Talk:Romani language

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Contents 1 Romani loanwords in English 1.1 gadgie and cooshtie 1.2 Dukes 1.3 Posh 2 languages related to roma 3 other gypsy languages? 4 Why Romany instead of Gypsy? 4.1 "these people call themselves 'Roma' " 5 copyedited 6 Are the different dialects communicable? 7 Improvement Drive 8 Romani and Romany 9 RRomani or RRomany? 10 Nature article 11 Devanagari 12 Distribution section 13 External links 14 Question 15 Title 16 "Carpathian" Romani

[edit] Romani loanwords in English

[edit] gadgie and cooshtie

gadgie and cooshtie are probably examples of regional dialect borrowings, rather than slang. gadgie is documented for Berwick-upon-Tweed / South East Scotland in at least one dialect dictionary. cooshtie is also found there, though it does not seem to be documented - though it is true that gadgie and cooshtie are slang words in other parts of Britain, such as East London. The article is fine, but it would be nice if better examples of slang words can be found. 82.152.97.125 10:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dukes

The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson states that "put up your dukes" comes from Cockney rhyming slang. I don't have the book on me, nor any other reference, so I'm not going to edit it.

Bill Bryson has no training in linguistics and The Mother Tongue is full of urban myths and factual inaccuracies, nearly one on every page. It is not an appropriate reference for anything. CRCulver 00:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you an expert on who is an expert or not?

Someone needs to dig out another reference regarding dukes or verify that it its loan status is described in the existing references. 82.152.97.125 10:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I thought nobody was sure where the term "Chav" comes from? (I for one have heard the term explained as an acronym for "Council Home And Violent" 138.235.105.2 01:53, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Posh

I'd heard that "posh" is an acronym for "Port out, Starboard home." It was explained to me that on passenger ships sailing from England to India through the Suez canal, the cabins on the shady side were the more desirable (to avoid the direct tropical sun in the Indian Ocean), and therefore, the more expensive. That works out to be on the left, on the port side as you're sailing east towards India, and on the right, the starboard side as you're sailing west towards England. 140.147.160.78 19:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

[edit] languages related to roma

Doesn't it stand to reason that the many languages claimed to be most closely related to Roma in this article have themselves diverged significantly while Roma itself was becoming distinct?

Whether or not this is the case, it would be interesting to see some of the features and words which are said to illuminate the origins of the language, rather than just second-hand claims of relationship. --babbage 19:18, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] other gypsy languages?

Recently i've read that there are several other gypsy languages besides romany. I'm finally getting around to adding my signature. Gringo300 23:48, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

One of them is angloromani. see talk page for angloromani. Gringo300 01:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why Romany instead of Gypsy?

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)

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)

[edit] "these people call themselves 'Roma' "

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.

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)

[edit] copyedited

OK, I thoroughly copyedited the article...[for parts of it, read "translated into English"][1]...have at it. Tomer^talk 08:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are the different dialects communicable?

I see many words are pretty much the same across different dialects. But an English Gypsy travelling through Romania could not understand them easily but as he traveled further and into Bulgaria, he was able to understand them much better.I wonder how much this corresponds to the Kalderash and Erli dialects.

Are Kalderash and Erli understandable to each other?

[edit] Improvement Drive

Roma people has been nominated to be improved on the Improvement Drive. Support this article with your vote and help us improve it to featured status!--Fenice 10:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The "dialects issue" when it comes to Rromani language is a fake one. Those who speak Rromanes can easily understand each other, no matter what dialect they speak. The dialectal differences are not so numerous and in the most of the cases they follow a logic schema. The problem is that outsiders often classify as Rroms people who aren't. For instance, the Travellers are not Rroms and they never spoke Rromani language. But people call them "gypsies", just like they call the Romanichals, who do speak anglo-rromani. The same with the Rudars, who are not Rroms, but a balkanic minority, speaking a dialect of Rumanian. People call them "Cigani", just like they call the Rroms.

[edit] Romani and Romany

There are in English these two spellings, but it is favoured the first, because this is the way the other Indo-Aryan languages are spelled: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Kashmiri etc. The Romani dialects are spelled also like this: Drindari, Erli, Jambashi etc. and even the dialects of other languages spoken by Roma (with only Romani vocabulary) like Pogadi. Romany looks awkward together with other Indo-Aryan languages. Desiphral 13:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

An external link regarding this issue is here. Desiphral-देसीफ्राल talk-फेन मा 08:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RRomani or RRomany?

How is it correct? RRomani or RRomany? --Andrei George 19:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The double-R spellings are a Romanian-specific introduction, that I don't believe are recognised elsewhere. So the answer is the same as 'Romani and Romany'. Shaun 22:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nature article

I would like to see a better citation of the Nature article. Makes it a great deal easier for those of us who would actually like to read said article!--King ravana 01:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Devanagari

Why is romani written in devanagari in the box? i tried to find an explanation but the article says nothing about it. Romani alphabet says nothing about it either. -guest

Now it is available the article about Romani writing systems. Desiphral देसीफ्राल 11:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Distribution section

I replaced the distribution section with info from http://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cd/data/lang/gen/data/numbers.en.pdf [2] as the numbers didn't add up to 4.8 million mentioned at the top of the page and the source of the data wasn't cited. Please revert if this was the wrong thing to do.

[edit] External links

Recently there has been a large community sentiment against external links, inspired by WP:NOT. I've removed a few external links on the page. An anon IP added links to individual dictionary definitions at some non-authoritative destination. However, the article would be more trustworthy if we sourced Romani loanwords into English against the OED, which is authoritative has reliable etymologies. There is the external link *Detailed discussion of the language, but it tells hardly much more than the WP article. I think we should add any of its facts to the article, and then delete the link. CRCulver 16:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Well you should discuss thiese matters before you delete. Simply deleting these links before asking is rude and not excatly welcome to people who have worked on the Roma related sections to have it changed by "fly-by-nighters"Robbyfoxxxx 16:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• Romani words in slang
• Romany Slang
• Romany Slang
• The word "slang" as Romani in origin

Calling me a fly-by-nighter violates WP:NPA and ignores my three and a half years of activity on WP. As for the links, the four can all be replaced by a single citation of the OED entry for "slang". CRCulver 17:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree some links needed to be erased, but the page of the Romani education system in Romania? There is a lot of on-line material in Romani there. Desiphral-देसीफ्राल talk-फेन मा 18:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I accidentally deleted that one. It merely needs a "RO" tag before it. CRCulver 18:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Stop deleting CCulver- You need some concensus before you delete, this is not "your"Romani language article.

I have not deleted further content. I have only reverted the anon IP's replacement of the deleted content. Please look at WP:NOT before protesting. There is no need for four links that all say the same exact thing. Look at the actual links I've removed. Furthermore, trimming content that violates WP:NOT is just as important as adding content. CRCulver 19:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with CRCulver. Put something adequate and nobody will delete it. Desiphral-देसीफ्राल talk-फेन मा 22:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

What language do the Romas of Belarus (and European Russia) speak? Thank you! -- 82.209.211.116 20:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title

Why is this article at Romani language and not at Romany language? The latter seems far more common in English: [3] [4].--Tekleni 11:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Consistency with other Indo-Iranian languages, and because new scholarship on the language overwhelmingly uses "Romani". CRCulver 13:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I still don't get it. Britannica calls it "Romany" [5]. We're breaking with years of tradition here (especially considering that the hits for "Romani" include many hits in languages other than English).--Tekleni 17:28, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Britannica is not a source, of course. Generally Wikipedia prefers the current academic name for languages, that's why we have Sami even though most older or popular sources say Lapp. CRCulver 18:29, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. Britannica is the very opposite of an academic source - it's a mere web blog. Oh, look at that, the Columbia Encyclopedia also calls it Romany [6]. How amateurish! BTW when are one of these "true" academic sources which call it "Romani" actually going to be cited, because I can't find any - not that it'll make much difference, as far as I can standard Wikipedia practice is to use the terms used by other encyclopedias (i.e. if it's acceptable for other encyclopedias, it is acceptable for Wikipedia).--Tekleni 18:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Did you know BTW that Britannica has an article called Sami language, not "Lapp language". Who woulda thunk it?--Tekleni 18:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Britannica is a secondary source. Naming disputes must look to primary scholarship. As an example:

• Romani in Contact: The History, Structure and Sociology of a Language (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory), International Conference on Romani Linguistics 1993, ed. Yaron Matras (John Benjamins, 1995).
• What is the Romani Language, Centre de recherces tziganes (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001).
• Matras, Yaron. Romani: A Linguistic Introduction(Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Notice that even the international conference on the language uses the spelling "Romani". CRCulver 19:00, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Good point + if that's how the people themselves spell it in English, then that's a different matter altogether. See Wikipedia:Naming dispute - the "self-identifying" name is generally preferred.--Tekleni 19:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Carpathian" Romani

What's the difference between the Carpathian Romani in the dialects section, and the Carpathian Romani in the Mixed Languages section? The article on North Central Romani seems to indicate that it's a dialect, and Ethnologue gives it language code. - Parsa 22:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Good observation, although they are used in close areas, Romungro is different of Carpathian Romani. Probably the user who added it, didn't know about the difference. Desiphral-देसीफ्राल 12:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)