Romani language
Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Distinguish Template:Infobox language
Template:Romani people Romani (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell;<ref>"Romany" in Oxford Living Dictionaries</ref><ref>"Romany" in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary</ref><ref>"Romany" in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary</ref><ref>Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh</ref> also Romanes Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell,<ref>"Romanes" in Collins English Dictionary; "Romanes" in Dictionary.com.</ref> Romany, Roma; Template:Langx) is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani people.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The largest of these are Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers),<ref name="rmy_ethno">Template:Cite web</ref> Balkan Romani (600,000),<ref name="rmn_ethno">Template:Cite web</ref> and Sinte Romani (300,000).<ref name="rmo_ethno">Template:Cite web</ref> Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.<ref>Template:Harvp "In some regions of Europe, especially the western margins (Britain, the Iberian peninsula, Scandinavia), Romani-speaking communities have given up their language in favor of the majority language, but have retained Romani-derived vocabulary as an in-group code. Such codes, for instance Angloromani (Britain), Caló (Spain), or Rommani (Scandinavia) are usually referred to as Para-Romani varieties."</ref>
The differences between the various varieties can be as large as, for example, the differences between the Slavic languages.Template:Sfn
Name
[edit]Speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language as Template:Lang "the Romani language" or Template:Lang (adverb) "in a Rom way". This derives from the Romani word Template:Lang, meaning either "a member of the (Romani) group" or "husband". This is also the origin of the term "Roma" in English, although some Roma groups refer to themselves using other demonyms (e.g. 'Kaale', 'Sinti').<ref name= hancock>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Classification
[edit]In the 18th century, it was shown by comparative studies that Romani belongs to the Indo-European language family.<ref name="mluvnice">Šebková, Hana; Žlnayová, Edita (1998). Nástin mluvnice slovenské romštiny (pro pedagogické účely) Template:Webarchive. Ústí nad Labem: Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity J. E. Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem: p. 4. Template:ISBN. "V 18. století bylo na základě komparatistických výzkumů jednoznačně prokázáno, že romština patří do indoevropské jazykové rodiny a že je jazykem novoindickým" ["In the 18th century, it was conclusively proved on the basis of comparative studie that Romani belongs to the Indo-European language family and is a New-Indian language"]</ref> In 1763 Vályi István, a Calvinist pastor from Satu Mare in Transylvania, was the first to notice the similarity between Romani and Indo-Aryan by comparing the Romani dialect of Győr with the language (perhaps Sinhala) spoken by three Sri Lankan students he met in the Netherlands.<ref>Marcel Courthiade, “Appendix Two. Kannauʒ on the Ganges, cradle of the Rromani people”, in Donald Kenrick, Gypsies: from the Ganges to the Thames (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2004), 105.</ref> This was followed by the linguist Johann Christian Christoph Rüdiger (1751–1822) whose book Template:Lang (1782) posited Romani was descended from Sanskrit. This prompted the philosopher Christian Jakob Kraus to collect linguistic evidence by systematically interviewing the Roma in Königsberg prison. Kraus's findings were never published, but they may have influenced or laid the groundwork for later linguists, especially August Pott and his pioneering Template:Lang (1844–45). By the mid-nineteenth century the linguist and author George Borrow was able to state categorically his findings that it was a language with its origins in India, and he later published a glossary, Romano Lavo-lil.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Research into the way the Romani dialects branched out was started in 1872 by the Slavicist Franz Miklosich in a series of essays. However, it was the philologist Ralph Turner's 1927 article “The Position of Romani in Indo-Aryan” that served as the basis for the integration of Romani into the history of Indian languages.
Romani is an Indo-Aryan language that is part of the Balkan sprachbund. It is the only New Indo-Aryan spoken exclusively outside the Indian subcontinent.<ref name = "intro">Schrammel, Barbara; Halwachs, Dieter W. (2005). "Introduction". General and Applied Romani Linguistics - Proceeding from the 6th International Conference on Romani Linguistics (München: LINCOM): p. 1. Template:ISBN.</ref>
Romani is sometimes classified in the Central Zone or Northwestern Zone Indo-Aryan languages, and sometimes treated as a group of its own.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Romani shares a number of features with the Central Zone languages.Template:Sfn The most significant isoglosses are the shift of Old Indo-Aryan r̥ to u or i (Sanskrit Template:Lang, Romani Template:Lang 'to hear') and kṣ- to kh (Sanskrit Template:Lang, Romani Template:Lang 'eye').Template:Sfn However, unlike other Central Zone languages, Romani preserves many dental clusters (Romani Template:Lang 'three', Template:Lang 'brother', compare Hindi Template:Lang, Template:Lang).Template:Sfn This implies that Romani split from the Central Zone languages before the Middle Indo-Aryan period.Template:Sfn However, Romani shows some features of New Indo-Aryan, such as erosion of the original nominal case system towards a nominative/oblique dichotomy, with new grammaticalized case suffixes added on.Template:Sfn This means that the Romani exodus from India could not have happened until late in the first millennium.Template:Sfn
Many words are similar to the Marwari and Lambadi languages spoken in large parts of India. Romani also shows some similarity to the Northwestern Zone languages.Template:Sfn In particular, the grammaticalization of enclitic pronouns as person markers on verbs (Template:Lang 'done' + Template:Lang 'me' → Template:Lang 'I did') is also found in languages such as Kashmiri and Shina.Template:Sfn This evidences a northwest migration during the split from the Central Zone languages consistent with a later migration to Europe.Template:Sfn
Based on these data, Yaron MatrasTemplate:Sfn views Romani as "kind of Indian hybrid: a central Indic dialect that had undergone partial convergence with northern Indic languages."Template:Sfn
In terms of its grammatical structures, Romani 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 Indo-Aryan languages.Template:Sfn
Romani shows a number of phonetic changes that distinguish it from other Indo-Aryan languages – in particular, the devoicing of voiced aspirates (bh dh gh > ph th kh), shift of medial t d to l, of short a to e, initial kh to x, rhoticization of retroflex ḍ, ṭ, ḍḍ, ṭṭ, ḍh etc. to r and ř, and shift of inflectional -a to -o.Template:Sfn
After leaving the Indian subcontinent, Romani was heavily affected by contact with European languages.Template:Sfn The most significant of these was Medieval Greek, which contributed lexically, phonemically, and grammatically to Early Romani (10th–13th centuries).Template:Sfn This includes inflectional affixes for nouns, and verbs that are still productive with borrowed vocabulary, the shift to VO word order, and the adoption of a preposed definite article.Template:Sfn Early Romani also borrowed from Armenian and Persian.Template:Sfn
Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.<ref>Template:Harvp. "Striking nonetheless are the grammatical similarities between Romani and Domari: the synthetisation of Layer ii affixes, the emergence of new concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative."</ref><ref>Template:Harvp. "The morphology of the two languages is similar in other respects: Both retain the old present conjugation in the verb (Domari kar-ami 'I do'), and consonantal endings of the oblique nominal case (Domari Template:Lang 'man.OBL', Template:Lang 'men.OBL'), and both show agglutination of secondary (Layer II) case endings (Domari Template:Lang 'for the man'). It had therefore been assumed that Romani and Domari derived form the same ancestor idiom, and split only after leaving the Indian subcontinent."</ref> This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be the "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent, but more recent research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central Zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.<ref name="What_is_Domari">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="ROMANI_ORIGINS">Template:Cite web</ref>
History
[edit]Template:Main The first attestation of Romani is from 1542 AD in western Europe.Template:Sfn The earlier history of the Romani language is completely undocumented, and is understood primarily through comparative linguistic evidence.Template:Sfn
Linguistic evaluation carried out in the nineteenth century by Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882–1888) showed the Romani language to be a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), not a Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA), establishing that the ancestors of the Romani could not have left India significantly earlier than AD 1000.
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. Romani 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 Template:Lang (Template:Lang) in the Prakrit became the feminine Template:Lang (Template:Lang) in Hindi and Template:Lang in Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages have been cited as evidence that the forerunner of Romani remained on the Indian subcontinent until a later period, perhaps even as late as the tenth century.
There is no historical proof to clarify who the ancestors of the Romani were or what motivated them to emigrate from the Indian subcontinent, but there are various theories. The influence of Greek, and to a lesser extent of Armenian and the Iranian languages (like Persian and Kurdish) points to a prolonged stay in Anatolia, Armenian highlands/Caucasus after the departure from South Asia. The latest territory where Romani is thought to have been spoken as a mostly unitary linguistic variety is the Byzantine Empire, between the 10th and the 13th centuries. The language of this period, which can be reconstructed on the basis of modern-day dialects, is referred to as Early Romani or Late Proto-Romani.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The Mongol invasion of Europe beginning in the first half of the thirteenth century triggered another westward migration. The Romani 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.<ref name="ema">Template:Cite web</ref> A project at Manchester University in England is transcribing Romani dialects, many of which are on the brink of extinction, for the first time.<ref name="ema" />
Dialects
[edit]
Today's dialects of Romani are differentiated by the vocabulary accumulated since their departure from Anatolia, as well as through divergent phonemic evolution 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.
Dialect differentiation began with the dispersal of the Romani from the Balkans around the 14th century and on, and with their settlement in areas across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.Template:Sfn The two most significant areas of divergence are the southeast (with epicenter of the northern Balkans) and west-central Europe (with epicenter Germany).Template:Sfn The central dialects replace Template:Lang in grammatical paradigms with Template:Lang.Template:Sfn The northwestern dialects append Template:Lang, simplify Template:Lang to Template:Lang, retain Template:Lang in the nominalizer Template:Lang / Template:Lang, and lose adjectival past-tense in intransitives (Template:Lang, Template:Lang → Template:Lang 'he/she went').Template:Sfn Other isoglosses (esp. demonstratives, 2/3pl perfective concord markers, loan verb markers) motivate the division into Balkan, Vlax, Central, Northeast, and Northwest dialects.Template:Sfn
Matras (2002, 2005) has argued for a theory of geographical classification of Romani dialects, which is based on the diffusion in space of innovations. According to this theory, Early Romani (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 prothesis of Template:Lang in Template:Lang > Template:Lang 'egg' and Template:Lang > Template:Lang 'he' as typical examples of west-to-east diffusion, and of addition of prothetic Template:Lang in Template:Lang > Template:Lang as a typical east-to-west spread. His conclusion is that dialect differences formed in situ, and not as a result of different waves of migration.<ref>Norbert Boretzky: Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004 p. 18–26</ref>
According to this classification, the dialects are split as follows:
- Northern Romani dialects in western and northern Europe, southern Italy and the Iberian peninsula<ref name="matras_proceedings">Template:Cite journal</ref>
- Central Romani dialects from southern Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Carpathian Ruthenia and southeastern Austria<ref name="matras_proceedings"/>
- Balkan Romani dialects, including the Black Sea coast dialects<ref name="matras_proceedings"/>
- Vlax Romani dialects, chiefly associated with the historical Wallachian and Transylvanian regions, with outmigrants in various regions throughout Europe and beyond<ref name="matras_proceedings"/>
SIL Ethnologue has the following classification: Template:Tree list
- Romani
- Balkan Romani
- Arlija
- Dzambazi
- Tinners Romani
- Northern Romani
- Baltic Romani
- Estonian Romani
- Latvian Romani (Lettish Romani)
- North Russian Romani
- Polish Romani
- White Russian Romani
- Carpathian Romani (Central Romani)
- East Slovak Romani
- Moravian Romani
- West Slovak Romani
- Finnish Kalo Romani
- Sinte Romani
- Abbruzzesi
- Serbian Romani
- Slovenian-Croatian Romani
- Welsh Romani
- Baltic Romani
- Vlax Romani
- Churari (Churarícko, Sievemakers)
- Eastern Vlax Romani (Bisa)
- Ghagar
- Grekurja (Greco)
- Kalderash (Coppersmith, Kelderashícko)
- Lovari (Lovarícko)
- Machvano (Machvanmcko)
- North Albanian Romani
- Sedentary Bulgaria Romani
- Sedentary Romania Romani
- Serbo-Bosnian Romani
- South Albanian Romani
- Ukraine-Moldavia Romani
- Zagundzi
- Balkan Romani
In a series of articles (beginning in 1982) linguist Marcel Courthiade proposed a different kind of 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 Template:Lang dialect of Great Britain) those with only a Romani vocabulary grafted into a non-Romani language (normally referred to as Para-Romani).
A table of some dialectal differences:
The first stratum includes the oldest dialects: Template:Lang (of Tirana), Template:Lang (of Korça), Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang (of Pristina), Template:Lang (Template:Lang), Template:Lang (Template:Lang), Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang (from Finland), Template:Lang, and the so-called Baltic dialects.
In the second there are Template:Lang (of Podgorica), Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang (of Agia Varvara)
The third comprises the rest of the Romani dialects, including Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang.
Mixed languages
[edit]Template:Main Some Roma have developed mixed languages (chiefly by retaining Romani lexical items and adopting second language grammatical structures), including:
- in Northern Europe
- Angloromani (in England)
- Scottish Cant (in Lowland Scotland)
- Scandoromani (in Norway & Sweden)
- in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and France:
- Erromintxela (in the Basque Country)
- Caló (in Portugal, Brazil and Spain).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- Manouche (a variant of Sinte Romani in France and its Mediterranean borders from Spain to Italy)
- in Southeast Europe
- in the Caucasus (Armenia)
Geographic distribution
[edit]Romani is the only Indo-Aryan language spoken almost exclusively in Europe.Template:Sfn
The most concentrated areas of Romani speakers are found in the Balkans and central Europe, particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Slovakia.<ref name="termcoord">Template:Cite web</ref> Although there are no reliable figures for the exact number of Romani speakers, the estimated amount of Romani speakers in the European Union is around 3.5 million, this makes it the largest spoken minority language in the European Union.<ref name="termcoord"/>
Status
[edit]The language is recognized as a minority language in many countries. At present the only places in the world where Romani is employed as an official language are the Republic of Kosovo (only regionally, not nationally)<ref>Constitution of Kosovo: [1] Template:Webarchive (PDF; 244 kB), page 8</ref> and the Šuto Orizari Municipality within the administrative borders of Skopje, North Macedonia's capital.
The first efforts to publish in Romani were undertaken in the interwar Soviet Union (using the Cyrillic script) and in socialist Yugoslavia.<ref>Kamusella, T. Language in Central Europe's History and Politics: From the Rule of cuius regio, eius religio to the National Principle of cuius regio, eius lingua? Journal of Globalization Studies. Volume 2, Number 1, May 2011 [2]</ref> Portions and selections of the Bible have been translated to many different forms of the Romani language.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The entire Bible has been translated to Kalderash Romani.<ref>E.g. Template:Cite web</ref>
Some traditional communities have expressed opposition to codifying Romani or having it used in public functions.Template:Sfn However, the mainstream trend has been towards standardization.Template:Sfn
Different variants of the language are now in the process of being codified in those countries with high Romani populations (for example, Slovakia). There are also some attempts currently aimed at the creation of a unified standard language.
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, a country with a sizable Romani minority (3.3% of the total 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 Romani children in the Romani language.<ref>Children's literature</ref> 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 Template:Lang, instead of Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang instead of Template:Lang, Template:Lang instead of Template:Lang or Template:Lang, etc.
An effort is also made to derive new words from the vocabulary already in use, i.e., Template:Lang (airplane), Template:Lang (slide rule), Template:Lang (retrospectively), Template:Lang (adjective). There is an ever-changing set of borrowings from Romanian as well, including such terms as Template:Lang (weather, time), Template:Lang (town hall), Template:Lang (cream), Template:Lang (saint, holy). Hindi-based neologisms include Template:Lang (bulb, electricity), Template:Lang (example), Template:Lang (drawing, design), Template:Lang (writing), while there are also English-based neologisms, like Template:Lang < "to print".
Romani is now used on the internet, in some local media, and in some countries as a medium of instruction.Template:Sfn
Orthography
[edit]
Historically, Romani was an exclusively unwritten language;Template:Sfn for example, Slovak Romani's orthography was codified only in 1971.<ref>Šebková, Hana; Žlnayová, Edita (1998). Nástin mluvnice slovenské romštiny (pro pedagogické účely) Template:Webarchive. Ústí nad Labem: Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity J. E. Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem: p. 4. Template:ISBN. "U nás k tomu došlo v roce 1971, kdy jazyková komise při tehdy existujícím Svazu Cikánů-Romů (1969–1973) přijala závaznou písemnou normu slovenského dialektu romštiny."</ref>
The overwhelming majority of academic and non-academic literature produced currently in Romani is written using a Latin-based orthography.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref>
The proposals to form a unified Romani alphabet and one standard Romani language by either choosing one dialect as a standard, or by merging more dialects together, have not been successful - instead, the trend is towards a model where each dialect has its own writing system.<ref name="errc">Template:Cite web</ref> Among native speakers, the most common pattern is for individual authors to use an orthography based on the writing system of the dominant contact language: thus Romanian in Romania, Hungarian in Hungary and so on.
To demonstrate the differences, the phrase /romani tʃʰib/, which means "Romani language" in all the dialects, can be written as Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang<ref name="mluvnice"/> and so on.
A currently observable trend, however, appears to be the adoption of a loosely English- and Czech-oriented orthography, developed spontaneously by native speakers for use online and through email.<ref>Template:Harvp</ref>
Phonology
[edit]The following is the core sound inventory of Romani. Template:Highlight are only found in some dialects.
Loans from contact languages often allow other non-native phonemes.Template:Sfn
Consonants
[edit]The Romani sound system is not highly unusual among European languages. Its most marked features are a three-way contrast between unvoiced, voiced, and aspirated stops, and the presence in some dialects of a second rhotic Template:Angbr.Template:Sfn
Eastern and Southeastern European Romani dialects commonly have palatalized consonants, either distinctive or allophonic.Template:Sfn
In some varieties such as Slovak Romani, at the end of a word, voiced consonants become voiceless and aspirated ones lose aspiration.<ref name="mluvnice"/> Some examples:
| word final | mid word |
|---|---|
| Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Gloss |
Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Gloss |
| Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Gloss |
Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Gloss |
Vowels
[edit]| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link |
| Mid | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link |
| Open | Template:IPA link |
Vowel length is often distinctive in Western European Romani dialects.Template:Sfn
Stress
[edit]Conservative dialects of Romani have final stress, with the exception of some unstressed affixes (e.g. the vocative ending, the case endings added on to the accusative noun, and the remoteness tense marker).Template:Sfn Central and Western European dialects often have shifted stress earlier in the word.Template:Sfn
Lexicon
[edit]Morphology
[edit]Nominals
[edit]Nominals in Romani are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals.<ref name="mluvnice"/> Some sources describe articles as nominals.
The indefinite article is often borrowed from the local contact language.Template:Sfn
Types
[edit]General Romani is an unusual language, in having two classes of nominals, based on the historic origin of the word, that have a completely different morphology. The two classes can be called inherited and borrowed,<ref name="mluvnice"/> but this article uses names from Matras (2006),Template:Sfn ikeoclitic and xenoclitic. The class to which a word belongs is obvious from its ending.
Ikeoclitic
[edit]The first class is the old, Indian vocabulary (and to some extent Persian, Armenian and Greek loanwords).<ref name="mluvnice"/> The ikeoclitic class can also be divided into two sub-classes, based on the ending.Template:Sfn
Nominals ending in o/i
[edit]The ending of words in this sub-class is -o with masculines, -i with feminines, with the latter ending triggering palatalisation of preceding d, t, n, l to ď, ť, ň, ľ.<ref name="mluvnice"/>
Examples:<ref name="mluvnice"/>
- masculine
- Template:Lang - the son
- Template:Lang - the little
- Template:Lang - our (m.)
- feminine
- Template:Lang - non-romani girl
- Template:Lang - small (note the change n > ň)
- Template:Lang - ours (f.)
Nominals without ending
[edit]All words in this sub-class have no endings, regardless of gender.
Examples:Template:Sfn
- masculine
- Template:Lang - the brother
- Template:Lang - the nice (m.)
- Template:Lang - the father
- feminine
- Template:Lang - the sister
- Template:Lang - the nice (f.) - same as m.
- Template:Lang - the mother
Xenoclitic
[edit]The second class is loanwords from European languages.<ref name="mluvnice"/>Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn (Matras adds that the morphology of the new loanwords might be borrowed from Greek.)
The ending of borrowed masculine is -os, -is, -as, -us, and the borrowed feminine ends in -a.
Examples from Slovak Romani:<ref name="mluvnice"/>Template:Sfn
- masculine
- Template:Lang - shoemaker
- Template:Lang - bus
- Template:Lang - teacher (m.)
- feminine
- Template:Lang - shirt
- Template:Lang - window
- Template:Lang - teacher (f.)
Basics of morphology
[edit]Romani has two grammatical genders (masculine / feminine) and two numbers (singular / plural).Template:Sfn
All nominals can be singular or plural.Template:Sfn
Cases
[edit]Nouns are marked for any of eight cases; nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative, and instrumental. The former three are formed by inflections on the noun itself, but the latter five are marked by adding postpositions to the accusative, used as an "indirect root."<ref name="mluvnice"/>
The vocative and nominative are a bit "outside" of the case system<ref name="seb52">Šebková, Žlnayová 1998, p. 52–54</ref> as they are produced only by adding a suffix to the root.
Example: the suffix for singular masculine vocative of ikeoclitic types is Template:Lang.<ref>Šebková, Žlnayová 1998, p. 47</ref>Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang - you, boy (or son)!
- Template:Lang - you, little one!
- Template:Lang - brother!
The oblique cases disregard gender or type: Template:Lang / Template:Lang (locative), Template:Lang / Template:Lang (dative), Template:Lang (ablative), Template:Lang (instrumental and comitative), and Template:Lang / Template:Lang (genitive).Template:Sfn
Example: The endings for o/i ending nominals are as follows:
| sg. nom. | sg. acc. | sg. voc. | pl. nom. | pl. acc. | pl. voc. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'boy' (masculine) |
Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 'woman' (feminine) |
Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
Example: the suffix for indirect root for masculine plural for all inherited words is Template:Lang,<ref name="seb52"/>Template:Sfn the dative suffix is Template:Lang.<ref>Šebková, Žlnayová 1998, p. 76–78</ref>Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang - mushroom
- Template:Lang - the indirect root (also used as accusative)
- Template:Lang – In the summer we go on mushrooms (meaning picking mushrooms)
There are many declension classes of nouns that decline differently, and show dialectal variation.Template:Sfn
Parts of speech such as adjectives and the article, when they function as attributes before a word, distinguish only between a nominative and an indirect/oblique case form.<ref>Šebková, Žlnayová 1998, p. 52</ref> In the Early Romani system that most varieties preserve, declinable adjectives had nominative endings similar to the nouns ending in -o (masculine -o, feminine -i) but the oblique endings -e in the masculine, -a in the feminine. The ending -e was the same regardless of gender. So-called athematic adjectives had the nominative forms -o in the masculine and the feminine and -a in the plural; the oblique has the same endings as the previous group, but the preceding stem changes by adding the element -on-.Template:Sfn
Agreement
[edit]Romani shows the typically Indo-Aryan pattern of the genitive agreeing with its head noun.
Example:
- Template:Lang - 'the boy's brother'
- Template:Lang - 'the boy's sister'.Template:Sfn
Adjectives and the definite article show agreement with the noun they modify.
Example:
- Template:Lang - 'my father'
- Template:Lang - 'my mother'.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Verbs
[edit]Romani derivations are highly synthetic and partly agglutinative. However, they are also sensitive to recent development - for example, in general, Romani in Slavic countries show an adoption of productive aktionsart morphology.Template:Sfn
The core of the verb is the lexical root, verb morphology is suffixed.Template:Sfn
The verb stem (including derivation markers) by itself has non-perfective aspect and is present or subjunctive.Template:Sfn
Types
[edit]Similarly to nominals, verbs in Romani belong to several classes, but unlike nominals, these are not based on historical origin. However, the loaned verbs can be recognized, again, by specific endings, which are Greek in origin.Template:Sfn
Irregular verbs
[edit]Some words are irregular, like Template:Lang - to be.
Class I
[edit]The next three classes are recognizable by suffix in 3rd person singular.
The first class, called I.,<ref name="mluvnice"/>Template:Sfn has a suffix Template:Lang in 3rd person singular.
Examples, in 3 ps. sg:Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang - to do
- Template:Lang - to hear
- Template:Lang - to see
Class II
[edit]Words in the second category, called II.,<ref name="mluvnice"/>Template:Sfn have a suffix Template:Lang in 3rd person singular.
Examples, in 3 ps. sg:Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang - to go
- Template:Lang - to be ashamed, shy away.
- Template:Lang - to laugh
- Template:Lang - to believe
- Template:Lang - to eat
Class III
[edit]All the words in the third class are semantically causative passive.Template:Sfn
Examples:Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang - to learn
- Template:Lang - to burn
- Template:Lang - to be beaten
- Template:Lang - to lie
Borrowed verbs
[edit]Borrowed verbs from other languages are marked with affixes taken from Greek tense/aspect suffixes, including Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang.Template:Sfn
Morphology
[edit]The Romani verb has three persons and two numbers, singular and plural. There is no verbal distinction between masculine and feminine.
Romani tenses are, not exclusively, present tense, future tense, two past tenses (perfect and imperfect), present or past conditional and present imperative.
Depending on the dialect, the suffix Template:Lang marks the present, future, or conditional.Template:Sfn There are many perfective suffixes, which are determined by root phonology, valency, and semantics: e.g. Template:Lang 'did'.Template:Sfn
There are two sets of personal conjugation suffixes, one for non-perfective verbs, and another for perfective verbs.Template:Sfn The non-perfective personal suffixes, continued from Middle Indo-Aryan, are as follows:Template:Sfn
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| sg. | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| pl. | Template:Lang | Template:Lang | |
These are slightly different for consonant- and vowel-final roots (e.g. Template:Lang 'you eat', Template:Lang 'you want').Template:Sfn
The perfective suffixes, deriving from late Middle Indo-Aryan enclitic pronouns, are as follows:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| sg. | Template:Lang | Template:Lang / Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| pl. | Template:Lang | Template:Lang / Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
Verbs may also take a further remoteness suffix whose original form must have been Template:Lang and which is preserved in different varieties as Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang or Template:Lang.Template:Sfn With non-perfective verbs this marks the imperfect, habitual, or conditional.Template:Sfn With the perfective, this marks the pluperfect or counterfactual.Template:Sfn
Class I
[edit]All the persons and numbers of present tense of the word Template:Lang in East Slovak Romani.<ref name="szl38">Šebková, Žlnayová 1998, p. 38</ref>
| sg | pl | |
|---|---|---|
| 1.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 2.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 3.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
Various tenses of the same word, all in 2nd person singular.<ref name="mluvnice"/>
- present - Template:Lang
- future - Template:Lang (many other dialects use a future particle such as ka preceding the imperfective form : Template:Lang)
- past imperfect = present conditional - Template:Lang
- past perfect - Template:Lang (Template:Lang + Template:Lang + Template:Lang)
- past conditional - Template:Lang (Template:Lang + Template:Lang + Template:Lang + Template:Lang)
- present imperative - Template:Lang
Class II
[edit]All the persons and numbers of present tense of the word Template:Lang in East Slovak Romani.<ref name="szl38"/>
| sg | pl | |
|---|---|---|
| 1.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 2.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 3.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
Various tenses of the word Template:Lang, all in 2nd person singular.<ref name="mluvnice"/>
- present - Template:Lang
- future - Template:Lang
- past imperfect = present conditional - Template:Lang
- past perfect - Template:Lang (irregular - regular form of Template:Lang is Template:Lang)
- past conditional - Template:Lang
- present imperative - Template:Lang
Class III
[edit]All the persons and numbers of present tense of the word Template:Lang in East Slovak Romani.<ref name="mluvnice"/> Note the added Template:Lang, which is typical for this group.
| sg | pl | |
|---|---|---|
| 1.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 2.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
| 3.ps | Template:Lang | Template:Lang |
Various tenses of the same word, all in 2nd person singular again.<ref name="mluvnice"/>
- present - Template:Lang
- future - Template:Lang
- past imperfect = present conditional - Template:Lang
- past perfect - Template:Lang (Template:Lang + Template:Lang + Template:Lang)
- past conditional - Template:Lang (Template:Lang + Template:Lang + Template:Lang + Template:Lang)
- present imperative - Template:Lang<ref>Šebková, Žlnayová 1998, p. 107</ref>
Valency
[edit]Valency markers are affixed to the verb root either to increase or decrease valency.Template:Sfn There is dialectal variation as to which markers are most used; common valency-increasing markers are Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang, and common valency-decreasing markers are Template:Lang and Template:Lang.Template:Sfn These may also be used to derive verbs from nouns and adjectives.Template:Sfn
Romani makes use of valency-changing morphology which increases or decreases the valency of its verbs.<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>
Syntax
[edit]Romani syntax is quite different from most Indo-Aryan languages, and shows more similarity to the Balkan languages.Template:Sfn
Šebková and Žlnayová, while describing Slovak Romani, argues that Romani is a free word order language<ref name="mluvnice"/> and that it allows for theme-rheme structure, similarly to Czech, and that in some Romani dialects in East Slovakia, there is a tendency to put a verb at the end of a sentence.
However, Matras describes it further.Template:Sfn According to Matras, in most dialects of Romani, Romani is a VO language, with SVO order in contrastive sentences and VSO order in thetic sentences.Template:Sfn The tendency of some dialects to put the verb in final position may be due to Slavic influence.
Examples, from Slovak Romani:Template:Sfn
- Template:Lang - This cup is cold.
- Template:Lang - This is a cold cup.
Clauses are usually finite.Template:Sfn relative clauses, introduced by the relativizer kaj, are postponed.Template:Sfn Factual and non-factual complex clauses are distinguished.Template:Sfn
Romani in modern times
[edit]Romani has lent several words to English such as pal (ultimately from Sanskrit Template:Lang "brother"<ref name=OEED>Hoad, TF (ed.) Oxford Concise Dictionary of Etymology (1996) Oxford University Press Template:ISBN</ref>). Other Romani words in general British slang are gadgie (man),<ref name=Beal/> shiv or chiv (knife).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Urban British slang shows an increasing level of Romani influence,<ref name=Beal>Template:Cite book</ref> with some words becoming accepted into the lexicon of standard English (for example, chav from an assumed Anglo-Romani word,<ref name=Beal/> meaning "small boy", in the majority of dialects).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> There are efforts to teach and familiarise Vlax-Romani to a new generation of Romani so that Romani spoken in different parts of the world are connected through a single dialect of Romani. The Indian Institute of Romani Studies, Chandigarh published several Romani language lessons through its journal Roma during the 1970s.<ref name="lee">Template:Cite book</ref>
Occasionally loanwords from other Indo-Iranian languages, such as Hindi, are mistakenly labelled as Romani due to surface similarities (due to a shared root), such as cushy, which is from Urdu (itself a loan from Persian Template:Lang) meaning "excellent, healthy, happy".<ref name=OEED/>
See also
[edit]- Balkan Romani
- Bohemian Romani
- Carpathian Romani
- Domari language
- Finnish Kalo language
- Laiuse Romani language
- Lotegorisch
- Parya language
- Romani alphabets
- Romani language standardization
- Zargari Romani
- Gens du voyage (France)Template:Colend
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]General and cited sources
[edit]- Template:Cite book
- Template:Cite book
- Template:Cite book
- Template:Cite web
- Template:Cite encyclopedia
Further reading
[edit]- Iliev, Iv. I. Armak. The System of the Personal Pronouns in the Romani Dialect in and around Kardzhali, Bulgaria, Ivan G. Iliev
- Template:Cite book
- Template:Cite EB1911
- Walter Simson. A History of the Gipsies: with specimens of the Gipsy language. Edited, with preface, introduction, and notes, and a disquisition on the past, present and future of Gipsydom, by James Simson. London: Sampson Low & Marston, 1865. A History of the Gipsies with Specimens of the Gipsy Language by Walter Simson
- Peter Bakker, Milena Hübschmannová. What Is the Romani Language?. Hatfield: University Of Hertfordshire Press, 2000.
- The Zincali : or, An account of the Gypsies of Spain; with an original collection of their songs and poetry, by George Borrow (1842)
- The Zincali, an account of the Gypsies of Spain (1907)
- El gitanismo : historia, costumbres, y dialecto de los gitanos
- Embéo e Majaró Lucas
- John Sampson. The dialect of the gypsies of Wales : being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1926. xxiii, 230 p. The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales: Being the Older Form of British Romani Preserved in the Speech of the Clan of Abram Wood
External links
[edit]Template:InterWiki Template:Incubator Template:Incubator Template:Wiktionary
- Factsheets on Romani Language
- Romani project at Manchester University, with a collection of downloadable papers about the Romani language and a collection of links to Romani media
- Outline of Romani Grammar—Victor A. Friedman
- Partial Romani/English Dictionary—Compiled by Angela Ba'Tal Libal and Will Strain
- ROMLEX Lexical Database of different dialects of Romani
- "Romani language in Macedonia in the Third Millennium: Progress and Problems" Template:Webarchive, Victor Friedman.
- "The Romani Language in the Republic of Macedonia: Status, Usage and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Victor Friedman.
- Romani Wikipedia (head page)
- Romani
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