Sinti
Sinti (Singular masc.=Sinto; sing. fem.=Sintisa) is the name of some communities of the nomadic people usually called "Gypsies" in English. This includes communities known in German and Dutch as Zigeuner and in Italian as Zingari. Sinti are their own ethnic group even though they often get confused with Romani People due to the term „Gypsies“, which is considered generic and also oudated.
While the Sinti were, until quite recently, chiefly nomadic, today only a small percentage of the group remains unsettled. In earlier times, they frequently lived on the outskirts of communities.
Sinti are a Christian group of people who are said to have been originated in India, which is often denied by Sinti themselves. Their true origin is still disputed to this day. Today, Sinti are mostly found in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France and Italy.
The Sinti language is called Sintikes.
The Sinti arrived in Germany and Austria in the Middle Ages, eventually splitting into two groups: Eftavagarja ("the Seven Caravans") and Estraxarja ("from Austria"). These two groups then expanded, the Eftavagarja into France, where they called locally as (Manouches), Spain and Portugal where they called Gitanos, Calo or Ciganos, and the Estraxarja into Italy and Slovenia, eventually taking various regional names.
References
[change | change source]Further reading
[change | change source]- Walter Winter, Struan Robertson (Translator) Winter Time: Memoirs of a German who Survived Auschwitz Hertfordshire Publications, (2004), ISBN 1-902806-38-7
- Reviewed by Emma Brockes "We had the same pain" in The Guardian November 29, 2004
- Open Society Intitute: The Situation of Roma in Germany (2002) Archived 2008-02-28 at the Wayback Machine
