional) are conceptualized in relation to the ongoing processes of “construction” and “agreement.”
Marija Todorova, Dizanje prošlosti u vazduh: ogledi o Balkanu i Istočnoj Evropi(Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek., 2010), pp. 77–90. The author sees the subject ofalterity in the Balkans as controversial: as the structuralism of mid-20th century- 52 -

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insisting on the community as a whole, not just its linguistically representative spokespeople or reliable handers-down of traditional culture,also insists on a chronological average, i.e. a dynamic rendering of thepicture by all possible methods, of which one is repeated return visits tothe field.3

Field Research in the Banat
The empirical material for this work is the result of extensive fieldwork in Serbia and the neighbouring countries, the Romanian part beginning in 1999. Besides the authors’ narrowly academic objectives,
the research team has made all material publicly available in a digitalarchive, which at this moment contains close on 400 hours of the Romanian vernaculars spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Bulgaria. A great deal of material was also recorded in Serbian,due to the fact that all these speakers are at least bilingual, while many
are multilingual. All the data (audio, video and photographic) is available through the LAN network of the Serbian Academy of Sciences andArts. The archived Romanian language corpus is an oral one, but withthe video data and photographs, some rudimentary written texts of thesemainly oral vernaculars are provided. The methodology borrowed fromhas been replaced by constructivism, a deconstruction of epistemological instruments has occurred. Balkan studies still deal with marginal and marginalized
ethnic or religious groups and minorities (unlike Western European articles onalterity which recently deal with the majority, invisible up to now, because it
formed the standard against which Others were constructed). Globalization, theappearance of cultural hybrids, a new dialogical principle in representing “TheOther” impose a new scientific ethic. Todorova sees the future of alterity research in the examination of mobility, fluidity, the flow between what “The Other” is at one moment, becoming “I” in the next and vice-versa. This turnaroundwill unavoidably spawn other epistemological problems: research will need todiversify, the exclusively ethnic and national construction of alterity to change,and scholars will turn to other aspects such as politics, class, occupation, gender.
3 Sikimić, “Tragom terenskih istraživanja,” pp. 443–454.
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anthropological linguistics and evolved toward sociolinguistic subfields
of linguistic ideology and landscape.4
From the end of the 1990s, the entire complex of the Banat was
team-researched. The archive of the Institute for Balkan Studies, mentioned above, contains field material from the area in various local dialects of Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak andSerbian.5 Many of these local speeches can be considered endangered.
Linguistic fieldwork tended to make more use of older members of thevarious rural communities in Serbia (mainly speakers of Slavic languages
and Romanian vernaculars, the researchers’ own linguistic competence
dictating the choice of language). Most of the interviews were semi-directed, the discussions generally aimed at reconstructing the traditional
culture, but with the narratives in the vernacular for both academic andarchival purposes. The participants were also encouraged to choose theirpreferred topic for conversation.
The result of this field research into the Romanian language consists, for the moment, of one volume dealing with the language and identity of the Banyash Roma (Banjaši na Balkanu, 2005 and Bayash in theSouth Slav context, 2011, a special issue of the journal Piramida); a volume on Romanians in Serbian Banat,6 a collection of international papers
on the academic construct,7 and a series of articles covering subfields of
4 e.g. Biljana Sikimić, “Romanian Linguistic Identity in Today Serbia,” in D.
Suiogan, Ş. Mariş, C. Dărăbuş, eds., Cultural Spaces and Archaic Background(Baia Mare: Editura Univeristăţii de Nord; Editura Ethnologica, 2011), pp.
14–33.
5 Some recent anthropologists discuss the development of regional identityof all inhabitants of the Banat. cf. S. Adam, “Construction of Banat Regional
Identity through Life-Story Interviews,” in K. Roth, V. Vučinić-Nešković, eds.,
Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe 2 [Ethnologia Balcanica 12] (Berlin, 2008), pp. 11–121; M. Dincă, L. Ţîru, “Regional andEthnical Identity in the Rural Area of Timiş County,” Region, Regional Identity
and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe 2, pp. 23–134.
6 A. Sorescu-Marinković, ed., Caiete de teren. Torac – metodologia cercetării de teren (Novi Sad, 2006).
7 B. Sikimić, T. Ašić, eds., The Romance Balkans (Belgrade: Institute for Balkan Studies of SASA, 2008).
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Romanian dialectology and linguistic anthropology,8 or Vlach linguistic
anthropology.9
Members of the research team have published a series of studies
showing shared features, i.e. Serbian-Romanian and Serbian-Vlach
isoglosses in traditional culture. Ethnic and language boundary was perceived as a connecting factor when seen from without, from the researcher’s position. From the interviewee angle, the studies almost as a rule
perceived subjective differences in places where researchers would nothave looked, or in terms of “non-suggested” borders.10
8 e.g. Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković, “Imaginea alterităţii la românii din
Voivodina. Studiu de caz: Toracu-Mic,” Imaginea străinului, (Baia Mare: Editura Universităţii de Nord, Editura Ethnologica, 2009), pp. 131–149; Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković, “Petrovasâla sau cum se construieşte ‘acasă’,”
Tradiţia XI (XIII), 26–28 (29–31) (Novi Sad, 2005), pp. 20–21; AnnemarieSorescu-Marinković, “Românii din Banatul sârbesc: identitate şi memorie,”
Probleme de filologie slavă XIV (Timişoara, 2006), pp. 337–349; AnnemarieSorescu-Marinković “Mogućnosti konstrukcije manjinskog identiteta: jedna biografska priča Rumuna iz Vojvodine,” V. Stanovčić, ed., Položaj nacionalnihmanjina u Srbiji (Beograd: SANU, 2007), pp. 447–460.
9 Svetlana Ćirković, “(Etno)lingvistička istraživanja Vlaha u Srbiji,” Probleme de filologie slavă XIV (Timişoara, 2006), pp. 273–286; Svetlana Ćirković, “Tradicionalna kultura Vlaha severoistočne Srbije: mogućnosti sekundarne
analize terenske građe,” in V. Stanovčić, ed., Položaj nacionalnih manjina u
Srbiji (Beograd, 2007), pp. 447–480; Biljana Sikimić, “Humorni aspekt srpsko-vlaške jezičke komunikacije,” Radovi simpozijuma: jugoslovenski Banat,
kulturna i istorijska prošlost 4 (Novi Sad, 1999), pp. 112–118; Biljana Sikimić,
Annemarie Sorescu, “The Concept of Loneliness and Death among Vlachs inNortheastern Serbia,” Symposia. Journal for the Studies in Ethnology and Anthropology (Craiova: The Center for Studies in Folklife and Traditional Cultureof Dolj County, AIUS Publishing House, 2004), pp. 159–183; Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković, “Torac via Clec: Când biografia bate etnografia,” in A. Sorescu-Marinković, ed., Caiete de teren. Torac – metodologia cercetării de teren(Novi Sad, 2006), pp. 111–172, etc.
10 Aimed as it was at small ethnic groups in the diaspora, it follows that thesame research team has published a series of studies on the subject of The Other,alterity and boundaries. Marija Вучковић, “Други у дискурсу Марка Гурана,”Българските острови на Балканите (София, 2007), pp. 205–218; Mария- 55 -

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Historical Borders
The historical regions of the Balkans, today divided by state borders, continue to persist to some extent at local level. The legal systems
and national policies of the former Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, with
the River Danube as a border line, may be traced even in contemporary
attitudes towards minority languages, religions and ethnicity all over theВучкович, “Болгары – это мы или другие? (Само)идентификация павликaниз Баната,” Etnolinwistyka 20 (Lublin, 2008), pp. 333–348; MarijaVučković,“Language and Religion among Bulgarian and Croatian Roman Catholics in
the Serbian Banat,” in Ch. Voß, ed., Ottoman and Habsburg Legacies in the
Balkans. Language and Religion to the North and to the South of the Danube River, (München-Berlin: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2010), pp. 247–264; Мария
Илич, “Когда ‘они’ становятся ‘мы’ а когда ‘они’? Устный дискурс сербовиз Венгрии,” Etnolingwistyka. Problemy języka i kultury 20 (Lublin, 2008),
pp. 349–366; Marija Ilić, “Those Were All Serbian Villages by the Danube: The
Concept of Space in Collective Narratives of the Serbs in Hungary,” in Christian Voss, ed., Habsburg vs. Ottoman Legacies in the Balkans. Language andReligion to the North and to the South of the Danube River (München, Berlin:
Verlag Otto Sagner, 2010), pp. 265–289. Exploring alterity has become an important topic in Slavistic ethnolinguistics. An entire issue of the Polish magazine Etnolingwistyka 20 in 2008 was dedicated to this topic, and the papers aremostly based on folklore material from which safer conclusions can be drawn,
conclusions applicable to all, with some exceptions which point to the possibility of analyzing daily speech and oral material from the corpus of minority
languages. From their personal field material on Serbs in Hungary (Marija Ilić)
and Bulgarian Catholics in the Banat (Marija Vučković), both authors relativize
this static perception of alterity.
Through complex stratification and negotiation on the diffuse borders of an ethnic group, the author of this paper also dealt with the example of the Kosovo
enclave of Prilužje. From field research of Serbs in Bela Krajina (Slovenia)
linguist Tanja Petrović, longterm member of the Institute for Balkan Studies’
research team, applied theoretical concepts of linguistic ideology (names suchas Michael Silvestrein, Kathrin Woolard, Bambi Schieffelin, Nancy Dorian) toSouth Slavic studies. Several important contributions covering linguistic ideologies have been published recently in Serbia, thus opening a new and promising field of qualitative approach in Balkan linguistics, see, e.g., Tanja Petrović,- 56 -

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Balkans. At the risk of over-simplifying complex historical processes,
there are nonetheless traces of the pragmatic Habsburg policy of preserving the religious and linguistic identities of ethnic groups, and, on
the other hand, traces of Ottoman national policy toward ethnic groups,
based on the milet system. Milet identified people solely on the basis ofreligion; ethnicity played no role. As for Orthodox Christians, the Ottomans made no distinction between Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian or Romanian Orthodox believers.11
Another useful theoretical concept that sheds light on the development of the complex European system of language-religion-national identity may be found in Myhill’s concept on pre-modern national
churches (e.g. Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Serbs). This idea could usefully be applied to Balkan Studies, despite serious later criticism of some of
its aspects. Mayhill’s idea of a national language can be interpreted in
two distinct ways, either as the spoken language or the sacred/ancestrallanguage of a group, and this distinction has played a crucial role in thedevelopment of nationalist movements intended to bring together people
who speak the same language but have different religious affiliations.12
From the point of view of Balkan Studies, it is important that certain
Balkan groups established national churches in pre-modern times. These“Studyng the Minority Groups’ Identities in the Balkans from the Perspective of
Language Ideology,” Balcanica XXXIV (Beograd, 2004), pp. 173–188; Tanja
Petrović, Srbi u Beloj Krajini. Jezička ideologija u procesu zamene jezika (Beograd: Balkanološki institut SANU, 2009), for Serbian communities in Slovenia;
Ivana Vučina Simović, Jelena Filipović, Etnički identitet i zamena jezika u sefardskoj zajednici u Beogradu (Beograd: Zavod za izdavanje udžbenika, 2009),
for Sephardic communities in Serbia.
11 This historical heritage is considered crucial for Balkan historical and contemporary sociolinguistics, see, e.g., recent volume on Ottoman and Habsburg
Legacies, 2010, covering the Balkans and Central Europe, and the volume on
the imperial heritage reflected in the culture and literature of the Balkans. D.
Bošković, ed., Imperijalni okviri književnosti i kulture (Kragujevac: FILUM,
2010); D. P. Hupchick, Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism (NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 133–135.
12 John Myhill, Language, Religion and National Identity in Europe and the
Middle East (John Benjamins, 2006), pp. 3–4.
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groups interpreted their modern national identity as being inherently associated with their religious affiliation and their sacred and ancestral language, even if some of the members did not speak this sacred/ancestrallanguage. Such groups consider themselves different from other groups
who based their national identity on spoken language, even if it was thesame spoken language.13 There has been reasoned criticism of some of
Myhill’s ideas in the meantime, but the sociolinguistic conclusions remain undisputed.14
From the point of view of oral history, another more importantboundary was set in Banat itself. At the end of World War I, there wasa territorial dispute about Banat’s division between two newly-formed
states – Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians
which was resolved by the Peace conference in Paris in 1919. The newborder left 65,000 Romanians in the Serbian part of the Banat, a mainlyrural population, while most of the intelligentsia opted for Romania.
Researchers in the humanities mostly deal with this border15; it isalso naturally important for those interested in the subjective perceptionof their interviewees; from the anthropological point of view, Aleksandra
Djurić’s study sheds light on its significance as a symbol.16

13 Myhill, Language, Religion and National Identity, pp. 3–4.
14 cf. Erez Levon, “John Myhill: Language, Religion and National Identity
in Europe and the Middle East (Discourse Approaches to Society and Culture),
John Benjamins, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2006, ix + 300 pp.,” Language
Policy 8 (2009), pp. 169–171.
15 Glogor Popi, Românii din Banatul sârbesc (Panciova-Bucureşti: Editura
Libertatea, Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, 1993); Mirjana Maluckov, Rumuni u Banatu (Novi Sad: Vojvođanski muzej, 1985); Laura Spariosu, “Rumuni
u Banatu,” in M. Maticki, V. Jović, eds., Banat kroz vekove. Slojevi kultura
Banata (Beograd: Vukova zadužbina, 2010), pp. 599–620.
16 Aleksandra Djurić, “The Cross with Four Pillars as the Cebtre of Religious
Gathering: Discussing Micro Regional Identity,” in K. Roth, V. Vučinić-Nešković, eds., Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe 1[Ethnologia Balkanica 11] (Berlin, 2008), pp. 171–184.
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Three Romanian Speaking Communities in Serbia:
Dialectological Perspective
The dialectological perception of the Romanian language in modern day Serbia is still tainted by ideology. At the time dialectologicalfield research was being published, some of the settlements were part ofa much larger country, Yugoslavia, but attitudes towards the Romanian
language were ambivalent even at that time.
Dialectologist Radu Flora (1922–1989), whose work on Romanian
dialectology is today considered a classic, was extremely knowledgeable
on the Serbian Banat and the historical south-Danube Romanian dialects,
especially Istro-Romanian. In Romance studies in the second half of the20th century in the former Yugoslavia, there was a dialectological silenceon the subject of Romanian speeches in northeast Serbia, indicative of
auto-censorship and a strong taboo on the topic under socialism. Flora’s unparalleled knowledge of the situation of Romanian language use
in Serbia (predominantly Banat ones) is clear from comments made inpassing on his dialectological studies of the Banat.17 In all humanistic
disciplines dealing with Romanians in the Serbian part of the Banat, thewidely accepted internal division is onto Banaćani (people from Banat),
Erdeljci (people from Ardeal) and Oltenci (people from Oltenia). Today’s field research shows that in the dialectological respect, there has
been a levelling off in favour of the dominant Banat dialect, and that
insistence on these divisions necessarily comes down to a reconstructionof the former state of affairs. However, the undisputed authority of previous generations of linguists has resulted in the old standards still being
accepted by contemporary researchers.
An article by Sikimić18 follows the ideological slanting of dialectological material required for Romanian linguistic atlases produced inanother political environment: Romania. These are three sites on the
17 Radu Flora, Dijalektološki profil rumunskih banatskih govora sa vršačkog područja (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1962), and particularly Radu Flora,
Rumunski banatski govori u svetlu lingvističke geografije (Beograd: Filološki
fakultet, 1971).
18 Sikimić, “Tragom terenskih istraživanja,” pp. 443–454.
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ground in Serbia which the distinguished Romanian linguist and dialectologist Emil Petrovici investigated in the field in 1937, as part of thework for the Romanian Linguistic Atlas II (Atlas Lingvistic Român): theRomanian ‘Oltenian’ site of Lokve/Sân Mihai in the Banat, the Vlach‘Ungurean’ (Banat) site of Ždrelo near Petrovac na Mlavi, and the Bayash‘Muntenian’ site of Čokešina in Podrinje.
In accordance with the academic views of his time, Emil Petrovici
places the Romanian speaking population of Čokešina (for whom theterm today would be, for instance, Karavlachs or Bayash) in quotation
marks, but does not do so with the population of the Vlach village ofŽdrelo (‘Romanians’ vs. Romanians). Despite these ethnic qualifications, today considered dubious, his linguistic conclusions and the material he amassed in the field have lost none of their value. Emil Petrovici
published his field research of the Mlava valley in September 1937 (collected papers entitled Notele de folclor de la românii din Valea Mlavei,
published in 1942). From dialectological data gathered in Ždrelo, he
concludes that the Vlachs had arrived in the Mlava valley from the area
north of the Danube by the early 18th century at the latest. He compares
their local speech and folklore material with the speech and folklore of
the Almaj River valley, in the south of the Romanian Banat, an area hehad previously explored in person.19
In a collection of dialectological texts for the Romanian Dialectological Atlas, Emil Petrovici also published seven examples from the
Romanian village of Lokve in the Banat. Romanian speeches of the
Serbian Banat were studied from the dialectological aspect on several
occasions,20 and here the dialectologically specific Lokve settlement became a sine qua non for other dialectologists: in recent times Romanca

19 Today Ždrelo is a Vlach gastarbeiter village, surrounded by Serbian villages (Bistrica, Šetonje, Ćovdin and Vezičevo), which were included in researchby the team from the SANU Institute for Balkan Studies. Examples of the contemporary state of Romanian speech from Ždrelo village were published in:
Sikimić, “Tragom terenskih istraživanja,” pp. 443–454.
20 Particularly Flora, Rumunski banatski govori.
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Iovanovici deals especially with Oltenian speeches in Banatsko Novo
Selo/Satu Nou, Lokve and Straža/Straja.21
However, none of these studies show the particular religion of the
Lokve community, and indeed researchers face difficulties in the use ofquestionnaires alluding to traditional spiritual culture in a multi-confessional field. Ethno-dialectological texts published by Emil Petrovici do
not indicate the existence of a large Romanian Nazarene community in
Lokve, which certainly existed at the time.22 The questionnaire for the
linguistic atlas was conceived on the basis of the responses anticipated from members of a Christian Orthodox culture, to which neo-Protestant communities, such as the Nazarenes of Lokve, would not havea response. Modern anthropological-linguistic researchers of this typeof community or individuals belonging to different confessions require
specially adjusted questionnaires).23

Three Romanian Speaking Communities of Serbia:
Anthropological-linguistic Perspective
For the requirements of anthropological linguistics, a division into
three Romanian speaking communities in Serbia seemed the most suit21 Romanţa Iovanovici, Graiurile olteneşti din Banatul de sud. Aspecte fonetice şi morfosintactice (Panciova: Editura Libertatea, 2006).
22 This fact has also been marginalised in historical and ethnographic syntheses on Romanians in the Banat: ethnologist Mirjana Maluckov only mentions
the existence of Nazarenes among Romanians in the Banat, historian MirceaMăran in his review of the history and culture of Romanian settlements in the
Serbian Banat does not mention Nazarenes in Lokve, and a glossy historicalmonograph on Romanians in the Banat by historian Gligor Popi, only mentions them in passing. Mircea Măran, Localităţi bănăţene (Panciova: Libertatea,Timişoara: Augusta, 2003); Popi, Românii din Banatul sârbesc, p. 210; Maluckov, Rumuni u Banatu, p. 15; The individual work with the interviewee is a need,due to the sensitivity of the issue and the stigma which still dogs members ofsmall religious communities in Serbia; besides Lokve village, interviews with
Nazarenes also took place in other Banat villages. Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović, “Minorităţi duble şi invizibile: românii năzărineni din Voivodina,” Anuar.
Institutul de cultură al românilor din Voivodina (Zrenjanin, 2009), pp. 201–216.
23 Djurić Milovanović, “Minorităţi duble şi invizibile,” pp. 201–216.
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able, since only it enables the desired complex approach in which theshared factor would be the same language, not religion or ethnic identity.
The division is, of course, an academic construct and frequently does notcoincide with the perception of the members of these communities.24 The
first group are the Romanians of the Banat region, north of the Danube,
belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church, using Romanian as thelanguage of divine service and the revised Julian calendar. The religious
union of Orthodox Serbs and Romanians in the Habsburg Empire wasdissolved in 1864. Data from the 2011 census gives 29,332 Romanians
as living in Serbia (25,410 in the province of Vojvodina). During thetime of Austra-Hungary Banat region was one single administrative unit.
After the First World War, Banat Romanians were divided by the stateborder between Yugoslavia and Romania. This paper focuses only on the
Romanians from the former Yugoslav and today’s Serbian Banat. Rather
different was the historical destiny of Vlachs: before the First World War
they lived in the Kingdom of Serbia, which became an integral parto of
the Kingdom of Yigoslavia. Vlachs in contemporary Serbia live southof the Danube and are Serbian Orthodox, using mainly Church Slavonicas liturgical language and the Old Style calendar. According to the 2011
census, there are 35,330 Vlachs living in Serbia (170 in the province of
Vojvodina). The third group are the Bayash, Banyash, or băieşi group,
ascribed by others as Romanian Gypsies and who live throughout Serbia,
except for southern Serbia and Kosovo. They are Romanian Orthodox,
Serbian Orthodox, or Roman Catholic, depending mainly on the religionof the majority population in their place of settlement. For the moment
they do not have minority status, and consequently there is no available
24 cf. Otilija Hedešan, “Jedan teren: Trešnjevica u dolini Morave,” in B. Sikimić, ed., Banjaši na Balkanu. Identitet etničke zajednice (Beograd: Balkanološki
institut SANU, 2005), pp. 13–106; Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković, “To Be or
Not to Be Romanian: Field Emotions in Romanian Speaking Communities from
Serbia,” in E. Marushiakova, ed., Dynamics of National Identity and Transnational Identities in the Process of European Integration (Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2007), pp. 55–66; Sorescu-Marinković, “Comunităţi românofone
din Serbia,” pp. 863–876; Sikimić, “Tragom terenskih istraživanja,” pp.
443–454.
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demographic data. The 2011 census allowed the option for Baysh people
to declare their own ethnicity, and the result is 80 Bayash in Serbia as awhole. The estimated figure is over 10,000 people.
On the one hand, it is possible to suggest the existence of three Romanian speaking communities in Serbia (Romanian, Vlach and Bayash),on the other – it is possible to distinguish four different religious systems
which couse differences in traditional culture: Serbian Orthodox Church(Vlachs and Bayash), Romanian Orthodox Church (Romanians andBayash), Roman Catholic Church (Bayash) and Neo-protestant Churches (Romanians and Bayash).
From the linguistic ethnography point of view, there are at least
three terminological systems covering traditional culture, due to the factthat different calendars are used (the Julian calendar, the revised Juliancalendar and even the Gregorian calendar among Roman Catholic Banyash in the Bačka region). A salient characteristic of both the Romanianand Vlach communities is a well preserved Romanian terminologicalsystem of calendar feasts. There are some Romanian Vlach feasts that do
not appear on the official Serbian Orthodox calendar, because they fallon a different day (e.g. Mătcălau, Joi verde, Ropotin, Ziua ursului, etc.).
Neo-Protestant communities develop ad hoc terminological systems depending on the language of evangelization (Serbian or standard
Romanian). We see these different linguistic strategies as a promising
field of research both for anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics.
Evangelization among Romanians in the villages around the town of
Vršac has a long tradition and the same process has recently started in the
Banyash settlements to the north of Danube. On the other hand, evangelization among the Romanian language communities south of the River
Danube is practically non-existent and even stigmatised. It is hard to
avoid the conclusion that the ancient border formed by the River Danube
exists even today in shaping attitudes toward neo-Protestant churches.
Field work data is usually obtained from the less educated membersof the older generations, as this also fulfills the dialectological criteria.
The conversations were held in the participant’s first language or dialect.
Applied qualitative analysis discovered the relationship of “objective,”“linguistic” differences that even today reflect dialect stratification andexisting “subjective” or “perceptive” differences that lead to local or re- 63 -

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gional stratification (e.g. Romanians in Banat are seen as coming from
Codru vs. Pusta, that is “the highlands” and “the low lands”). From thelinguistic point of view, this stratification can be seen as a “minimal-difference” one, being based only on the lexicon within the same dialect.
Romanians are in a peculiar position in the larger Banat towns(apart from Vršac where there are 1,761 Romanians according to the2011 census), as these places have no Romanian Orthodox churches, noroffer any possibility of education in the language. There are, however, cultural institutions: the Bureau for Vojvodina Romanian culture in
Zrenjanin, founded in 2008 (according to the same census, there are 635
Romanians living in Zrenjanin) and the Libertatea publishing house in
Pančevo (706 Romanians). A significant number of Romanian intellectuals live in the capital of the province, Novi Sad (772), where there
is a chair of Romanian Language at the Philosophy Department of the
University and central publishing and media houses in Romanian, but
no classes in the language at lower educational levels, nor a Romanian
Orthodox church. By comparison, large, ethnically compact Romanianvillages in the Banat have over a thousand people (Lokve 1,819, Torak
1,780, Vladimirovac 1,424 according to the 2002 census, due to the factthat the 2011 census data on ethnicity in minor, rural settlements are not
yet available).

Negotiating with the Interviewee: Internal Stratification of
Romanianness in the Banat
A dynamic picture of negotiating Romanianness appeared from theresults of a 2005 study of the village of Mali Torak in Central Banat.25
This was a very lengthy conversation (approximately 180 minutes) with
an elderly interviewee, born in the neighbouring, ethnically mixed village of Klek/Clec.26 Embracing the theories of Romanian ethnologist
25 Sorescu-Marinković, “Mogućnosti konstrukcije manjinskog identiteta,” pp.
447–460.
26 The transcript of this interview was published in excerpts, and it was also
the subject of an analysis of field work methodology. Sorescu-Marinković,“Torac via Clec,” pp. 111–172.
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Romanians in seRbian banat

Sanda Golopentia, who explains the concepts “community of memories”
and “collective memory” on the example of Germans in the Romanianpart of the Banat, Sorescu-Marinković analyses the attachment to Romanianness through critical discourse analysis and views it through a seriesof concentric circles. Since the fieldwork carried out by the Institute forBalkan Studies is qualitative one, the preferred interviewees are elderly
people, and therefore the attitudes of younger generation age group remain unknown.
The first circle of Romanianness is represented by the respectablefamily from which the interviewee herself comes. After the family circle, less numerous but with strong affective marking, comes the circle ofRomanians from the village. However, since the interviewee was born in
one Romanian village and married into another neighbouring community
in the village of Mali Torak/Toracu Mic, her identification constantly oscillates towards one or other of the two settlements. Sorescu-Marinković
assumes that the interviewee belongs in equal measure to the communities of both villages.27 The third Romanian circle includes settlements in
the Serbian Banat which differ from one another depending on the local
sub-dialect and dress code. The discourse shows a series of distinctions:
between the two Romanian villages (Klek and Jankov Most/Iancaid) on
the basis of the spoken language; between another two Romanian villages (Klek and Mali Torak) on the one hand, and a third (Ovča/Ovcea) on
the other – because of some details in funeral customs; between Klek andMali Torak on the one hand and Veliki Torak/Toracu Mare on the other– in national costume and speech. And while the inhabitants of Klek arecalled arđil’eni/noi îs dân Аrđeal, and those of Jankov-Most olteni, thepopulation of Veliki Torak remains non-specific, they are described as
coming from “another place” (noi îs dân Аrđeal, ăşća-s dân altu loc [weare from Ardeal, those others are from another place]), perhaps due tothe fact that the term bănăţăni [people from the Banat], quite appropriate
for naming the Romainians from Veliki Torak (at least from the linguistic
standpoint), is reserved for indigenous Serbs from the Banat (Ş-ăia toţor fost lale, cum să spuńe, cum le dzâśe la ăşća, la bănăţăni [They were
27 Sorescu-Marinković, “Mogućnosti konstrukcije manjinskog identiteta,” pp.
447–460.
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Biljana Sikimić

Map: Serbian Banat: settlements mentioned in this article- 66 -

Romanians in seRbian banat

also all Lalas as they call them, those people from Banat]). Ethnic termn
Lala, mentioned by the participant, is habitual name of indigenous Serbs
in Banat.
Sorescu-Marinković also proposes a sort of interviewee’s mental
map of Romanian settlements in the Banat.28 Klek and Mali Torak: theformer is her native village where so many of her loved ones are buried at
the cemetery, the latter the place where she has been living for more thanhalf a century and in which she feels at home. Then, Jankov Most – theclosest village to which elderly people from Klek used to go to church
and where many girls from Klek were married. There follows Ovča – thevillage to which Romanians from Klek were at one time relocated andwith which family connections exist. Then come Ečka/Ecica and Sutjeska/Sarcea, settlements linked to the oral history of the interviewee’s ancestors. The narration also mentions Veliki Torak/Toracu Mare, but by
way of comparison with the Romanian villages closer to the interviewee,
and the village of Glogonj/Glogoni, mentioned only once because of a
distant family connection.
The fourth circle of Romanianness is a trans-border one. It includes
both Romanians from the Serbian and from the Romanian Banat. Romanian interviewees from the Serbian Banat often perceive the place inwhich they live as a space between two territories, between Romania
and Serbia, which are, again, not perceived as two separate countries intheir discourse.29 In this way, the capital city of the Romanian Banat,
Temišvar/Timişoara often comes up in the interviewee’s discourse (unlike Zrenjanin, the closest town in Vojvodina, which is mentioned very
sporadically and almost always merely as “the town”). In her analysis, Sorescu-Marinković concludes that “Timişoara is a familiar space,rather too far away to be included in living space, but representing an

28 Sorescu-Marinković, “Mogućnosti konstrukcije manjinskog identiteta,” pp.
447–460.
29 For more details on border identity see Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković,“The Vlachs of North-Eastern Serbia: Fieldwork and Field Methods Today,”Symposia – Journal for Studies in Ethnology and Anthropology (Craiova, Regional Museum of Oltenia, 2006), pp. 125–142.
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Biljana Sikimić

area of prestige.30 However, while the special Romania (Timişoara) is
a familiar space with which identification is possible, Romania in general represents an alterity.” Thus “negotiated” concentric circles do not
represent strictly geographical limitations but rather affective and family
ones. Equally, borders, overlapping, dissection of space do not exist
synchronously but rather diachronically, they are lumped together onlyin the interviewee’s discourse.31

Negotiating Borders: The Role of the Researcher
We will show the role of the researcher in the immediate construction of a complex Romanian identity in the Banat in the example of aninterview carried out in 2005 in the village of Ritiševo/Ritişor. The recording is kept in the Digital Archive of the Institute for Balkan Studies
under Ritišor 1 BS, A. It is a paragraph from an interview by Biljana
Sikimić (BS) and Otilia Hedeşan (OH). Transcription: Biljana Sikimić;
revision: Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković.
The interview took place in 2005, at a time when there were administrative obstacles to communication between the Serbian and Romanianparts of the Banat and difficulty in obtaining visas. The participant is aman of middle age, a Romanian from Ritiševo village in Central Banat(P). The interview is partly in Serbian and partly in Romanian, since thesecond researcher (OH) is from Romania and does not speak Serbian.
Sociolinguistic positions of the interviewee and two researchers
are not equal: P is bilingual (speaks Romanian as his first language, andSerbian as his second), the researcher BS speaks Romanian as a for30 Sorescu-Marinković, “Mogućnosti konstrukcije manjinskog identiteta,” pp.
447–460.
31 Sorescu-Marinković deals with “ethnic Others” from the point of viewof Romanians in the Banat, these being Germans, Serbs and Roma. Sorescu-Marinković, “Imaginea alterităţii,” pp. 131–149. A fragmentary picture of
the perception of Germans from the same angle is also given in Biljana Sikimić,“De la Torac la Clec: informaţia minimală de teren,” in A. Sorescu-Marinković,
ed., Caiete de teren. Torac – metodologia cercetării de teren (Novi Sad, 2006),
pp. 173–201.
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Romanians in seRbian banat

eign language. Some ad hoc “borders” of the imagined origin of all theparticipant in the interview were also established: P is insider from the
Romanian community in the Serbian Banat, OH is Romanian from the
Romanian Banat, and should be taken for granted as an unbiased expert
for Romanian culture and identity; the researcher BS is also taken for
granted as an unbiased expert for Romanian culture and identity comingfrom the majority community in Serbia.
P: Ne, ovi [Romi u Ritiševu] nisu Banjaši, oni su Banjaši u Ulmi. To
je jedna vrsta Cigana kao kod Apatina i, gore prema Somboru. To jejedna druga vrsta Cigana [No, these (Roma in Ritiševo) are not Bayash,
the Bayash live in Uljma village. This is a kind of Gypsies like those at
Apatin and up towards Sombor. This is another kind of Gypsies].
BS: A vi znate i za te? Cum ştiţi? [You know about them? How do you know?]
P: E, kako znam, bio sam. Samo da Vam objasnim malo. Am fost, vă
spun româńeşce, ca să înţel’eagă şî doamna, elector prântru aleźerea
consiliului naţional al românilor dân ăla. Şî ei or vińit dă la Apatin, laVârşeţ, ţigań, napoi cu trei ańi. La Vârşeţ în sala Steria să śară un învăţător. Lângă Apatin, staţi că vă spun şî satu cum îl cheamă [Eh, how do I
know, I was there. Only let me explain a little. I was, I’ll tell you in Romanian, so that the lady can understand too, the elector for the electionof the national council of Romanians. And they, the Gypsies, came from
Apatin to Vršac, three years ago. To Vršac, to the Sterija hall to look fora teacher. Near Apatin, wait, let me tell you what the village is called].
BS: Vajska [Vajska].
P: Vajska, aşa. Acolo unđ-or cădzut rachece dân Croaţia. Şî l’-o dărâmat casel’e. Or vińit după un învăţător, în urmă cu zece-doişpe ani l’-omurit dascălu, şî nu mai aveau dascăl. Şî nişte ţâgań veńau să ceară dascăl român că nu mai ştiu româneşce şî ei învăţau l’imba română la, Vaiscă, în Vaisca. Avem până la Sombor, ńe ocupăm mult cu aceste lucrurişî cunoaşcem, am fost elector păntru consiliu naţional în două mandace[Vajska, that’s it. Where the rockets from Croatia fell. And destroyed
their houses. They came for a teacher, their teacher had died ten-twelve
years ago and they no longer have a teacher. And some Gypsies cameto ask for a Romanian teacher because they no longer know Romanian,and they had studied Romanian in Vajska, Vajska village. We have all
up to Sombor, we dealt a lot with these matters and we know, I was theelector for the national council for two terms in office].
BS: Nu s-au înclus în Uniunea românilor, da? [They didn’t join the Community of Romanians, right?]- 69 -

Biljana Sikimić

P: Ei veńau aşa să, nu, nu înţelegeau, ei veńau, ca să, s-or inclus, erau
membri. Aveam Uniunea românilor, elimină nişte legitimaţii dă români,care poace să ńe apere în înstituţâl’i dă stat, şi instituţâl’i lege internaţionale, şciţi spatele. Comunitatea românilor din Serbia. Ş-aceste lucruri
ne dă facilităţi prăntru primirea vizelor a Româńiei [They used to comelike that, they didn’t understand, they used to come, they got involved,
they were members. We had a Community of Romanians, it issues identity cards to Romanians, which can protect us before government institutions and institutions of international law, you know, protect our backs.
The Community of Romanians from Serbia. And these things make iteasier for us to get Romanian visas].
OH: Şi ţigańi s-au inclus? [And the Gypsies became involved as well?]
P: Îs incluşi. Ei spun că nu-s ţigańi. Ştiţi, problema lor este o problemă
dificilă. Ei nu răcunosc că-s ţigańi, că vorbăsc româneşte, nu vorbescţiganeşte [They are involved. They say they’re not Gypsies. You know,
their problem is difficult. They won’t admit that they’re Gypsies because
they speak Romanian, they don’t speak Gypsy].

The participant’s undisputed Romanianness is emphasized by thefact that, on two occasions, he had been elector for the election of the
Romanian national council and so acquired the status of competent insider. The interview with the researchers is on the Bayash from Vajska in
the Bačka region, who are close to the Bayash of the neighbouring Banat
village of Uljma, therefore a third party, who is absent. This is negotiation over Bayash ethnic identity: Bayash Romanian language identity is
undisputed both by the researchers and the participant, a Romanian fromthe Banat. Researcher OH does not dispute the Roma (“Gypsy”) identity of the Bayash from Vajska, part, of course, of a strategy of gaining
as much information as possible from the participant. The second researcher (BS) presents herself as an expert on the Bayash question. This
interview is part of a process of reluctant negotiation on the Romanianidentity of the Bayash which has been going on for the last ten years or
so in the Banat (in fact in the province of Vojvodina), but not south of the
Danube. Borders are set by both researchers and participant: “They say
they are not Gypsies,” “They won’t admit that they are Gypsies.”
Having the fuzzy linguistics theory as a starting point, Sikimić analyzes geographical borders mentioned in the same conversation
fragment: the settlement of Vajska in the Bačka region is situated in the- 70 -

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westernmost borderland of the province of Vojvodina.32 In the easternmost borderland is the town of Vršac, at the time of conversation (2005)
a local urban center for the Romanian community in the Banat, in the immediate vicinity of the village of Ritiševo. By comparison to this imagined center of Banat Romanianness at the time, the Bayash settlement of
Vajska is the farthest possible periphery. In the year 2013 this imagined
center is, at least formally, the town of Zrenjanin housing the Institute forRomanian culture in Vojvodina.
The “strong” Romanian border, requiring valid visas for Serbian
citizens, was “softer” for members of Romanian community. Participantfrom Ritiševo belives that this circumstance has influenced the Bayashstruggle for the formalization of their Romanianness.
Immediately before the quoted fragment, the interview dwelt on the
topic of (undisputed) Roma living in Ritiševo. These Roma are known
by the researchers to use the local Romanian dialect even in informal
communication among themselves, but this fact was not the subject ofraising the problem of their (Roma) identity.33

Three Romanian-speaking Communities or More?
Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković takes a step further in raising the
problem of the boundaries of the three Romanian-speaking communities,
starting from this division and pointing out the fact that some other groups
in Serbia also speak Romanian, groups whose numbers are difficult todetermine.34 These are Romanian immigrants of more recent times, whohave arrived in the Banat and northeastern Serbia in more significant
32 Biljana Sikimić, “Rumuni u Vojvodini: subjektivne granice,” in S. Gudurić,ed., Jezici i kulture u vremenu i prostoru (Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, 2012),
pp. 681–691.
33 More details on multilingualism of Ritiševo Roma in Biljana Sikimić,
Annemarie Sorescu-Marinković “The Linguistic Richness of Roma in Serbia:
Banat and Its Multilingual Dimension,” Maja Miskovic, ed., Roma Educationin Europe. Practices, Policies and Politics (London and New York: Routledge,2013), pp. 176–177.
34 Sorescu-Marinković, “Comunităţi românofone din Serbia,” pp. 863–876.
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numbers following the Romanian revolution of 1989, and Roma in Romanian speaking villages (such as Ritiševo), who, being multilingual,also speak the local Romanian dialect in daily communication.
From the 1990s onward, migrant workers began to leave Romania
in significant numbers. Serbia (and before it Yugoslavia) was one of thecountries on the list patronised by Romanian migrants not only becauseof its proximity but also for linguistic reasons. The author points to themarriage migrations (whose representatives she calls “new Romanians”)
as the “invisible migration”: Romanian women arrive in the villages ofnortheastern Serbia as part of the seasonal work force and frequently
settle there permanently. The Vlachs have the term românoaice (Romanian woman originally from Romania) unlike the term românce whichpertains to autochthonous Vlach women from Serbia. In the sociolinguistic sense, the influence of the more recent process of Vlachs goingaway to school in Romania is also significant, a process which follows
a time-honoured custom in educating Romanians from the Banat.35 The
process of arranging marriages with Romanian women from Romania
has an even stronger tradition in the Banat.
Another “invisible” Romanian-speaking group in the Banat are economic migrants from northeastern Serbia to whom the Vlach speech of
the Romanian language is a first tongue. They are frequently referred to
as “Srbijanci” by the autochthonous Romanian population. The Bayashin the Banat, migrants from northeastern Serbia, are also often defined
as “Srbijanci.” A couple of individual cases were studied by chance inSouth Banat (for instance, in the Romanian villages of Straža/Straja andKuštilj/Coştei).
Along with all the active Romanian language interviewees wehave mentioned, we should also add another “para-Romanian-speaking”
group of Aromanian descendants in Serbia who live dispersed, for themost part in town settlements, and who are presently experiencing a kindof revitalization of their “heritage language.” In Pančevo, a Banat town
settlement, the Aromanian language is currently in the process of being
revived by a non-government organization (In Medias Res). The language is taught by qualified professors of Aromanian using textbooks
35 Sorescu-Marinković, “Comunităţi românofone din Serbia,” pp. 869–871.
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Romanians in seRbian banatfrom Romania.36 There is an Association of Aromanians (Lunjina) in
Belgrade, and among its members are active speakers of the Aromanian
language.37

Final Remarks
Several factors have helped bring about an awareness of the need
to form a dynamic interactive epistemology as part of the broadest possible anthropological-linguistic field work among different minorities, andwith local majority groups too. Work with the ethnically complex ruralcommunities of the Banat, particularly its Romanian speaking communities, led to a revision of predetermined academic positions. Throughanalysis of interviews in the field, information was acquired as a resultof negotiation, subjective and fragmentary, but resulting in an indubitably dynamic picture. As a method, joint field research has added to thecomplexity and dynamism of the picture (as a temporary fixing of the situation) with the participation in the team of researchers of varying gender, age, language knowledge, scientific background and ethnic origin.
Notwithstanding the fact that the interviewees often perceive the teamas a whole, a dynamic epistemology is possible because of the synchronous adjustment of the community to the various researchers. The next
important factor is contemporary local context that can differ even fromhouse to house in one rural settlement. The possibility of comparable
research in urban communities becomes a matter of chance. The fragmented nature of minority communities in modern urban settings enables
work only with individuals known to the researcher, or with people whoare politically or culturally engaged. This ultimately leads to auto-censorship of the interview, and auto-correction of its linguistic expression:
only a step away from erasing all subjective boundaries.
36 Aromanian classes have been taught for 3 years as part of an Open Language Workshop, two hours per week, two semesters per year.
37 For the sociolinguistic image of the Aromanian language in Serbia, see
Zoran Plasković, “Status i etnički identitet Cincara između očekivanja i stvarnosti,” in B. Sikimić, ed., Skrivene manjine na Balkanu (Beograd: Balkanološki
institut SANU, 2004), pp. 147–156.
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