30 images Created 3 Nov 2010
Romania-Csango the last Sons of the Wind
ROMANIA - CSANGO, THE LAST SONS OF THE WIND
The Csango people are a Hungarian ethnographic group of Roman Catholic faith living mostly in the Bac?u County, in the Romanian region of Moldavia. Their traditional language, Csango is an old Hungarian dialect still in use. For centuries, the self-identity of the Csangos was based on the Roman Catholic religion and the Hungarian language and it is generally accepted by many scholars, Hungarian but also Romanian, that the Csangos have a Hungarian origin and that they arrived in Moldavia from the west. Some other Romanian authors claim that the Csangos are in fact "magyarised" Romanians from Transylvania. Whatever can be argued about their language there is no doubt that this is a form of Hungarian. The Council of Europe has expressed in 2001 its concerns about the situation of the Csángó minority culture, and discussed that the Csángós speak an early form of Hungarian and are associated with a great diversity of folk art and culture, which is of exceptional value for Europe. Today the Csángós make no political demands, but merely want to be recognized as a distinct culture and demand education and church services in their language. The official Romanian point of view changed in 2006, when President B?sescu condemned the situation of the ethnic minorities during the communist regime, describing the forced assimilation of the Csangos and the responsibility of the Catholic Church.
The Csango people are a Hungarian ethnographic group of Roman Catholic faith living mostly in the Bac?u County, in the Romanian region of Moldavia. Their traditional language, Csango is an old Hungarian dialect still in use. For centuries, the self-identity of the Csangos was based on the Roman Catholic religion and the Hungarian language and it is generally accepted by many scholars, Hungarian but also Romanian, that the Csangos have a Hungarian origin and that they arrived in Moldavia from the west. Some other Romanian authors claim that the Csangos are in fact "magyarised" Romanians from Transylvania. Whatever can be argued about their language there is no doubt that this is a form of Hungarian. The Council of Europe has expressed in 2001 its concerns about the situation of the Csángó minority culture, and discussed that the Csángós speak an early form of Hungarian and are associated with a great diversity of folk art and culture, which is of exceptional value for Europe. Today the Csángós make no political demands, but merely want to be recognized as a distinct culture and demand education and church services in their language. The official Romanian point of view changed in 2006, when President B?sescu condemned the situation of the ethnic minorities during the communist regime, describing the forced assimilation of the Csangos and the responsibility of the Catholic Church.
