Welsh-Romany language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Welsh Romany Romnimus
Spoken in:	Wales (United Kingdom)
Total speakers:	Probably extinct as a first language.^[1]
Language family:	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Central Zone Romany Welsh Romany
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`rom`
ISO 639-3:	`rmw`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Welsh Romany (or Welsh Romani) is a variety of the Romany language which was spoken fluently in Wales until at least 1950.^[1] It was spoken by the Kale group of the Roma people who arrived in Britain during the 15th century. The first record of Gypsies in Wales comes from the 16th century.

The majority of the vocabulary is of Indo-Aryan origin but there are a number of loanwords from other languages. Welsh loanwords include melanō ("yellow", from melyn), grīga ("heather", from grug) and kraŋka ("crab", from cranc). There are also English loanwords such as vlija ("village"), spīdra ("spider") and bråmla ("bramble").^[2]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Price, Glanville (2000) Languages in Britain and Ireland, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
^ John Sampson (1926) The dialect of the Gypsies of Wales, being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood, Oxford University Press, London.