Indo-Aryan language of the Roma (see Rom ), spoken in many countries of the world, with its greatest concentration of speakers in eastern Europe.
Romany is believed to have separated from the northern Indian languages с AD 1000. Its dialect s, which include many loanwords from languages where the Roma have lived, are classified according to the languages that influenced them: Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Czecho-Slovak, German, Polish, Russian, Finnish, Scandinavian, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Welsh, and Spanish. Romany has no tradition of writing but a rich oral tradition. In the 20th century some collections of Romany poems and folktales were published in eastern Europe.