Editing Romani people (section)

=== Linguistic evidence ===
Linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon.<ref name="mluvnice">{{Citation |last1=Šebková |first1=Hana |last2=Žlnayová |first2=Edita |year=1998 |url=http://rss.archives.ceu.hu/archive/00001112/01/118.pdf |title=Nástin mluvnice slovenské romštiny (pro pedagogické účely) |place=Ústí nad Labem |publisher=Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity J. E. Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem |page=4 |isbn=978-80-7044-205-0 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304024041/http://rss.archives.ceu.hu/archive/00001112/01/118.pdf |archive-date=4 March 2016}}</ref>

Romani and [[Domari]] share some similarities: [[agglutination]] of postpositions of the second layer (or [[case marking|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.{{sfn|Matras|2002|p=48}} This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent—but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate branches within the [[Central Indo-Aryan languages|central zone]] ([[Hindustani language|Hindustani]]) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom, therefore, likely descend from two migration waves from India separated by several centuries.<ref name="Domari">{{cite web |title=What is Domari? |publisher=University of Manchester. Romani Linguistics and Romani Language Projects |url=http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/atmanchester/projects/domari.shtml |access-date=23 July 2008 |archive-date=10 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160410044633/http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/atmanchester/projects/domari.shtml |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=ROMANI_ORIGINS>{{cite web |title=On romani origins and identity |url=http://www.radoc.net/radoc.php?doc=art_b_history_origins&lang=en&articles=true |publisher=Radoc |access-date=23 July 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717140132/http://www.radoc.net/radoc.php?doc=art_b_history_origins&lang=en&articles=true |archive-date=17 July 2011}}</ref>

In [[phonology]], the Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages, especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as [[Kashmiri language|Kashmiri]] and [[Shina language|Shina]] through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of [[Indo-Aryan languages#New Indo-Aryan|New Indo-Aryan languages]].<ref name=Elsevier />
{{Rom-Dom numerals}}