Welsh Romani

Welsh Romani
Period	15th century to approx. 2005
Formerly spoken in	Wales , UK
speaker	Presumably extinct as a mother tongue / first language.
Linguistic ; classification	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Central group Romani Northern group Para-Romani English Romani Mixed language ;
Language codes
ISO 639 -2	Rome
ISO 639-3	rmw

Welsh-Romani (or Welsh Romany ; own name: Romnimus ; sometimes also called Kååle ) is a variety of Romani belonging to the Northern Group , which was spoken in Wales until at least 1950 . It was spoken of by the Kalè group of Roma who came to Britain in the 15th century and were first mentioned in writing in the 16th century.

Word stock

The majority of the vocabulary is of Indo-Aryan origin, there are also loanwords from Welsh ( melanō "yellow" from melyn , grīga "heather" from grug and kraŋka "crab" from cranc ) and English ( vlija "village", spīdra "spider") and bråmla "blackberry").

Relationship with other Roma dialects

Historically, the variants of Welsh and English Romani of Romanichal (Roma in England and Wales) constitute the same variant of Romani, share characteristics and are historically closely related to dialects such as those in France , Germany ( Sinti ), Scandinavia , Spain , Poland , Northern Russia and the Baltic States . These dialects are descended from the first wave of Roma immigrants to western, northern and southern Europe in the late Middle Ages.

Individual evidence

↑ Thomas Acton and Donald Kenrick (eds.): Romani rokkeripen to-divvus. Romanestan, London 1984.
^ ^A ^b Glanville Price: Languages in Britain and Ireland (German: Sprachen in Britannien und Irland), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 2000.
↑ ROMLEX: Romani dialects
^ Norbert Boretzky : Annotated Dialect Atlas of Romani. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 18
↑ John Sampson : The dialect of the Gypsies of Wales, being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood (German: Der Dialekt der Roma von Walisien, which is the older form of British Romani, preserved in the language of the Abram Wood clan ), Oxford University Press, London 1926.
^ J. Sampson: The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1926.
^ Bakker: Review of McGowan, The Winchester Confessions. In: Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 5th Series, Volume 7, Issue 1, 1997, pp. 49-50.

Web links

Welsh-Romani entry at Ethnologue
Welsh-Romani word list ( memento from October 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Romani Cymru (Welsh Romani)

[1] Thomas Acton and Donald Kenrick (eds.): Romani rokkeripen to-divvus. Romanestan, London 1984.

[Price-2] A ^b Glanville Price: Languages in Britain and Ireland (German: Sprachen in Britannien und Irland), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 2000.

[3] ROMLEX: Romani dialects

[4] Norbert Boretzky : Annotated Dialect Atlas of Romani. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 18

[5] John Sampson : The dialect of the Gypsies of Wales, being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood (German: Der Dialekt der Roma von Walisien, which is the older form of British Romani, preserved in the language of the Abram Wood clan ), Oxford University Press, London 1926.

[6] J. Sampson: The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1926.

[7] Bakker: Review of McGowan, The Winchester Confessions. In: Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. 5th Series, Volume 7, Issue 1, 1997, pp. 49-50.