| Angloromani | |
|---|---|
| Pogadi Chib | |
| Spoken in | United Kingdom, Australia, US, South Africa |
| Native speakers | 195,000 (date missing) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | rme |
Angloromani or Anglo-Romani (literally "English Romani", or Pogadi Chib) is a language combining aspects of English and Romani, which is a language spoken by the Romani people; a ethnic group who trace their origins to the Indian subcontinent. Angloromani is spoken in the UK, Australia, the US and South Africa.
The language combines a mix of Romani and English. The original Romani language was spoken in England until the late nineteenth century; perhaps a generation longer in Wales. It was replaced by English as the everyday and family language of British Romani, but this does not mean the language disappeared entirely. Words of Romani origin were still used as part of a family-language. Words which are occasionally inserted into English conversation are referred to in linguistic literature on Romani as 'Para-Romani': the selective retention of some Romani-derived vocabulary following the disappearance of Romani as an everyday language of conversation.
Anglo-Romani is thus more a vocabulary, than a ‘language’ in the strict sense. It is used within the framework of English conversation, English sentences, and English grammar and pronunciation, thus: The mush was jalling down the drom with his gry. means 'The man was walking down the road with his horse.'[1]
Edinburgh slang also contains a large number of Romani-derived words. A few words, like pal (originally ‘brother’), chav (originally 'Romanichal boy', cognate with Chavo in Romani proper), lollipop (originally 'candy apple') have entered common English usage.[2]
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Until relatively recently, Anglo-Romani received very little study from the academic community. However a recent discovery of a documents (Winchester confessions) c. seventeenth century, indicates, British Romani was itself a dialect of the northern branch of Romani sharing a close similarity to Welsh Romani.[3] However, the language in a modern context has deteriorated from the Indic based vocabulary, morphology, and influences from Greek and other Balkan languages of seventeenth century to a Para-Romani dialect typical of modern Anglo-Romani with sentence endings influenced by English, while Welsh Romani retains the original grammatical system.
Historically the variants of Welsh and English Romani, constituted the same variant of Romani,[4] share characteristics and are historically closely related to dialects spoken in France, Germany (Sinti), Scandinavia, Spain, Poland, North Russia and the Baltic states. Such dialects are descended from the first wave of Romani immigrants into western, northern and southern Europe in the late Middle Ages.[5] Few documents survive into modern times, the (Winchester confessions) c.1616 highlight the variant of English Romani and contains a high number of words still used in the modern Northern European Romani dialects and until recently Welsh Romani;[6] Examples include; Balovas (pig meat bacon), Lovina (beer, alcohol), ruk (tree), Smentena (cream), Boba (beans) and Folaso (glove) and all such words occur in all western dialects of Romani, with little English loanwords present.[7]
However the Winchester confessions, highlights English grammatical structures, were influencing speakers of English Romani (within a London context where the document was sourced) to an (adjective-noun) configuration rather than the (noun-adjective) configuration of other Romani dialects, including modern Welsh Romani. The document suggests a complete separation between Thieves' Cant, and the variant of English Romani of the time.[8] This has particular implication when dating the origin and development of Anglo-Romani and split from Welsh Romani. One such study[3] believes English Romani speakers gradually lost its distinctive syntax, phonology and morphology. While other leading contemporaries[9] believes Anglo-Romani developed relatively recently to the Romani communities arrival in the sixteenth century, in a similar development to the Pidgin or Creol languages.[9]
Anglo-Romani was already developing in the seventeenth century, although this change from the original English Romani was unclear. The (Winchester Confessions) disproves a sudden morphological change).[10] and favours a strict linguistic separation between a Canting language and English Romani whose speakers used a separate and distinct Romani language when speaking amongst themselves. A situation which existed one hundred years later as testified by James Poulter 1775 as “the English Gypsies spoke a variant of their own language that none other could understand”, indicating the language was distinct from the common “Canting tongue” of England. Romani of that time was a language of every day communication, of practical use, and not a secret language.
The original Romani was used exclusively as a family or clan language, during occasional encounters between various Romani clans. It was not a written language, but more a conversational one, used by families to keep conversations amongst themselves in public places such as markets unintelligible to others. It was not used in any official capacity in schools or administrative matters, and so lacked the vocabulary for these terms. Such terms were simply borrowed from English. However, to still keep the language undecipherable to outsiders, the Romani speakers coined new terms that were a combination or variation of the original English terms. For example, a ‘forester’ is called veshengro, from the Romani word for ‘forest’, vesh; a ‘restaurant’ is a habbinkerr from the words habbin ‘food’ and kerr ‘house’, thus literally ‘foodhouse’; and a ‘mayor’ is a gavmoosh, from the words gav ‘village, town’ and moosh ‘man’, literally ‘town-man’. Gradually, British Romani began to give up their language in favour of English, though they retained much of the vocabulary, which they now use occasionally in English conversation – as Angloromani.[11]
Its origins are in India, and the core of the vocabulary and grammar still resemble modern Indian languages like Urdu, Kashmiri, or Punjabi. Linguists have been investigating the dialects of Romani since the second half of the eighteenth century, and although there are no ancient written records of the language, it has been possible to reconstruct the development of Romani from the medieval languages of India to its present forms as spoken in Europe. Although the language remains similar at its core, it is sometimes quite difficult for Romani people from different regions to understand one another if they have not had any exposure to other dialects before.
Anglo-Romani is a mixed language, with the base languages being Romani and English (something referred to as Para-Romani in Romani linguistics).
Some English lexical items that are archaic or only used in idiomatic expressions in Standard English survive in Anglo-Romani, for example moniker and swaddling.
Every region where Angloromani is spoken is characterised by a distinct colloquial English style; this often leads outsiders to believe that the speech of Romnichals is regional English. The distinct rhotic pronunciation of some Angloromani varieties also means that many outsiders perceive Romnichals to be from the West Country because West Country English is also rhotic. Indeed, many Romnichals from the south of England or the Midlands region have a slightly West Country sounding accent; in actual fact it is a southern Romnichal accent.
Within Anglo-Romani we can find three dialects:
These dialects are based on where various groups originally settled when moving to the UK. The members of these groups consider not only their dialects to differ, but also that they are of different ethnic groups. At the time of settlement, these divisions were somewhat reflective of geographic location. They did travel, but until travel became modernized, the migrations were relatively local [12]
There is a certain amount of post-creole continuum in Anglo-Romani. A (ever-dwindling) small population of Romnichals have knowledge of the purer form of English Romani, which was spoken by the Kale of Wales until 1923. These people are able to converse fluently in unbroken English Romani, which is the acrolect that informs the vocabulary of all Angloromani variants.
The following table gives an example of Angloromani in all its current stages:
| English | Acroclectic Angloromani (pure Angloromani) | High Angloromani | Mesolectic Angloromani | Basilectic Angloromani (completely mixed language) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Go and ask your sister | jaw te puches tiri phenya | jaw ta puch tiri pen | jaw an' puch tiri pen | joll an' puch tuti's pen |
| Don't speak Romani in the village | kekka rokkeres romanes adrey o gavos | kek rokker romanes adrey o gav | kek rokker romanes adrey the gav | kek rokker romanes in the gav |
| I like dancing at home | Man kommaw te kelaw khene | Man komma te kel khene | Mandi komma to kill adrey the kenna | Mandi koms kellin' in the kenna |
In broken Hindi the equivalent would be ja kar puch tere behn ko or in Gujarati jau tu puch tari ben ne, and in Potwari the phrase would be jaa puch tari bhen.
Romani had a phonemic distinction between two /r/s - a flap and a voiced uvular fricative - which in Anglo-Romani has been lost and replaced by a single rolled /r/. Anglo-Romani has also lost the phonemic distinction between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. Overall, Anglo-Romani consonants reflect the standard British English consonantal system with these exceptions:
Romani allowed for two word orders - SVO and VSO. Anglo-Romani has only SVO word order. Negation in Anglo-Romani is achieved through the use of the word kek, i.e.
“Be” is optionally deleted
Reduplication is employed for emphasis, as in:
Up to 1547, the Romani language was an inflected language, employing two genders, plurality and case marking. Anglo-Romani is first referenced in 1566-67. Around 1873, Romani personal pronouns became inconsistently marked, according to Leland, who also notes that case distinction began fading overall, and gender marking also disappeared. Borrow notes that in 1874, some Romani speakers were still employing complete inflection, while some were adapting the English syntax with Romani lexicon. It seems to be around 1876 that gender distinction was no longer seen, however continued use of Romani plural forms was noted, along with English verb conjugation. 1923, when some plural still being used on nouns, but English prepositions are used instead of Romani postpositions. Current usage has lost almost all Romani morphology and instead uses English morphology with Romani lexical items.
The Anglo-Romani Project, an initiative of the Romani community of Blackburn and the Lancashire Traveller Education Service, has samples of Anglo-Romani conversation as well as documentation, which it has collected with the aim to document the Anglo-Romani lexicon in its regional and dialectal variation. Samples of conversation and their meaning can be found here. Samples of Anglo-Romani, Audio files
Lord's prayer sample text:
Comparison of Angloromani, European Romani, Indian languages and Slang English
| Angloromani | European Romani | English | Indian languages | Slang English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chav | Chavo | Child, Son, Boy (all specifically used for Gypsies and not non-Gypsies) | Bacha | Chav (meaning a rough youth deriving from a derogatory usage of the word chav to refer to a Gypsy Boy) |
| Lollipobbul | Laliphabai | Candy Apple (or 'red apple') | Lal Seb ("seb" is a fairly recent Persian borrowing into Northern Indian languages) | Lollipop |
| Gavver | Gavengro | Policeman (or Villager) | Graavala (Pakistani Punjabi & Pothwari) | Gaffer |
| Dad | Dad | Father | Daadaa | Dad |
| Jib | Chib | Language/Tongue | Jeeb | Gibber (to speak nonsense, originally a slur against Gypsies who were perceived to be speaking nonsense when conversing in Romani) |
Some examples of Angloromani Words
| Angloromani | English | Northern Indian languages |
|---|---|---|
| Dikkin | Looking | Dekhna (Hindi-Urdu) |
| Tan | Place | Thaan (Punjabi & Pothwari) |
| Adrey | In | Andar (Hindi-Urdu) |
| Kooshti | Happy, Good | Khushi (Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Pothwari) |
| Rawni | Lady | Raani (Hindi) |
| Rai | Gentleman | Rai (Punjabi, meaning landlord) |
| Duvvel | God | Deva (Hindi) |
| Beng | Devil | Bangaa (Hindi, Punjabi, Pothwari, meaning bent or twisted) |
| Tachibens | Truth | Sachpan (Hindi) |
| Yog | Fire | Aag (Hindi, Punjabi) |
| Panni | Water | Paani (Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Pothwari) |