Capacity development for underrepresented communities/Research

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Research

Implementation

Evaluation

The research phase aimed to explore the current state of the identified underrepresented communities and was conducted in the period from 1 June to 31 August 2022. It consisted of two research tools:

• a survey distributed to members of the community
• an interview with experts about the community

Aromanian language

Survey questions

▼

Demographics

Q1. Gender: (single choice)

• Male
• Female

Q2. Age: (single choice)

• under 18
• 18–30
• 30–40
• 40–50
• 50–60
• over 60

Q3. Residence: (short answer)

• __________________

Q4. Level of education: (single choice)

• First level: Primary education
• Second level: Vocational education
• Third level: Three-year secondary school
• Fourth level: Four-year secondary education
• Fifth level: Specialist education
• Sixth level: Bachelor's degree
• Seventh level: Master degree
• Eighth level: Doctor of Philosophy

Q5. Are you employed? (single choice)

• Yes
• No

Q6. How do you access Internet? (multiple choice)

• from a mobile phone
• from a tablet
• from a laptop computer
• from a personal computer
• from another device

Language

Q7. What is your proficiency level in speaking Aromanian? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q8. What is your proficiency level in Aromanian writing? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q9. How did you learn Aromanian? (multiple choice)

• within family
• with friends
• at school/faculty
• at courses
• __________________

Q10. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements about the Aromanian language in Macedonia. (checkbox grid)

Statement	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Agree	Strongly agree	No idea
Aromanian in spoken form is endangered.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Aromanian in written form is endangered.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Aromanian is well-represented in the Macedonian media.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Printed materials in Aromanian are easily accessible.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Digital materials in Aromanian are easily accessible.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝

Wikipedia

Q11. How do you use Wikipedia? (multiple choice)

• as a reader
• as an editor

Q12. How often do you use Wikipedia? (single choice)

• more than once daily
• once daily
• once weekly
• once monthly
• less than once monthly

Q13. What language editions of Wikipedia do you use? (multiple choice)

• Aromanian
• Macedonian
• Albanian
• Turkish
• Serbian
• Bosnian
• Romani
• English
• other

Q14. Have you got a Wikipedia account? (single choice)

• Yes
• No

Q15. Have you heard of the other Wikimedia projects? (multiple choice)

• Wikimedia Commons
• Wikidata
• WIktionary
• Wikisource
• Wikiquote
• Wikinews
• Wikiversity
• Wikivoyage
• Wikispecies
• none

Q16. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements about the coverage of the Aromanian culture on Wikipedia. (checkbox grid)

Statement	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Agree	Strongly agree	No idea
Topics about the Aromanian culture are well-covered on Wikipedia.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Wikipedia contains sufficient number of articles about famous Aromanians.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Articles on topics about the Aromanian culture and famous Aromanians on Wikipedia suffice in size.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Contents in articles on topics about the Aromanian culture and famous Aromanians are reliable.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝

Survey findings

Demographics

• Most of the surveyed speakers are employed (81.3%) and hold an academic degree (79.9%).
• About one half of the surveyed are aged under 40 (50.7%), with the 18–30 age group being the largest (29.9%).
• Slightly over a half of the speakers reside in Skopje (53.0%), a significant minority lives in Bitola (18.7%) and the rest indicated 6 other towns in Macedonia or a place abroad.
• A vast majority of speakers access Internet from a mobile phone (88.1%), with a significant share using a PC or a laptop (41.8% each).

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Language

• Most of the surveyed stated that they can speak some Aromanian (88.1%), but only about a third can speak it at a native level. However, when it comes to writing, the figures go down even though the majority still has some proficiency in writing (73.1%), but only a sixth indicated Aromanian writing at a native level. There is a weak tendency that older speakers have higher proficiency in both speaking (ρ=0.22) and writing (ρ=0.14). A dominant share of the surveyed learnt Aromanian within their family (93.3%).
• A large majority of speakers opine that Aromanian is endangered in both spoken (84.3%) and written form (85.8%). Similarly, most people think that the language is not well-represented in the Macedonian media (88.8%), and there are not enough printed (87.3%) as well as digital materials in the language (83.6%). Younger generations are somewhat more pessimistic regarding the status of the language in the Macedonian society.

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Wikipedia

• All surveyed speakers read Wikipedia, but very few of them edit it (3.0%). In the light of this, only 6.7% have a Wikipedia account. About one third use Wikipedia on a weekly basis, with almost a third using it more frequently and slightly above a third less frequently.
• The English Wikipedia (75.4%) and the Macedonian Wikipedia (65.7%) are the most popular editions. In addition, 14.9% of the surveyed speakers use the Aromanian edition.
• A little above two thirds have heard of the other Wikimedia projects, with Wiktionary (34.3%), Wikidata (26.9%) and Wikimedia Commons (19.4%) being the best-known.
• Most speakers think that Wikipedia lacks topics about the Aromanian culture (77.6%) as well as articles about famous Aromanians (72.4%), and that the articles do not suffice in size (78.4%). Opinions are more divided on the reliability of articles on topics about the Aromanian culture and famous Aromanians, with 42.5% being concerned and 22.4% expressing approval.

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Interview questions

▼

Q1. How big is the Aromanian-speaking community in Macedonia and what is its geographic distribution?

Q2. Is there a standardised Aromanian language? What dialects of the Aromanian language are spoken in Macedonia, what is the number of their speakers and what is their representation?

Q3. What is the availability of printed materials in Aromanian? How many of them are readily available in digital form?

Q4. What is the availability of printed materials about the Aromanian culture in other languages? How many of them are readily available in digital form?

Q5. What are the biggest challenges of the Aromanian-speaking community in Macedonia?

Q6. What are the biggest needs of the Aromanian-speaking community in Macedonia?

Q7. What kind of events proved to be most efficient learning methods for the Aromanian-speaking community?

Interview findings

• Official figures indicate that the number of Aromanian speakers in Macedonia is around 1,700, but this figure seems to be underestimated because over 10,000 persons have been recorded speaking the language.
• There are a couple of dialects of Aromanian with minor differences spoken in Macedonia. These differences have been thoroughly studied by the Macedonian linguist Marjan Markoviḱ, who made a comparative analysis on the writing and pronunciation of sentences in all these dialects.
• Availability of printed materials is scarce, yet increasing in the recent period. There are no bookshops specialised in selling printed materials in Aromanian and the distribution is usually done through personal contacts. Digital materials are made available through websites and social networks.
• The Aromanian people and culture are well-documented in books in the other languages, especially English and Macedonian.
• Aromanian non-governmental organisations do not organise a lot of events. In general, there are four main events that took place on a recurrent basis every year: a ceremonial academy commemorating the Aromanian National Day, two folklore festivals and a day commemorating the Aromanian culture. There are also some other events in the form of a conference, a symposium or a book promotion event. Some efforts to organise courses in the Aromanian language were made in the past.

Challenges

• Conservation of the language. Young generations use the Aromanian language less and there are very few families with two Aromanian parents in which the children speak the language. However, there is an increasing number of young Aromanians declaring their origin and willing to learn the language, with some individuals acquiring language textbooks on their own.

Needs

• Opportunities to learn the language. The government should financially support non-governmental organisations to organise Aromanian courses. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to establish a Department of Aromanian language in the higher education, which would consist of linguists who would train teachers from primary and secondary schools to teach the language to their pupils.

Romani language

Survey questions

▼

Demographics

Q1. Gender: (single choice)

• Male
• Female

Q2. Age: (single choice)

• under 18
• 18–30
• 30–40
• 40–50
• 50–60
• over 60

Q3. Residence: (short answer)

• __________________

Q4. Level of education: (single choice)

• First level: Primary education
• Second level: Vocational education
• Third level: Three-year secondary school
• Fourth level: Four-year secondary education
• Fifth level: Specialist education
• Sixth level: Bachelor's degree
• Seventh level: Master degree
• Eighth level: Doctor of Philosophy

Q5. Are you employed? (single choice)

• Yes
• No

Q6. How do you access Internet? (multiple choice)

• from a mobile phone
• from a tablet
• from a laptop computer
• from a personal computer
• from another device

Language

Q7. What is your proficiency level in speaking Romani? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q8. What is your proficiency level in Romani writing? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q9. What Romani dialect do you use? (single choice)

• Bugurdži
• Kovač
• Džambaz
• Arli
• _________

Q10. How did you learn Romani? (multiple choice)

• within family
• with friends
• at school/faculty
• at courses
• __________________

Q11. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements about the Romani language in Macedonia. (checkbox grid)

Statement	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Agree	Strongly agree	No idea
Romani in spoken form is endangered.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Romani in written form is endangered.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Romani is well-represented in the Macedonian media.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Printed materials in Romani are easily accessible.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Digital materials in Romani are easily accessible.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝

Wikipedia

Q12. How do you use Wikipedia? (multiple choice)

• as a reader
• as an editor

Q13. How often do you use Wikipedia? (single choice)

• more than once daily
• once daily
• once weekly
• once monthly
• less than once monthly

Q14. What language editions of Wikipedia do you use? (multiple choice)

• Romani
• Macedonian
• Albanian
• Turkish
• Serbian
• Bosnian
• Aromanian
• English
• other

Q15. Have you got a Wikipedia account? (single choice)

• Yes
• No

Q16. Have you heard of the other Wikimedia projects? (multiple choice)

• Wikimedia Commons
• Wikidata
• WIktionary
• Wikisource
• Wikiquote
• Wikinews
• Wikiversity
• Wikivoyage
• Wikispecies
• none

Q17. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements about the coverage of the Romani culture in Macedonia. (checkbox grid)

Statement	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Agree	Strongly agree	No idea
Topics about the Romani culture are well-covered on Wikipedia.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Wikipedia contains sufficient number of articles about famous Romani.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Articles on topics about the Romani culture and famous Romani on Wikipedia suffice in size.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Contents in articles on topics about the Romani culture and famous Romani are reliable.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝

Survey findings

Demographics

• A vast majority of the surveyed speakers are aged under 40 (78.8%), most are employed (63.5%) and a half hold an academic degree (50.0%).
• Almost a third of the surveyed reside in Skopje (30.8%), with the majority being evenly distributed across 15 other towns in Macedonia, and very few live abroad (1.9%).
• A large majority of speakers access Internet from a mobile phone (88.5%), but there are significant shares of those using a laptop (38.5%) or a PC (28.8%).

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Language

• Most of the surveyed stated that they have some speaking proficiency in Romani (86.5%) and half of those speak it as a native language (42.3%). With regards to writing proficiency, the figures are lower and 65.4% of the surveyed can write in the language, with a share of 32.7% being able to do it at a native level. Romani speakers in Macedonia tend to use mainly four dialects, with the users of the Kovač dialect constituting the largest share (38.5%). A majority of speakers learnt Romani within their family (63.5%) and a significant minority learnt it with friends (34.6%).
• Opinions are divided about whether Romani is endangered in spoken and written form, although those expressing concern are still more than a half. A dominant majority of the surveyed think that the language is underrepresented in the Macedonian media (92.3%), and that there are not enough printed (88.5%) as well as digital materials in the language (86.5%). People with higher level of education are more pessimistic about the status of the language in the Macedonian society. Older generations are somewhat more concerned about the language status but opine that the language is not that underrepresented.

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Wikipedia

• Almost all of the surveyed speakers read Wikipedia (94.2%), but very few of them edit it (5.8%), with only 7.7% having a Wikipedia account. A significant minority of 40.4% use Wikipedia every day, whereas the rest uses it less frequently.
• The Macedonian Wikipedia is by far the most popular edition (82.7%), but a significant share also uses the English Wikipedia (38.5%). Only 5.8% of the surveyed stated that they use Wikipedia in the Romani language.
• More three fourths have not heard of the other Wikimedia projects. Wikidata is the best-known other Wikimedia project (11.5%).
• A large majority of the surveyed think that Wikipedia lacks topics about the Romani culture (86.5%) as well as articles about famous Romani people (90.4%), and the articles on topics about the Romani culture and famous Romani people do not suffice in size (84.6%). About two thirds have also raised concerns regarding the reliability of the articles documenting Romani culture and famous Romani people.

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Interview questions

▼

Q1. How big is the Romani-speaking community in Macedonia and what is its geographic distribution?

Q2. Is there a standardised Romani language? What dialects of the Romani language are spoken in Macedonia, what is the number of their speakers and what is their representation?

Q3. What is the availability of printed materials in Romani? How many of them are readily available in digital form?

Q4. What is the availability of printed materials about the Romani culture in other languages? How many of them are readily available in digital form?

Q5. What are the biggest challenges of the Romani-speaking community in Macedonia?

Q6. What are the biggest needs of the Romani-speaking community in Macedonia?

Q7. What kind of events proved to be most efficient learning methods for the Romani-speaking community?

Interview findings

• Official figures indicate that the number of Romani speakers is 31,721, which is an increase compared to the previous reported figure of around 25,000.
• There is a Balkan Romani language, which is available in the keyboard layout. The varieties of Romani are not "dialects" in a linguistic sense. Four main varieties are spoken in Macedonia with minor differences in writing and pronunciation.
• Availability of printed materials is scarce. Books are mostly printed as part of a project run by a non-governmental organisation, but they are not available for retail in the bookshops. There is an organisation owning a private collection of Romani books.
• The Council of Europe has a department engaged with Romani history, culture and language, which publishes books and other materials in the English language. Books documenting the Romani people and culture are also available in Serbian, Hungarian and Slovak.
• Educational videos, documentary films and television shows proved to be the most efficient means of learning the Romani language.

Challenges

• Inability to learn the language. There is no curriculum in the Romani language. The language is taught as a non-compulsory subject in the schools located in areas inhabited by Romani people.
• Lack of Romani textbooks and literature. The main problem for writing a Romani textbook is the high set of criteria that cannot be met.
• Difficulty of training language specialists. The Department of Romani language at the Faculty of Philology in Skopje was closed, so it is difficult to educate people who will professionally engage with the language. Romani teachers in schools most often have a different educational background and are not specialists in the field.

Needs

• Lower the criteria for authoring Romani textbooks. Advocacy efforts need to be made at government level in order to lower the criteria and enable authors to write a Romani textbook.

Macedonian Sign Language

Survey questions

▼

Demographics

Q1. Gender: (single choice)

• Male
• Female

Q2. Age: (single choice)

• under 18
• 18–30
• 30–40
• 40–50
• 50–60
• over 60

Q3. Residence: (short answer)

• __________________

Q4. Level of education: (single choice)

• First level: Primary education
• Second level: Vocational education
• Third level: Three-year secondary school
• Fourth level: Four-year secondary education
• Fifth level: Specialist education
• Sixth level: Bachelor's degree
• Seventh level: Master degree
• Eighth level: Doctor of Philosophy

Q5. Are you employed? (single choice)

• Yes
• No

Q6. How do you access Internet? (multiple choice)

• from a mobile phone
• from a tablet
• from a laptop computer
• from a personal computer
• from another device

Language

Q7. What is your proficiency in using the Macedonian Sign Language? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q8. What is your proficiency in using Macedonian? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q9. What is your proficiency in Macedonian writing? (single choice)

• no proficiency
• basic level
• intermediate level
• advanced level
• native level

Q10. How did you learn the Macedonian Sign Language? (multiple choice)

• within family
• with friends
• at school/faculty
• at courses
• on the Internet/through books
• _____________________________

Q11. How did you learn Macedonian? (multiple choice)

• within family
• with friends
• at school/faculty
• at courses
• on the Internet/through books
• _____________________________

Q12. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements about the Macedonian Sign Language in Macedonia. (checkbox grid)

Statement	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Agree	Strongly agree	No idea
Macedonian Sign Language is well-represented in the Macedonian media.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Printed materials in the Macedonian Sign Language are easily accessible.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Digital materials in the Macedonian Sign Language are easily accessible.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Macedonian Sign Language is will-represented across institutions (public administration, banks, notaries/lawyers).	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Macedonian Sign Language is well-represented across hospitality objects (hotels, restaurants, coffee shops).	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Macedonian Sign Language is well-represented across cultural institutions (cinemas, theatres).	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝

Wikipedia

Q13. How do you use Wikipedia? (multiple choice)

• as a reader
• as an editor

Q14. How often do you use Wikipedia? (single choice)

• more than once daily
• once daily
• once weekly
• once monthly
• less than once monthly

Q15. What language editions of Wikipedia do you use? (multiple choice)

• Macedonian
• Albanian
• Turkish
• Serbian
• Bosnian
• Aromanian
• Romani
• English
• other

Q16. Have you got a Wikipedia account? (single choice)

• Yes
• No

Q17. Have you heard of the other Wikimedia projects? (multiple choice)

• Wikimedia Commons
• Wikidata
• WIktionary
• Wikisource
• Wikiquote
• Wikinews
• Wikiversity
• Wikivoyage
• Wikispecies
• none

Q18. Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements: about the coverage of the Macedonian Sign Language in Macedonia. (checkbox grid)

Statement	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Agree	Strongly agree	No idea
Topics about the Macedonian Sign Language are well-covered on Wikipedia	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Articles on topics about the culture of the Macedonian Sign Language community on Wikipedia suffice in size.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Contents in articles on topics about the Macedonian Sign Language on Wikipedia are reliable.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝
Wikipedia contains sufficient number of articles about sign language users.	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝	⃝

Survey findings

Demographics

• A vast majority of the surveyed persons are aged under 40 (82.8%), most are unemployed (62.1%) and very few hold an academic degree (6.9%).
• Slightly more than a third reside in Skopje (34.5%), with significant shares of people living in Ohrid (20.7%) and Bitola (17.2%), whereas the rest resides in 6 other towns in Macedonia.
• A large majority of the surveyed access Internet from a mobile phone (82.8%).

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Language

• Most of the surveyed are native users of the Macedonian Sign Language (82.8%), but 20.7% can use and only 13.8% can write in Macedonian at a native level. A majority learnt the Macedonian Sign Language within their family (65.5%) or in the educational process (62.1%), whereas a dominant majority learnt Macedonian in the educational process (93.1%). The latter conclusions are confirmed by a positive correlation between the level of education and proficiency in the Macedonian Sign Language and the Macedonian language.
• Almost all of the surveyed opine that the Macedonian Sign Language is not well-represented in the Macedonian media, institutions (public administration, banks, notaries/lawyers), hospitality objects (hotels, restaurants, coffee shops) and cultural institutions (cinemas, theatres).

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Wikipedia

• All of the surveyed persons use Wikipedia as readers and none have a Wikipedia account. About two thirds read Wikipedia on a monthly basis (65.5%), with only 10.3% reading it every day.
• A dominant majority of the surveyed persons read the Macedonian Wikipedia (93.1%), but a significant share also reads the English Wikipedia (27.6%).
• None of the surveyed have heard of the other Wikimedia projects.
• A significant majority of the surveyed think that Wikipedia lacks topics about the Macedonian Sign Language and the culture of its community as well as articles about famous users of the language (89.7% each). The same share surveyed stated that the articles on these topics are not sufficient in size and raised concerns regarding the reliability of the contents.

Note: Percentages may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Interview questions

▼

Q1. How big is the community of Macedonian Sign Language users in Macedonia?

Q2. What proficiency in Standard Macedonian do the Macedonian Sign Language users have>

Q3. What is the availability of printed materials about the Macedonian Sign Language and its user community? How many of them are readily available in digital form?

Q4. What are the biggest challenges of the community of Macedonian Sign Language users in Macedonia?

Q5. What are the biggest needs of the community of Macedonian Sign Language users in Macedonia?

Q6. What are the necessary conditions for Macedonian Sign Language users to be trained on how to edit Wikipedia?

Interview findings

• No official figures on the number of people using the Macedonian Sign Language exists because there is no institutions where individuals can report proficiency in the language. A rough estimate can be made by looking at the membership in the National Association of Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Macedonia, which is still not a good indicator given that the membership in the association is on a voluntary basis. Unofficially, there are around 6,000 deaf and hard of hearing people in Macedonia, with the number of people using the Macedonian Sign Language ranging from 3,000 to 4,000 persons.
• Macedonian Sign Language users usually have difficulties comprehending the native language spoken within their family, which is mainly a result of agrammatism due to the different grammatical structures and expressions between the spoken and sign languages.
• Availability of printed materials about the Macedonian Sign Language is scarce, and most of them are outdated because the language changed over time. Digital materials exist in the form of videos documenting expressions in the language. However, these efforts were subject to criticism as the Macedonian Sign Language community was not involved in their production.

Challenges

• Difficulties in communication. The Macedonian Sign Language users have difficulties to lip-read the speech in the absence of a sign language interpreter. This problem aggravated during the COVID-19 pandemic when wearing a mask was obligatory, which fully disabled this group of people to comprehend someone's speech.
• Comprehension of scientific terminology. The scientific terminology is oftentimes alien to the Macedonian Sign Language users, which puts them in difficult situation when communicating with specialists in certain fields (e.g. medics).
• Discrimination in the society. Macedonian Sign Language users have difficulties to get employed and hard time to be promoted. Some people report unfair treatment by driving schools and even the police while attending the training for a driving licence.

Needs

• Use of technological tools. Macedonian Sign Language community will benefit from larger availability of technological tools as aid while writing in the Macedonian language (e.g. spell-check and autocorrect tools).