Ian Hancock

Ian Hancock

Ian Francis Hancock ( Romani : Yanko le Redžosko , born August 29, 1942 in London ) is a linguist, Romani scholar and human rights lawyer.

He heads the Romani Studies program and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been Professor of English, Linguistics and Asian Studies since 1972. He has represented the Roma people before the United Nations and was a member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council under President Bill Clinton . He also represented the Roma people at the 1997 rafto awards ceremony .

Childhood and youth

Ian Hancock grew up in England. His mother Kitty is Romnichal (British Roma). His father Reginald (Redžo) has roots among the Romungri (Hungarian Roma) and among British travelers.

Hancock lived in Canada for almost six years and returned to England in 1961. Few of his relatives could read and write. He himself attended school up to the 9th grade. Then he took on various jobs, including as a painter. He lived with students from Sierra Leone and learned their language Krio from them . Thanks to his language skills and talents, he was able to take part in a program at the University of London that gave disadvantaged minorities an academic education. He became a Roma rights activist in the late 1960s after British police started a fire that killed two Roma children. In 1971, he was the first to get his PhD from Rome in the UK , despite not having a high school diploma.

Romani studies

Ian Hancock has written over 400 books, articles and lectures on the Roma people and language (specifically on the Vlax dialect). In these works, he not only illuminates linguistic, but also historical, anthropological and genetic aspects. Among other things, he advocates the thesis that the Roma are not descended from low castes but from Rajput warriors.

Creole languages

Apart from his fundamental studies in the field of Anglo-Romani , Hancock is an internationally recognized expert on Creole languages , in addition to Krio, also on the Gullah of South Carolina and Georgia and the Afro-Seminole , which is spoken in southwest Texas .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} UT report on Dr. Hancock . In: What's in a Name?: Professor takes on roles of Romani activist and spokesperson to improve plight of his ethnic group . University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on February 5, 2005. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 4, 2011.