Welsh-Romani language

Welsh Romani
Romnimus
Spoken in Wales (United Kingdom)
Native speakers Probably extinct as a first language.[1]  (date missing)
Language family
Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-3 rmw

Welsh Romani (or Welsh Romany; sometimes also known as Kååle[2]) is a variety of the Romani language which was spoken fluently in Wales until at least 1950.[1] It was spoken by the Kale group of the Romani people who arrived in Britain during the 15th century. The first record of Gypsies in Wales comes from the 16th century. Welsh-Romani is one of the many Northern Romani dialects.[3]

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").[4] Historically the variants of Welsh and English Romani of the Romanichal, constituted the same variant of Romani,[5] 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.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b Price, Glanville (2000) Languages in Britain and Ireland, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
  2. ^ ROMLEX: Romani dialects
  3. ^ Norbert Boretzky: Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004 p. 18
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Sampson. J. (1926) The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. Oxford. Clarendon Press.
  6. ^ Bakker (1997) Review of McGowan, The Winchester Confessions. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Fifth series, 7. (1): 49-50.

External links