ROMANY LANGUAGE

also called Gypsy, or Gipsy, language related to the North Indo-Aryan (Indic) languages, spoken on all five continents by Gypsies, who are generally considered by physical anthropologists to be of Indian origin. The main concentrations of Romany speakers are in eastern Europe. The Romany language, like Gypsies as a minority people, seldom has received any legal recognition. It is likely, from the evidence of comparative linguistics, that Romany separated from related North Indian languages in about AD 1000. Modern Gypsy dialects all over the world have been classified (by the Slovenian scholar Franz von Miklosich) according to their European originals, of which there are 13: Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Czecho-Slovak, German, Polish, Russian, Finnish, Scandinavian, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Welsh, and Spanish. The dialectal differentiations originated during the Gypsies' stay in the regions where these languages were spoken; while living in these regions they accepted many loanwords from the native languages and sometimes phonetic and even grammatical features. The vocalic (vowel) and consonantal systems of all Romany dialects are clearly derived from Sanskrit. Some of the changes correspond to those undergone by modern Indian languages; others represent a more archaic state (e.g., the preservation of initial consonant clusters dr-, tr- and medial st[h], st[h]); and a few are difficult to explain. The vowels of a typical central European dialect (CracowLovari) are i, e, a, o, u. Indo-Aryan retroflex consonants have disappeared from the consonantal system, while Slavic fricative and affricate sounds have been accepted. Romany possesses a grammatical system analogous to that of the modern North Indian languages. The Romany direct case represents the Sanskrit nominative and accusative, while the oblique is derived from the genitive. Various postpositions (elements occurring after the noun) can also be added, as in Hindi or Bengali, for other syntactic purposes. The verbal system has three persons, two numbers, five tenses (present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and future), and three moods. It is in its vocabulary that Romany best reflects the wanderings of its speakers. The main sources (apart from the original Indian stock) are Iranian (doshman enemy, from Persian doshman), Armenian, Greek (drom way, from drmoV), Romanian (bolta shop, from bolta), Hungarian (bino sin, from bun), and the Slavic languages (glas voice, rebniko pond, grob tomb, dosta enough, ale but). Indo-Aryan words include bokh hunger, from Hindi bhukh; bal hair, from Sanskrit bala; gelo gone, the past participle of za go (compare Bengali jawa, glo); and rat blood, from Prakrit ratta. There is no tradition of writing in Romany, but a rich oral tradition exists. One of the reasons for the survival of the language is its usefulness as an argot, or secret language, since the Gypsy style of life often leads to conflict with neighbouring communities. In the 20th century several eastern European countries have published poems and folktales in Romany, using their national scripts. Non-Gypsies (or Gajos) have also sometimes published in Romany.