Domari
| Domari | ||
|---|---|---|
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Spoken in |
Egypt , Iraq , Iran , Israel , Jordan , Lebanon , Libya , Palestine & Gaza Strip , Syria , Turkey | |
| speaker | not reliably known | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in | - | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
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| ISO 639 -2 |
inc |
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| ISO 639-3 | ||
Domari is an Indo-Aryan language found in the Middle East and some neighboring regions. It is spoken of by isolated and socially marginalized population groups who traditionally pursue traveling trades, in particular work as metalworkers and showmen and refer to themselves as the cathedral (“man, human”, plural dome, domba ) or qurbati . The domes living in the Levant are disparagingly called Nawar (" blacksmith, fire-worshiper ") by the Arab population .
Similar to the Romani of the Roma who immigrated to Asia Minor and Europe and the Lomavren of the Lom in Armenia and the southern Caucasus , the Domari has similarities with the Central Indian languages, especially the realization of ṛ as u or i ( Sanskrit śṛṇ- , Domari sun- / sin- , "to hear") and from kṣ- as k (h) (Sanskrit akṣi , Domari aki , "eye"). Like Romani, it retains some archaic features that have been lost in other central Indian languages (e.g. Sanskrit oṣṭha , Domari ošt , "lip", Sanskrit hasta , Domari xast , "hand"), and on the other hand it has similarities with more recent morphological ones Developments in Northwest Indian languages, including the renewal of the conjugation of the past by affixing the participle with the oblique enclitic pronoun. In older research since John Sampson (1923) it was therefore assumed that both languages went back to a common preliminary stage that migrated from central India to the west and that they were only divided later. On the other hand, Domari offers distinctive archaic features of a phonological, morphological and lexical nature compared to Romani, which indicate that the migration to the west in the case of Domari took place at an earlier point in time and therefore a convergent but separate development of two different Central Indian languages can be assumed.
Domari is now a language threatened with extinction, which is mainly still used by older speakers in the family. There are communities of Domari speakers mainly in Jerusalem , Gaza , Jordan , Lebanon and Syria , whose Domari in phonology , vocabulary, morphology and syntax is already heavily interspersed with the contact language Arabic . Remains of Domari also appear in the secret vocabulary of nomadic communities in other regions, including the Kurdish- speaking Mıtrıp or Karaçi , traveling traders in eastern Anatolia, and the Lorī- speaking Luti , a socially excluded group in Lorestan, Iran . Scattered elements of Domari are also attested in a larger geographic region stretching from Azerbaijan in the north to Sudan in the south.
There is no reliable information on the number of speakers worldwide. Especially for the Domari in Jerusalem, best documented and examined by RAS Macalister (1914) and Yaron Matras (1999), it is assumed that there are up to 200 mostly older speakers today.
classification
literature
- Sekandar Amanolahi, Edward Norbeck: The Luti, an outcaste group of Iran . In: Rice University Studies , Vol. 61, No. 2, 1975, pp. 1-12
- Bruno Herin: The Northern Dialects of Domari. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society, Vol. 164, No. 2, 2014, pp. 407–450
- RAS Macalister : The language of the Nawar or Zutt, the nomad smiths of Palestine. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1914 (= Gypsy Lore Society Monographs, 3)
- Rüdiger Benninghaus: Les Tsiganes de la Turquie orientale . In: Études tsiganes , Vol. 3, 1991, pp. 47-60
- Yaron Matras : The state of present-day Domari in Jerusalem . (PDF 672 kB) In: Mediterranean Language Review 11, 1999, pp. 1-58
- Yaron Matras: Two Domari legends about the origins of the Doms. (PDF; 131 kB) In: Romani Studies 5, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2000, pp. 49-75
- Frank Meyer: Dōm and Turkmān in the city and country of Damascus. Franconian Geographical Society, Erlangen 1994
- John Sampson: On the origin and early migration of the Gypsies. In: Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Series 3, Vol. 2, 1923, pp. 156-169
Web links
- Domari in the Romani Project of the University of Manchester (England)
- Dom Research Center (Cyprus)