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Romani is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani communities. According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own. The largest of these are Vlax Romani, Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Romani (300,000). 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.
Shelta is a language spoken by Mincéirí, particularly in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It is widely known as the Cant, to its native speakers in Ireland as De Gammon, and to the linguistic community as Shelta. The exact number of native speakers is hard to determine due to sociolinguistic issues but Ethnologue puts the number of speakers at 30,000 in the UK, 6,000 in Ireland, and 50,000 in the US. The figure for at least the UK is dated to 1990; it is not clear if the other figures are from the same source.
The Sinti are a subgroup of Romani people. They are found mostly in Germany, France and Italy and Central Europe, numbering some 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today only a small percentage of Sinti remain unsettled. In earlier times, they frequently lived on the outskirts of communities.
Pikey is a slang term, which is pejorative and considered by many to be a slur. It is used mainly in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to people who are of the Traveller community, a set of ethno-cultural groups found primarily in Great Britain and Ireland. It is also used against Romanichal Travellers, Welsh Kale, Scottish Lowland Travellers, Scottish Highland Travellers, and Funfair Travellers.
Thieves' cant is a cant, cryptolect, or argot which was formerly used by thieves, beggars, and hustlers of various kinds in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in other English-speaking countries. It is now mostly obsolete and used in literature and fantasy role-playing, although individual terms continue to be used in the criminal subcultures of Britain and the United States.
Romanichals are a Romani subgroup within the United Kingdom and other parts of the English-speaking world. There are an estimated 500,000 Romani in the United Kingdom; almost all live in England. Most Romanichal speak Angloromani, a mixed language that blends Romani vocabulary with English syntax.
A vardo is a traditional horse-drawn wagon used by British Romanichal Travellers as their home. A vardo must have four wheels, with two being used for steering. The vehicle is typically highly decorated, intricately carved, brightly painted, and even gilded. The Romanichal Traveller tradition of the vardo is seen as a high cultural point of both artistic design and a masterpiece of woodcrafter's art.
Welsh Romani is a variety of the Romani language which was spoken fluently in Wales until at least 1950. It was spoken by the Kale group of the Romani people who arrived in Britain during the 16th century. The first record of Romani moving permanently into Wales comes from the 18th century. Welsh-Romani is one of the many Northern Romani dialects.
The Norwegian and Swedish Romanisæl Travellers are a group or branch of the Romani people who have been resident in Norway and Sweden for some 500 years. The estimated number of Romanisael Travellers in Sweden is 65,000, while in Norway, the number is probably about 10,000.
In Romani culture, a gadjo (masculine) or gadji (feminine) is a person who has no Romanipen. This usually corresponds to not being an ethnic Romani, but it can also be an ethnic Romani who does not live within Romani culture. It is often used by Romanies to address or denote outsider neighbors living within or very near their community.
The Romani people have several distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Calé, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans in the early 12th century, from a migration out of the Indian subcontinent beginning about 1st century – 2nd century AD. They settled in the areas of present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Roma population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.
Scottish Travellers, or the people in Scotland loosely termed Romani persons or travellers, consist of a number of diverse, unrelated communities that speak a variety of different languages and dialects that pertain to distinct customs, histories, and traditions.
The Kale are a group of Romani people in Wales. Many claim to be descendants of Abram Wood, who was the first Rom to reside permanently and exclusively in Wales in the early 18th century, although Romanichal Travellers have appeared in Wales since the 16th century. Welsh Kale are almost exclusively found in Northwest Wales, specifically the Welsh-speaking areas. Romanichal Travellers inhabit South Wales and North East Wales.
The Romani people are also known by a variety of other names; in English as gypsies or gipsies, and Roma; in Greek as γύφτοι (gíftoi) or τσιγγάνοι (tsiggánoi), in Central and Eastern Europe as Tsingani ; in France as gitans besides the dated terms bohémiens and manouches; in Italy as rom and sinti besides the dated terms zingari, sigani, and gitani; in Spain as gitanos; and in Portugal as ciganos.
Erromintxela is the distinctive language of a group of Romani living in the Basque Country, who also go by the name Erromintxela. It is sometimes called Basque Caló or Errumantxela in English; caló vasco, romaní vasco, or errominchela in Spanish; and euskado-rromani or euskado-romani in French. Although detailed accounts of the language date to the end of the 19th century, linguistic research began only in the 1990s.
Sinte Romani is the variety of Romani spoken by the Sinti people in Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, some parts of Northern Italy and other adjacent regions. Sinte Romani is characterized by significant German influence and is not mutually intelligible with other forms of Romani. The language is written in the Latin script.
Scottish Cant is a cant spoken in Scotland by Lowland Scottish Romani Travellers.
There are a number of traditionally itinerant or travelling groups in Europe who are known as "Travellers" or "Gypsies". The origins of the indigenous itinerant groups are unclear. They have been assumed to have taken up the travelling lifestyle out of necessity at some point during the Early Modern period but to not be ethnically distinct from their source population. However, recent DNA testing has shown that the Irish Travellers are of Irish origin but are genetically distinct from their settled counterparts due to social isolation, and more groups are being studied.
Romani people have been recorded in the United Kingdom since at least the early 16th century. Records of Romani people in Scotland date to the early 16th century. Romani number around est. 225,000 in the UK. This includes the sizable population of Eastern European Roma, who immigrated into the UK in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and also after EU expansion in 2004.
References
- ↑ "School of Arts, Languages and Cultures - The University of Manchester". www.alc.manchester.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2007-02-18. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
- 1 2 "Languages of the UK" (PDF). 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-06-14.
- 1 2 Kenrick, Donald. S. (1971). "The sociolinguistics of the development of British Romani". In Acton, T. A. (ed.). Current changes amongst British Gypsies and their place in international patterns of development: proceedings of the Research and Policy Conference of the National Gypsy Education Council, held at ... Oxford.
- 1 2 Sampson, John (1926). The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- ↑ Bakker (1997). Review of McGowan, "The Winchester Confessions". Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 5th ser., 7(1): 49-50.
- ↑ Smart B. C.; Crofton, H. T. (1875). The Dialect of the English Gypsies (2nd ed.). London: Asher & Co.
- ↑ McGowan, Alan (1996). The Winchester Confessions 1615–1616: depositions of travellers, gypsies, fraudsters and makers of counterfeit documents, including a vocabulary of the Romany language. Romany and Traveller Family History Society. ISBN 9781900660013.
- 1 2 Hancock, Ian. F. (1971). Comment on Kenrick, q.v., above.
- ↑ Bakker, Peter (2002), "An early vocabulary of British Romani (1616): A linguistic analysis", Romani Studies, 5, vol. 12
- ↑ Romani Sociolinguistics. p. 93.
- ↑ McWilliams, Krislyn; Nelson, Manuela; Oxley, Meghan. "AngloRomani: The Mixed Language of Romani Peoples" (PDF). Seattle: University of Washington. Retrieved 2015-12-23.
- ↑ Hancock, Ian (2010). "George Borrow's Romani". In Karanth, Dileep (ed.). Danger! Educated Gypsy: Selected Essays. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press. p. 173. ISBN 9781902806983.
- ↑ "Angloromani". romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2013-01-13. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
- ↑ Samples of Anglo-Romani, Audio files
- ↑ Dictionary - Angloromani