Talk:Romani language

message: Why is the language called Romany? Is it to do with Romania, where they settled for thousands of years? Scott Gall 03:40, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the language is called Romany because these people call themselves "Roma". It has nothing to do with Romania, that's mere coincidence. In fact, a related people living in the Middle East call themselves "Dhom", which seems to be the original name. As for the name Gypsy, that word is increasingly seen as offensive, based as it is on a misunderstanding of their origins, as the English believed they were from Egypt, when in reality they migrated from India. Also, the Roma haven't lived in Romania for "thousands of years"; they only reached the Balkans around the beginning of the second millennium AD. CRCulver 04:13, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Also bear in mind that at the time the Roma left Anatolia, ca. 1000 AD, "Roman" meant "Byzantine Roman", since the Eastern Roman Empire survived (gradually disintegrating and fragmenting) for a thousand years after the "classical" Roman Empire fell.  -- Craig Goodrich 68.58.132.176 (talk) 05:18, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

text: >> Jumping in: The term "Gypsy" has never been meant as an insult before the NAZI agitation. Remember well-known operas and songs and whatever. It was used as a cover term and originated in times centuries ago when neither the wandering (now) "Romani" nor the sedentary people had exact knowledge of geography, however, knew Rome and Egypt from the bible. Thus they answered to originally having come from either Rome or Egypt. Obviously younger people cannot fancy such historical knowledge today. Note further: Before the late nineteenth century, English-language texts usually referred to the language as the "Gypsy language". While some consider it derogatory, in the United States, "gypsy" is still the most-understood term, as "Romani" is not in common use there.[24]2A02:8108:9640:AC3:B062:9E24:2057:F204 (talk) 09:08, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

text: That is simply incorrect. RashersTierney (talk) 14:42, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Maybe some are proud, but most not, do you have some statistics or something else to prove your sayings? Desiphral-देसीफ्राल talk-फेन मा 10:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, the term Gypsies is not really equivalent to Cikáni.  That would be equivalent to the Polish Cygan and the German Zigeuner--both having an initial sound of Ts, followed by a short i sound--and other European words for the people.  The term Gypsy stems from the mistaken notion that they came from Egypt.  The Wikipedia article Romani people suggests a couple of derivations for that word.  140.147.160.78 17:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Why Romany instead of Gypsy?

message: In answer to CR Culver, the Romany/Gypsy/Cikán pepole of the Czech Republic (and probably most of Central and Eastern Europe) tend to see "Roma" as a new-fangled "politically correct" term. As far as they are concerned, they're Gypsies (Cikáni) and proud of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HairyDan (talk • contribs) 00:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe some are proud, but most not, do you have some statistics or something else to prove your sayings? Desiphral-देसीफ्राल talk-फेन मा 10:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, the term Gypsies is not really equivalent to Cikáni.  That would be equivalent to the Polish Cygan and the German Zigeuner--both having an initial sound of Ts, followed by a short i sound--and other European words for the people.  The term Gypsy stems from the mistaken notion that they came from Egypt.  The Wikipedia article Romani people suggests a couple of derivations for that word.  140.147.160.78 17:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "these people call themselves 'Roma' " 

message: I have moved this comment from the article to here:Note - Misal and Bijli are not derived from Sanskrit. Misal is derived from Persian.Do what you like with this info. —Zalktis (talk) 17:51, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neologisms note 

message: Perhaps it would be good to have an article on Para-Romani languages? This term appears a few places in WP articles on various Romani languages/dialects, but is IMO not properly explained. Furthermore, in some instances Angloromani is described as a mixed language, whereas in the article mixed language, AR is named as an example of what a mixed language  is not. An article on Para-Romani might clarify this issue. What do the more linguistically knowledgeable amongst you say? —Zalktis (talk) 08:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems like a good idea to me, but I don't know who can work on it, since there are more important issues right now that are being resolved quite slowly. AKoan (talk) 10:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. For now it's safe to list them as (probably) mixed languages, it kind of depends on the amount of lexical admixture (i.e. whether it's a roughly equal mix or if one language just contributes a handful of words). As it doesn't look like anyone has done a count so far, calling them mixed for now seems fine to me. Portmanteau is not a descriptor I've heard for an entire language, I rather doubt that's correct. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Para-Romani 

message: The article states that Romani isn't official in any country in the world, though the article about Sweden clearly says that Romani is one of its minority languages. Is there any reason that this article claims the opposite? HannesP (talk)¨  —Preceding undated comment was added at 22:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That is definitely wrong, Romani is one of its minority languages in Romania, too. And other places. AKoan (talk) 10:09, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is with the definitions, legal or otherwise, of what constitutes an official language, and what status a recognised minority language has. For example, in Finland, Swedish—the language of one minority group—has the status of an official language for historical and cultural reasons, whereas Romani, the language spoken by another minority group is "only" a recognised minority language: even though there is some state support for the use of Finnish Romani in some contexts, such as in native language education, one cannot, for example, demand that correspondence one receives from the Finnish government be written in Romani, as is the case with Swedish. As for Sweden, we have the bizarre situation where there are currently 5 recognised minority languages (Sámi, Finnish, Meänkieli, Yiddish, and Romani), but there is no legally defined official language at all (though the proposed law on languages will for the first time legally define Swedish as the de jure official language in Sweden). —Zalktis (talk) 10:39, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You might be right. I think we should avoid this information, since its not clear how each state defines its own "official language" and "minority language". AKoan (talk) 10:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Instead of avoiding, let's clearify: in Sweden Romani is a recognized minority language (one of five as correctly stated above) and as such this should be listed in the fact box. When it comes to definitions of official languages I think we have to go by what each nation states in legislation. (And since July 1st 2009 Swedish is the official language of Sweden, along side with 5 recognized minority languages with official status.) Stajn (talk) 22:26, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Official status in Sweden 

message: has it as several languages. I suggest  a move. Sarcelles (talk) 12:18, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That it would be quite a major change. Usually Romani is presented as a language with many dialects, though there are people that consider it as a family of related languages. But the "language with many dialects" view is prevalent. Kenshin (talk) 08:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: In The Gospel in Many Tongues there are bible texts in Romani of Southern and Northern Germany, that are very different. Sarcelles (talk) 08:33, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request to move to ''Romani languages'' 

message: Any good?
[URL=http://img39.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rromaneekhipecopy.jpg][IMG]http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/4899/rromaneekhipecopy.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.236.213.52 (talk) 06:40, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rromani Ehkipe 

message: I've reverted a number of edits which appear to reflect a user's opinion and original research (he/she even used the phrase "in my opinion") rather than verifiable sources. See my comments on the user's talk page. --rossb (talk) 05:45, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that was a correct decision. Would be glad if the posting editor engaged here though; there may be reliable 3rd party sources to back up their thesis. RashersTierney (talk) 06:17, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research 

message: There's a problem: the link to Baltic Romani Language on this page redirects to this very same page. That should be fixed and an article made on the Baltic Romani Language.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.219.64.35 (talk) 20:50, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There are a lot of links like that in the Romani articles - I'll try and create some stubs for the main groupings at the very least so it doesn't happen anymore. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:55, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Baltic Romani Language link 

message: Right, been looking through the page and I'm tempted to delete the stuff about the relationship to Divehi and Sinhalese. Since Romani is Indo-European, it is de-fact related to ALL Indo-European languages and there's no need to state individual ones. The reason I'm asking on the talk page first is because I'm not a Romanist and just wondering if there is a particular reason to single those two out? Akerbeltz (talk) 09:54, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid my expertise is not in this area, but I too would be interested in hearing specific reasons, if they exist. RashersTierney (talk) 11:14, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, lexicostatistics apparently, which have never struck me as a particularly great reason. Shared nontrivial innovations in phonology (sound laws) and morphology are considered the best evidence. Of course, the question is not what Romani is related to, but which language or group it is most closely related to, as it is only clear that Romani is Indo-Aryan, not what its specific affiliations within Indo-Aryan are. I, too, am tempted to simply delete it. Sure, the Sinhalese connection is cited using the Gray/Atkinson paper, but few linguists would consider it a good source to settle issues of subgrouping. The Divehi connection isn't even properly sourced – and as Sinhalese and Divehi are so closely related, it is a fairly redundant connection to mention: If Romani is closely related to Sinhalese, it is automatically also closely related to Divehi. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linguistic links 

message: Been pondering that list at the end for a while now and I've come to the conclusion it's not that appropriate; looking around, that kind of thing is discouraged except for extremely poorly documented languages (which Romani is not).
A section for phrases is more common but the spelling needs sorting and - don't take this the wrong way cause it's not meant negatively - how come we ended up with Gujarati contrasting examples rather than, say, Sanskrit or Hindi? Akerbeltz (talk) 09:44, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples and Wordlist 

message: Some people get confused between Romani Language and Romanian language, or Romani Language and  Romansh language, so at the top, it should say:
Not to be confused with Romanian language or Romansh language.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.12.1.173 (talk) 14:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reverted same. Please show evidence of such confusion documented at a reliable source, and if this is the case, should the Romanian language article not also include a similarly worded hatnote? RashersTierney (talk) 18:22, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion with Romani Language and Romanian Language 

message: There has been a rash, well, so far 2, undiscussed page moves by User:Nergaal who moved Romano-Greek language to Hellenoromani language and Romano-Serbian language to Serbian Romani language, with an edit summary citing remove confusion.
Now on Hellenoromani I could be swayed if this indeed has primacy over Romano-Greek but the other edit to my mind increases the confusion because it suggests it's a sub-branch of Romani rather than Serbian with Romani admix. That aside, Serbian Romani seems a made up term to me. What are your views? I'm leaning towards asking an admin to revert both moves and request proper move debates if there is a case for moving either. Left a note for Nergaal but (s)he seems uninclined to consider the point. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverted, apparently shortly after the move, by , who knows what they're doing with regard to languages. Hellenoromani language and Serbian Romani language are now redirects to Romano-Greek language and Romano-Serbian language respectively. --Thnidu (talk) 01:04, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page moves 

message: I would like to bring to the attention of Romani-focused wikipedia editors the recent publication of "Learn Romani" author Ronald Lee's "Romani Dictionary: Kalderash - English": http://www.magoriabooks.com/books/rodikalen/
Excerpts from the book may be found online here: http://www.romanidictionary.com/books/rodikalen/
Hopefully it will prove to be a useful resource for information on this sometimes elusive topic.
--Magoriabooks (talk) 06:47, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Romani Dictionary

message: I change the Distribution beacause they arent true. I see it in the surce and I just changed it. The same one thats there. Ah and sorry I dont speek very good English.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.173.156.70 (talk) 15:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm trying hard to understand exactly what your concerns are. Does this report, The Status of Romani in Europe go any way towards addressing them? RashersTierney (talk) 11:29, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Distribution

message: While this article is fairly informative, it seems to be lacking much of the information I came here to find, namely a linguistic description such as we have on other language articles like Russian language or German language.  Although I am not qualified to add them, there should be sections on phonology, grammar, etc.  William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 00:53, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linguistic description? 

message: states in the artilce that Romani was an oral, unwritten language and then started using latin script, but in ancient times, there has been evidence of the Sinti using sanskript style scripts like Devanagari (which modern Hindi/Sindhi uses) or Nagari, then during migration them adapted to oral traditions or Latin script  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.81.170 (talk) 05:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: If you'll provide  reliable sources, maybe you or someone else can incorporate this into the article. Otherwise,  no. --Thnidu (talk) 00:12, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:   Alphabet 

message: The article uses this term in a confusing, ambiguous way. The primary sense of contact language (also contact variety or contact vernacular) is, as far as my understanding goes, a distinctive language variety arosen through (intense) language contact, specifically a mixed language, pidgin or creole language, but also foreigner talk and interlanguages. This sense (specifically referring to Para-Romani varieties, which are sometimes described as mixed, but clearly not pidgins or creoles) is apparently also meant at the beginning of the section "Dialects". Unfortunately, Contact language simply redirects to Pidgin and is thus very misleading. Even more unfortunately, there is a second meaning specific to studies about geographically widespread minority languages such as Romani or Yiddish (or Jewish languages in general), namely "the language of the majority in a certain region that the discussed language variety is strongly influenced by", for example German in the case of Sinti. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contact languages 

message: not appliable infoboxes as flag galleries goes against Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. flags like Norway and   Sweden are not corroborated with the dialect.
--MCCartneyfo (talk) 15:39, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Corrected misspelling, which redirects to Sweeden, Kentucky. (And "corroborated" almost certainly should be "correlated".) --Thnidu (talk) 01:10, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Identifying reliable sources 

message: I think 'bewer', as described in the 'Romani loanwords in English' section, is actually a loanword from either Shelta or Gaelic (Though I don't claim to know which), because I know it's understood to mean 'woman' among Pavees/ Irish Travellers. It's rarely if ever used by English Romanies, as 'woman' in that language is juvvi/džuvi, or some variant thereof, and is also sometimes 'mawt' in the Angloromani dialect. Then rakli, chay or romni/ rawni to denote girls, young women, married women and posh gadjo women, respectively. Bewer could well be a word from another dialect of Romani, but are there any definite sources? It's not a big deal, but otherwise I think it needs moving to a loanwords category on the Shelta page. (Xamurrochokas (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the uncited reference to bewer as a Romani loanword. Since I don't know it's actual origin I won't move it to the Shelta or Gaelic pages personally, but it's free game to anyone who fancies determining its origin. For the sake of whomever might want to copy/ paste it in that case, the sentence was, "... and bewer (woman) in Yorkshire in England, also seen as beor in Corkonian slang within Hiberno-English." (Xamurrochokas (talk) 08:48, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Pretty sure the word, and spelling variants thereof, are of Shelta origin; not directly Irish in any case. Leland appears to support this (see search). It is already included at Shelta#Orthography. RashersTierney (talk) 12:48, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authentic Loanword? 

message: I'm fairly certain "nark" comes from "narcotics", as in a narcotics agent.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.92.150.2 (talk) 22:31, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: See  for an explanation – note the earliest date of attestation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:08, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loanword: Nark? 

message: The claim "..as well as paani (water) in Yorkshire in England" is dubious. I have never heard or seen reference to this as a Yorkshire dialect word (I live in Yorkshire) and the "aa" sound would almost  certainly be expressed as "ar". -- Q Chris (talk) 09:09, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Lived in Yorkshire and never heard this either. I took that whole sentence out. — Lfdder (talk) 12:25, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Is Wikipedia had a Romani language?--46.130.44.200 (talk) 11:00, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, https://rmy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherutni_patrin, though has far fewer articles than the Engish one. -- Q Chris (talk) 12:18, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romani Wikipedia? 

message: The lede begins 
: Romani (... ) is any of several languages of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family 
with an acute accent over the c: ć.  The next section,  Name, opens with
: Speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language as řomani čhib "the Romani language" or řomanes "in a Rom way".
where the c has a caron, or haček. The (incomplete) list of spellings in §   Alphabet, 
: ... [romaɲi tʃʰib], which means "Romani Language" in all the dialects, can be written as románi szib, románi čib, romani tschib, románi tschiwi, romani tšiw, romeni tšiv, romanitschub, rromani čhib, romani chib, rhomani chib, romaji šjib and so on. 
includes čhib but not ćhib, appearing to support the caron spelling. 
So which is it? Apparently both and neither, as there is no single official or universally accepted orthography, the Romani being a people with many diverse dialects and no government of their own. But for consistency in the article I'm changing the lede mention to čhib. --Thnidu (talk) 01:29, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''ćhib'' or ''čhib''? 

message: Connecting "grubo" ('fat') with Georgian "kʰoni (ქონი)" sounds doubtful at the best. "Grubo" sounds nothing like "kʰoni" but quite like Polish "gruby" which, surprisingly, means "fat". So, it is much more likely to be a Slavic loan. Of course, the whole "Lexicon" section provides no source whatsoever so I'd be very suspicious concerning its etymological grounds. --Oop (talk) 00:47, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suspicious etymologies 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Earlier this year the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education released a document describing the intended curriculum to be used during the teaching of a subject meant for Romani schoolchildren. The document is multilingual, featuring two languages of the Romani people in Croatia:
# ljimba dă băjaš – rumuneašte, which is related to Romanian (yes, Romanian) and has much more Romani speakers in Croatia than the Romani language iself has
# romani čhib - that's what it's called in the document, obviously a variant of Romani
Questions: how should we handle the former language? It's not strictly the main topic of this article, but surely it should be at least mentioned?
What variant of Romani is spoken (or official) in Croatia? Maybe somebody who understands Romani could figure that out by glancing at the document?
We should probably also mention that Croatia seems to be getting education for the Romani in the Romani language (and also the other one), if not now, then when it actually happens and gets covered by secondary sources.
Should we list Croatia as having Romani "recognized as a minority language"? Notrium (talk) 01:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Croatia questions 

message: The specific description of the morphology etc. should have been based on Matras, who gives 'early Romani' forms, which can be said to be common to all or most dialects. Instead, there is a reliance specifically on Czech descriptions of East Slovak Romani, which is just one dialect. Also, an alleged distinction between 'indirect' and 'accusative' is asserted, which Matras doesn't mention and I'm not aware of either. The Czech source is not online, so I can't verify it, but even if it's true, it may be true also of this dialect. --79.100.149.219 (talk) 14:41, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Edit: I think I've got the confusion; the editor meant the syncretic oblique form of the adjective declension, but made it sound as if it were a contrasting value on par with the dative etc. I have re-worded the relevant parts for clarity. Still I think this should be re-written based on Matras.--79.100.149.219 (talk) 15:16, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much reliance on one local dialect 

message: I always find it curious that the striking similarity between the phonology of Romani and that of Classical and Eastern Armenian (an observation I already made many years ago, easily a decade) has not been noted by researchers, by all appearances. Given the presence of Armenian loanwords in Romani and the excellent fit with the hypothetical migration route, given the existence of Lomavren, and given that some of the similarities in question relate to the unique traits of Romani compared to other Indo-Aryan languages and the phonological developments it underwent, it's easy to see Early Romani as having arisen (probably in the 12th century) in a population in the Lesser Caucasus that was relatively intensely bilingual in a New Indo-Aryan language (which had arrived – probably in the 11th century – from the southeast, having absorbed loanwords from Persian and other Iranian languages) and the local Armenian dialect, developing a few unusual traits for an Indo-Aryan language and eventually (after 1200) migrating further to the west, into Anatolia, still predominantly Greek-speaking at the time. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romani and Armenian