History
Romany ( Romani, Rromano [with a double r]) is the language of the Roma and Sinti, nomadic peoples who came originally from northern India and parts of Pakistan and who currently live world-wide, primarily in Europe. They are believed to have left India about 1000 A.D. and to have passed through what is now Afghanistan, Iran, Armenia, and Turkey. They reached the Balkan peninsula by the 14th century. Some Roma migrated south to North Africa and reached Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar. Both currents met in today's France.

The Roma are popularly known in English as Gypsies, a word which is derived from the word Egypt, based on the mistaken belief that they were natives of Egypt. The term was never used by the Roma to describe themselves. The term Gypsy has long been associated with persecution and has acquired pejorative connotations. In Europe, they are also known as Tsiganes, Zigeuners, and Gitanos.

Status
The world population of Roma is difficult to establish with any certainty. Estimates vary from 5 to 10 million worldwide. The largest concentrations of Roma are found in the Balkan peninsula, in central Europe, the United States, in Russia, and in the other former republics of the USSR. Smaller numbers are scattered throughout western Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Click here for more detailed information about the Roma.


Romany belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language group and is closely related to Punjabi and Sinhala. It is thought to be a loose collection of languages rather than dialects. Ethnologue classifies them into the following major groups.

Grammar
The language of the Roma was influenced by the languages of the different European countries they visited. For instance, Romany noun declensions survived in eastern Europe because of the influence of the Slavic languages that have a rich system of noun declensions with the result that Romany has up to eight cases. In western Europe, on the other hand, the tendency was for declensions to disappear in favor of the use of prepositions, some of them borrowed from European languages, e.g., mit "with" (from German). Romany verbs are typically Indo-European with three tenses (present, past, future) and two aspects (imperfective and perfective).

Vocabulary
Romany bears the imprint of the Roma travels and points to their origin in India through the survival of grammatical forms and basic vocabulary typical of Indo-Aryan languages.

When the nomadic ancestors of the Roma began their long journey westward a thousand years or more ago, they often stayed for long periods of time in regions where they lived in proximity to peoples who spoke different languages. The Roma borrowed words and even grammatical constructions from these languages. For instance, Romany has words of Iranian origin such as ambrol "pear", ruv "wolf'", of Armenian origin such as bov "oven", grast "horse", and of Greek origin such as drom "road", zumi "soup". Romany also has many borrowings from the Slavic languages, Hungarian, Romanian, German, Italian, and other European languages. Sometimes, Romany created new words by combining elements from different languages. For example the Romany word ledome "frozen" is composed of the Slavic root led "ice" and the suffix me, the past participle ending taken from Greek.

Writing
In recent years, there has been a growing tendency to write in Romany, a language which has hitherto been only oral. At present, Romany writing depends on the country in which the speakers reside. In the Balkans, Romany may be written in the Latin or in the Cyrillic script. There has also been a move towards unification and standardization of the language among the Roma of different countries.

Romany words in English

The English word pal comes from Romany pal "brother, comrade", variant of continental Romany pral, probably from Sanskit bhrata "brother".

The English word posh probably comes from thieves' slang meaning "'money" (1830), originally "coin of small value, halfpenny", possibly from Romany posh "half."

Gypsy music
Gypsy music is part of the musical heritage of many countries. Below are a few links to Gypsy music sites.

Rromano-Suno Music from the Balkans
Gypsy Music Site Listings

Useful links
Romany
Minority Languages: Romani
Romany-English Online Dictionary