Romany language

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Romany
rromani ćhib
Spoken in: The speakers of Romany are scattered throughout the world
Total speakers: 4.8 million
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Indo-Aryan
   Central Zone
    Romany 
Official status
Official language in: recognised as minority language in parts of:
Flag of the Republic of Macedonia Republic of Macedonia
Flag of Serbia Serbia
Flag of Slovenia Slovenia
Flag of Hungary Hungary
Flag of Germany Germany
Flag of Romania Romania
Flag of Russia Russia
Flag of Sweden Sweden
Flag of Finland Finland
Flag of Spain Spain
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: rom
ISO 639-3: variously:
rom – Romany (generic)
rmn – Balkan Romany
rml – Baltic Romany
rmc – Carpathian Romany
rmf – Kalo Finnish Romany
rmo – Sinte Romany
rmy – Vlax Romany
rmw – Welsh Romany
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Romany or Romani, Gypsy or Gipsy[1] (native name: romani ćhib) is the language of the Roma and Sinti.

The Indo-Aryan Romany language should not be confused with either Romanian (spoken by Romanians), or Romansh (spoken in parts of southeastern Switzerland), both of which are Romance languages.

Contents

[edit] Classification and status

Analysis of the Romany language has shown that it is closely related to those spoken in central and northern India, Pothwari in particular. This linguistic relationship is believed to indicate the Roma's and Sinti's geographical origin. Loanwords in Romany make it possible to trace the pattern of their migration westwards. They came originally from the Indian subcontinent or what is now northern India and parts of Pakistan. The Romany language is usually included in the Central Indo-Aryan languages (together with Western Hindi, Bhili, Gujarati, Khandeshi, Rajasthani etc.). It is still debated whether the origin of the name Sinti is the same as that of the toponym for the Sindh region of southeastern Pakistan and far western India (Rajasthan and Gujarat), around the lower Indus River or is a European loanword in Romany, recognizable as such in its morphological integration into the language (plural Sinte, feminine singular Sintica). It was primarily through comparative linguistic studies of the Romany language with various north Indian dialects and languages that the origins of the Roma people were traced back to India.

Romany, Panjabi, and Pothwari share some words and similar grammatical systems. A 2003 study published in Nature suggests Romany is also related to Sinhalese,[2] presently spoken in Sri Lanka.

In terms of its grammatical structures, Romany is conservative in maintaining almost intact the Middle Indo-Aryan present-tense person concord markers, and in maintaining consonantal endings for nominal case – both features that have been eroded in most other modern languages of Central India. It shares an innovative pattern of past-tense person concord with the languages of the Northwest, such as Kashmiri and Shina. This is believed to be further proof that Romany originated in the Central region, then migrated to the Northwest. Characteristic for Romany is the fusion of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, and the emergence of external tense morphology that attaches to the person suffix. All of these features are shared between Romany and Domari, which has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages.

The Romany language is sometimes considered a group of dialects or a collection of related languages that comprise all the members of a single genetic subgroup.

While the language is nowhere official, there are attempts currently aimed at the creation of a standard language out of all variants (such as those from Romania, the USA, Sweden). Also, different variants of the language are now in the process of being codified in those countries with high Roma populations (for example, Slovakia).

[edit] History

There are no sure historical documents about the early phases of the Romany language. The language is not directly cited in the epic Shahnameh by the 11th century Persian poet Firdausi, who wrote about the 10,000 or 12,000 Desi musicians who were given in the 5th century AD by King Shankal of Kanauj (in Sindh) to Bahram Gur the King of Persia. Nevertheless, many have suggested that these people are the ancestors of the Roma.

However, research carried out already in the nineteenth century by Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882-1888) showed this to be unlikely. The Romany language proves to be a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), not a Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA), as it would have to be to fit Firdausi's scheme. The principal argument favouring a migration during or after the transition period to NIA is the loss of the old system of nominal case, and its reduction to just a two-way case system, nominative vs. oblique. A secondary argument concerns the system of gender differentiation. Romany has only two genders (masculine and feminine). Middle Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) generally had three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and some modern Indo-Aryan languages retain this old system even today. It is argued that loss of the neuter gender did not occur until the transition to NIA. Most of the neuter nouns became masculine while a few feminine, like the neuter अग्नि (agni) in the Prakrit became the feminine आग (āg) in Hindi and jag in Romany. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romany and other NIA languages have been cited as evidence that the forerunner of Romany remained in the Indian Subcontinent until a later period, perhaps even as late as the tenth century CE.

There are no historical proofs to clarify who were the ancestors of the Roma, and what motivated them to emigrate from the Indian subcontinent, but there are various theories. The influence of the Greek language (and to a lesser extent of the Iranian languages, like Persian, Kurdish and of the Armenian language), points to a prolonged stay in Anatolia after the departure from South Asia.

The Mongol invasion of Europe beginning in the first half of the 13th Century triggered another westward migration. The Roma arrived in Europe and afterwards spread to the other continents. The great distances between the scattered Roma groups led to the development of local community distinctions. The differing local influences have greatly affected the modern language, splitting it into a number of different (originally exclusively regional) dialects.

Today Romany is spoken by small groups in 42 European countries [1]. A project at Manchester University in England is transcribing Romany dialects, many of which are on the brink of extinction, for the first time. [2]

[edit] Modern language

Today's dialects of Romany are differentiated by the vocabulary accumulated since their departure from Anatolia, as well as through divergent phonemic evolutions and grammatical features. Many Roma no longer speak the language or speak various new contact languages from the local language with the addition of Romany vocabulary.

A long-standing common categorisation was a division between the Vlax (from Vlach) from non-Vlax dialects. Vlax are those Roma who lived many centuries in the territory of Romania. The main distinction between the two groups is the degree to which their vocabulary is borrowed from Romanian. Vlax-speaking groups include the great number of speakers (between half and two-thirds of all Romany speakers). Bernard Gilliath-Smith first made this distinction, and coined the term Vlax in 1915 in the book The Report on the Gypsy tribes of North East Bulgaria. Subsequently, other groups of dialects were recognized, primarily based on geographical and vocabulary criteria, including:

In the past several decades, some scholars have worked out a categorisation of Romany dialects from a linguistic point of view on the basis of historical evolution and isoglosses. Much of this work was carried out by Bochum-based linguist Norbert Boretzky, who pioneered the systematic plotting of structural features of Romany dialects onto geographical maps. This culminated in an Atlas of Romany Dialects, co-authored with Birgit Igla, which appeared in 2005 and plots numerous isoglosses onto maps. At the University of Manchester, similar work has been carried out by linguist and former Romany-rights activist Yaron Matras, and his associates. Together with Viktor Elšík (now of Charles University, Prague), Matras compiled the Romany Morpho-Syntax database, which is the largest compilation of data on the dialects of Romany. Parts of this database can be accessed online via the webpage of the Manchester Romany Project. Matras (2002, 2005) has argued for a theory of geographical classification of Romany dialects, which is based on the diffusion in space of innovations. According to this theory, Early Romany (as spoken in the Byzantine Empire) was brought to western and other parts of Europe through population migrations of Rom in the 14th-15th centuries. These groups settled in the various European regions during the 16th and 17th centuries, acquiring fluency in a variety of contact languages. Changes emerged then, which spread in wave-like patterns, creating the dialect differences attested today. According to Matras, there were two major centres of innovations: some changes emerged in western Europe (Germany and vicinity), spreading eastwards; other emerged in the Wallachian area, spreading to the west and south. In addition, many regional and local isoglosses formed, creating a complex wave of language boundaries. Matras points to the prohtesis of j- in aro > jaro 'egg' and ov > jov 'he' as typical examples of west-to-east diffusion, and of addition of prothetic a- in bijav > abijav as a typical east-to-west spread. His conclusion is that dialect differences formed in situ, and not as a result of differetn waves of migration.

In a series of articles (beginning from 1982), Marcel Courthiade proposed a different kind of classification. He concentrates on the dialectal diversity of Romany in three successive strata of expansion, using the criteria of phonological and grammatical changes. Finding the common linguistic features of the dialects, he presents the historical evolution from the first stratum (the dialects closest to the Anatolian Romany of the 13th century) to the second and third strata. He also names as "pogadialects" (after the Pogadi dialect from Great Britain) those which have only a Romany vocabulary grafted into a non-Romany language.

A table of some dialectal differences:

First stratum Second stratum Third stratum
phirdom, phirdyom

phirdyum, phirjum

 phirdem phirdem
guglipe(n)/guglipa

guglibe(n)/gugliba

 guglipe(n)/guglipa

guglibe(n)/gugliba

 guglimos
pani

khoni

kuni

 pai, payi

khoi, khoyi

kui, kuyi

 pai, payi

khoi, khoyi

kui, kuyi
ćhib shib shib
jeno zheno zheno
po po/mai mai

The first stratum includes the oldest dialects: Mechkari, Kabuji, Xanduri, Drindari, Erli, Arli, Bugurji, Mahajeri, Ursari (Rićhinari), Spoitori (Xoraxane), Karpatichi, Polska Roma, Kaale (from Finland), Sinto-manush, and the so-called Baltic dialects.

In the second there are Chergari, Gurbeti, Jambashi, Fichiri, Filipiji and a subgroup of the Vlax dialects of Romania and Bulgaria.

The third comprises the rest of the so-called Vlax dialects, including Kalderash, Lovari, Machvano.

[edit] Mixed languages

Some Roma have developed creole languages or mixed languages, including:

[edit] Standardization

Main article: Romani language standardization

There are independent groups currently working toward standardizing the language, including groups in Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, the United States, Sweden, and other nations.

A standardized form of Romany is used in Serbia, and in Serbia's autonomous province of Vojvodina Romany is one of the officially recognized languages of minorities having its own radio stations and news broadcasts.

In Romania, the country with the largest identifiable Roma population, there is a unified teaching system of the Romany language for all dialects spoken in the country. This is primarily a result of the work of Gheorghe Sarău, who made Romany textbooks for teaching Roma children in the Romany language. He teaches a purified, mildly prescriptive language, choosing the original Indo-Aryan words and grammatical elements from various dialects. The pronunciation is mostly like that of the dialects from the first stratum. When there are more variants in the dialects, the variant that most closely resembles the oldest forms is chosen, like byav instead of abyav, abyau, akana instead of akanak, shunav instead of ashunav or ashunau, etc.

An effort is also made to derive new words from the vocabulary already in use, i.e., xuryavno (airplane), vortorin (slide rule), palpaledikhipnasko (retrospectively), pashnavni (adjective). There is an ever-changing set of borrowings from Romanian as well, including such terms as vremea (weather, time), primariya (town hall), frishka (cream), sfïnto (saint, holy). Sanskrit-based neologisms include bijli (bulb, electricity), misal (example), chitro (drawing, design), lekhipen (writing), while there are also English-based neologisms, like printisarel < "to print", prezidento < "president".

Language standardization is presently also being employed in the revival of the Romany language among various groups (in Spain, Great Britain, and elsewhere), which have ceased to speak the language. In these cases, a specific dialect is not revived, but rather a standardized form derived from many dialects is learned.

[edit] Romany loanwords in English

Romany has lent many words to English, including pal, dukes[3] (meaning fists, as in the expression "put up your dukes"), and lollipop[4]. These mostly turn up in slang—such as gadgie (man), shiv or chiv (knife), cushty or cooshtie (good) — and in regional dialects, such as radge (adj bad or angry, noun a state of irritation) in northeast England and southeast Scotland and jougal (dog) in southeast Scotland and parni (water) and bewer (woman) in West Yorkshire in England, also seen as beor in Corkonian slang within Hiberno-English. Urban British slang shows an increasing level of Romany influence, with some words becoming accepted into the lexicon of standard English (for example, chav from an assumed Anglo-Romany word, meaning small boy, in the majority of dialects).

[edit] Distribution

The following table shows the distribution of Romany speakers in Europe according to Bakker et al. (2000) [5]. The last column shows the percentage of Romany speakers in the Roma population in each country.

Country Speakers  %
Albania 90,000 95%
Austria 20,000 80%
Belarus 27,000 95%
Belgium 10,000 80%
Bosnia and Herzegovina 40,000 90%
Bulgaria 350,000 80%
Croatia 28,000 80%
Czech Republic 140,000 50%
Denmark 1,500 90%
Estonia 1,100 90%
Finland 3,000 90%
France 215,000 70%
Germany 85,000 70%
Greece 160,000 90%
Hungary 260,000 50%
Italy 42,000 90%
Latvia 18,500 90%
Lithuania 4,000 90%
Macedonia 215,000 90%
Moldova 56,000 90%
Netherlands 3,000 90%
Poland 4,000 90%
Romania 433,000 80%
Russia 405,000 80%
Serbia and Montenegro 380,000 90%
Slovakia 300,000 60%
Slovenia 8,000 90%
Spain 1,000 1%
Sweden 9,500 90%
Turkey 280,000 70%
Ukraine 113,000 90%
United Kingdom 1,000 0.5%

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508791/Romany-language
  2. ^ Gray, R.D. & Atkinson, Q.D. 2003. "Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin." Nature. 426, 435-439.
  • Bakker Peter et al. 2000. What is the Romani language? Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.
  • Hancock, Ian. 2001. Ame sam e rromane džene / We are the Romani People. The Open Society Institute, New York.
  • Lee, Ronald. 2005. Learn Romani Das-dúma Rromanes Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press
  • Masica, Colin. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Matras, Yaron. 2002. Romani: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sarău, Gheorghe. 1997. Rromii, India şi limba rromani. Bucureşti.
  • Sarău, Gheorghe. 2000. Dicţionar rrom-român / Dikcionaro rromano-rumunikano. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca. ISBN 973-35-0987-6.

[edit] External links

Wikipedia
Romany language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Note: For links to a variety of Romani media, chatroom and history and culture sites, see in particular the links pages of the Manchester University Romani project.)