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Romani language

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This article is about the language spoken by Roma people. For the Malyo-Polynesian language, see Romang language.

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Romani (or Romany) is the language of the Roma and Sinti. The Indo-Aryan Romani 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.

Classification and status

Analysis of the Romani language has shown that it is closely related to those spoken in northern India, Punjabi in particular. This linguistic relationship is believed to indicate the Roma's and Sinti's geographical origin. Loanwords in Romani make it possible to trace the pattern of their migration west. They came originally from the Indian subcontinent or what is now northern India and parts of Pakistan. The Romani 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 Romani, recognizable as such in its morphological integration into the language (plural Sinte, feminine singular Sintica). It was primarily through comparative linguistic studies of the Romani language with various north Indian dialects and languages that the origins of the Roma people were traced back to India.

Romani, Punjabi, and Pothohari share some words and similar grammatical systems. A 2003 study published in Nature suggests Romani is also related to Sinhalese,[1] presently spoken in Sri Lanka.

The Romani language is considered alternatively 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).

History

There are no sure historical documents about the early phases of the Romani language. The language is not directly cited in the epic Shah Name 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, new research (Masica, 1991:221) shows this to be unlikely. The Romani 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. It has only two genders (masculine and feminine). Until around the year 1000, the Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) had three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). By the turn of the 2nd millennium they changed into the NIA phase, losing the neuter gender. 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 Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages is proposed to prove that the change occurred in the Subcontinent. It is therefore believed that it was not possible that the Romas' ancestors left there prior to 1000.

Most mainstream researchers in Romani linguistics and Romani ethnography hold the view that the exodus of the Rom(a) from India is part of the historical phenomenon of outwards migration from India of castes, specializing in certain trades. These groups will have originated in different areas within India, and spoken different (albeit related) Indian languages, and probably left the subcontinent at different times, taking different routes. However, many of them share ethnonyms that go back to similar caste names: the Rom of Europe, the Lom of the Caucasus and Anatolia, the Dom of the Middle East, are an example, all descending, it is assumed, from the Indian caste of the Ḍom. The latter is a cover-term for itinerant service-providing castes. This origin hypothesis allows to reconcile the linguistic and geographical diversity of minorities of Indian origin living outside of India, with the similarities between them in occupation profile, social status, name, and origin.

However, in recent years political activists and Romani intellectuals have begun to question this hypothesis, searching instead for a historical narrative that would connect their ancestors with 'high status' groups in Indian society, rather than with the low-status Ḍom. It is in this context that the works of people like Hancock, Lee, Rishi, and Kochanowski are to be interpreted.

Traditionally, from the 19th century onwards, scholars proposed and supported as origin of the Sanskrit word ḍōma, designating a low caste[2]. Their theory is based on the initial uvular trill (represented by rr), presented as a reflex of a retroflex sound and on supposed similarites between the occupation profile, social status, name, and origin. However, according to Romani scholar Ian Hancock, continuing earlier studies of Ralph Lilley Turner, the variations of pronunciation of the initial sound in different dialects, besides the r, put under the umbrella of the letters rr (uvular trill, voiceless velar fricative and others), also the study of the evolution of the initially retroflex sounds in proto-Romani and the origins of the contemporary rr in different Romani words, proves that there is no serious base to make a link between rom and ḍōma. Also genetical researches point out that Roma are closer to the Punjabis and Rajputs than to Domba.[3]. Moreover, the Dom name used in South Asia is an exonym employed by high caste people to designate some unrelated ethnic groups of different origins (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda) that use their own different ethnic names as endonyms (proving further this origin as untrue). Most Roma refer to themselves as Rom or Rrom, depending on the dialect. The word means "husband", Romni/Rromni meaning "wife", while the unmarried are named čhavo ("boy") (IPA pronunciation: /cʰaʋo/) or čhej ("girl"). Thus, the Sanskrit word rama (रम) or ramaṇa (रमण) meaning "husband" have been considered as etymologies for Rom.

It is known that the period of time around 1000 AD was one of great turmoil in the northern part of the Indian Subcontinent. The Muslim invasions wrought havoc and led to massive population movements. The scholar and Romani political activist Ian Hancock and also W.R. Rishi wrote that the Roma ancestors left the Subcontinent as a result of these circumstances. Between the years 1001 and 1026, the Muslim Afghans and Turks known as Ghaznavids made seventeen invasions in the Punjab and Sindh areas, fighting against the local Hindus. The Rajputs played a major role in the resistance. They were a mixture of different jāti (castes) brought together by a common desire to repel the foreign invaders. There are accounts that many of them were captured and sent to Central Asia to be used as conscripts in further fighting, and that others left the war zone, heading west.

These movements of population involved many categories, because the Rajputs would go to war with their families and their associates frequently. According to Hancock, the Romani language sustains the claimed Rajputic ancestry: most of the words related to war are of Indo-Aryan ancestry like bust (spear), patava (gaiters), xanrro (sword), tover (axe) [1]. The name for those who are not Roma, gadže derives from Prakritic gajja (civilian, domestic, non-military). Also there are cultural similarities between Roma and Rajputs and DNA research demonstrates genetic proximity.

The short-lived Ghaznavid Empire was polyglot, but Persian was official. This could explain the share of Persian loanwords in Romani, loans from no earlier than 10th century Persian. However, the greatest changes to the Romani language occurred much further West. The Seljuks (who defeated the Ghaznavids in 1038), also defeated the Byzantine Empire in 1071 and conquered eastern Anatolia.

Historical documents relate the subsequent movement of populations from Central Asia to eastern Anatolia. It seems that it was here that, according to Ian Hancock's thesis, the Romani language evolved as a koine from the many Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the ancestors of the Roma. The original status of Romani as a lingua franca is supported by the vocabulary of Indo-Aryan origin. It cannot be linked to a certain area, but it includes words from all across the northern Subcontinent. During its development, it underwent a certain degree of influence from the local Greek. This influence is secondary in weight after the Indo-Aryan ancestry of the language, both in vocabulary and in grammar (there are some suffixes of Greek origin). Other Anatolian languages contributed to the creation of Romani as well (most notably Armenian).

This is also when it seems that the Roma developed their identity as a distinct people, abandoning the jātī differences. Moreover, they had to adapt to the life of the foreign lands and find economic niches for survival. Analysis of Romani vocabulary indicates that the Romas' ancestors were not originally nomadic. Indo-Aryan words like kher (house), udar (door), gav (village), thagar (king), balo (pig), khaini (hen), giv (wheat) seem to indicate a settled society instead. Words related to nomadism come from Anatolia, where this lifestyle first became common for the Roma. For example, grast (horse) and char (grass) are from Armenian, vurdon (waggon, cart) is from Kurdish, drom (road) and petalo (horseshoe) are from Greek. Also the skills of metalworking were acquired here: the words for metals (except for those for gold, silver and iron, which are Indo-Aryan) are from Greek and Armenian, as well as for the tools used in this field.

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 Romani 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 Romani is spoken by small groups in 42 European countries [2]. A project at Manchester University in England is transcribing Romani dialects, many of which are on the brink of extinction, for the first time. [3]

Modern language

Today's dialects of Romani 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 Romani 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 Romani 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 Romani dialects from a linguistic point of view on the basis of historical evolution and isoglosses. In a series of articles (beginning from 1982), Marcel Courthiade proposed a new classification. He concentrates on the dialectal diversity of Romani 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 Romani 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 Romani vocabulary grafted into a non-Romani 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.

Mixed languages

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

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 Romani is used in Serbia, and in Serbia's autonomous province of Vojvodina Romani 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 Romani language for all dialects spoken in the country. This is primarily a result of the work of Gheorghe Sarău, who made Romani textbooks for teaching Roma children in the Romani 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 Romani 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.

Romani loanwords in English

Romani has lent many words to English, including posh, pal, dukes[4] (meaning fists, as in the expression "put up your dukes"), and lollipop[5]. 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 Romani influence, with some words becoming accepted into the lexicon of standard English (for example, chav from an assumed Anglo-Romani word, possibly charvy meaning either "baby" or "mate" depending on context, chavi meaning male child or charver meaning prostitute).

Distribution

Distribution of Romani speakers in Europe according to Bakker et al. (2000) [6]. Percentage (%) shows the percentage of Romani speaking 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%

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Gray, R.D. & Atkinson, Q.D. 2003. "Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin." Nature. 426, 435-439.
  2. ^ Matras, 2002
  3. ^ Ian Hancock, Romani words for Romanies and non-Romanies
    On Romani Origins
  • 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.
  • Masica, Colin. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: The 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.
Vlax Romani 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.)

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