Angloromani language

Angloromani or Anglo-Romani (literally "English Romani"; also known as Angloromany, Rummaness, or Pogadi Chib) is a language combining aspects of English and Romani, which is a language spoken by the Romani people; an ethnic group who trace their origins to the Indian subcontinent. Angloromani is spoken in the UK, Australia, the US and South Africa.

'Anglo-Romani' is a term used to describe usage of words of Romani origin within English conversation. 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 used as an evocative vocabulary rather than a language in the strict sense. It is used within the framework of Gypsy-English conversation and English sentences, with Gypsy specific 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.'^[4]

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.^[5]

Historical documentation of English Romani

Until relatively recently, Anglo-Romani received very little attention from the academic community. However a recent discovery of a document from about the 17th century titled the Winchester confessions indicates that British Romani was itself a dialect of the northern branch of Romani sharing a close similarity to Welsh Romani.^[6] However, the language in a modern context has deteriorated from the Indic-based vocabulary, morphology, and influences from Greek and other Balkan languages of the 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,^[7] 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.^[8] Few documents survive into modern times, the Winchester confessions document c.1616 highlights the variant of English Romani and contains a high number of words still used in the modern Northern European Romani dialects and until recently also Welsh Romani;^[7] 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 few English loanwords present.^[9]

However, the Winchester confessions document indicates that English grammatical structures were influencing speakers of English Romani (within a London context where the document was sourced) to adopt 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 early 17th century.^[10] This has particular implications when dating the origin and development of Anglo-Romani and its split from Welsh Romani. The author of one such study^[6] believes English Romani gradually lost its distinctive syntax, phonology and morphology while other scholars^[11] believe Anglo-Romani developed relatively quickly after the Romanis' arrival in England in the sixteenth century, in a development similar to the Pidgin or Creole languages.^[11]

Anglo-Romani was already developing in the seventeenth century although the change from the original English Romani is unclear. The Winchester confessions document disproves a sudden morphological change,^[12] and lends support to 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: "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 everyday 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 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 "food-house"; and a mayor is a gavmoosh, from the words gav, village, town, and moosh, man, literally "town-man". Gradually, the 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.^[5]

The origins of the Romani language are in India, and the core of the vocabulary and grammar still resemble modern Indic languages like Urdu, Kashmiri, and 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.

Intertwining

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 fact it is a southern Romnichal accent.

Dialectal variation

Within Anglo-Romani three dialects are identifiable:

• Scottish Anglo-Romani (the variant spoken by descendants of Anglo-Romani in Scotland, particularly the Scottish Borders, Edinburgh and Glasgow). Scottish Anglo-Romani is not to be confused with the Scots-based Scottish Cant or the Gaelic-based Beurla Reagaird.
• North Welsh Romani Kalè
• South Welsh Romani and English Romani (identical)

These dialects are based on where various groups originally settled when moving to the UK. The members of these groups consider that not only do their dialects 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.^[13]

There is a certain amount of post-creole continuum in Anglo-Romani. A small (and dwindling) 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 Anglo-Romani variants.

Phonology and syntax

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:

• Anglo-Romani includes the consonant /x/ in certain dialects.
• Anglo-Romani may sometimes be rhotic even in parts of the country that are non-rhotic. In other cases, it is non-rhotic like English non-rhotic dialects; for example, in Romani terno "young" (passing through the stage tarno) can be rendered as tawno.^[14][15]

Romani allowed for two word orders – Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) and Verb-Subject-Object (VSO). Anglo-Romani has only SVO word order. Negation in Anglo-Romani is achieved through the use of the word kek, i.e.

• măndī can kek ker lĭs - "I can't do it."
• there's kekə pani left in kŭvə kurī  – "There’s no water left in this bucket."

"B" is optionally deleted:

• tūte kūšta diken muš – "You (are a) fine looking man."
• tūte rinkna râne – "You (are a) pretty lady."

Reduplication is employed for emphasis, as in:

• dūvrī – "distant"
• dūvrī-dūvrī – very distant"

Morphology

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 adopting the English syntax with a Romani lexicon. It seems to be around 1876 that gender distinction was no longer seen; however, the continued use of Romani plural forms was noted, along with English verb conjugation. In 1923, some plural endings were still being used on nouns, but English prepositions were used instead of Romani postpositions. Current usage has lost almost all Romani morphology and instead uses English morphology with Romani lexical items.

Samples of Angloromani

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 of documenting 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

Some common phrases

Lord's prayer sample text, with English elements in italics:

Midivəl kor bešes dre Your tan, we lels Tiro Your nav šukerly. Thy kralisipən'll wel so that tutti koms'll be kɛrɛd here on earth, pensə dre your own tan. Del us sɔ:ken divves our mɔrə and fordel our bengəli kɛrəpəns same as we fordels them as kɛrs them kɛrəpəns to us. Mɔ: lel us dre wafədipən but hander us əvri from it. 'cause Tutti's the right ruzlipən and sɔ: kʌvəs that's kušti, sɔ: the čires, forever. Amen.^[16]

Comparison of Angloromani, European Romani, Indic languages and Slang English

The Bible in Romany

The first published samples of the Bible in Romany were translated by Wester Boswell and published in 1875. Sylvester "Wester" Boswell (1812-1890) was an English Gypsy who spoke Romanes. In the 1870s he translated some Scripture selections into English. These were published as "Genuine Romany Compositions" on pages 226-235 of a book called the "Dialect of the English Gypsies" by Bath C. Smart and Henry Thomas Crofton. The book was compiled in 1874 and published in London in 1875. In the Romany compositions, the words were written down using an orthography developed by A.J. Ellis which was used by the English Dialect Society. and they adopted the Greek letter χ to represent the sound being nearly that of ch in German or Welsh. The parts of Romanes which were English borrowings were italicised.

In 1973 the British and Foreign Bible Society produced a leaflet called Shavved and the Got Latchered (Lost and Found), and then in 1979 produced "A Kushti Lav (Good News in Romany)" and in 1981 "More Kuchti Lavs" which were selected passages from the New Testament. Later Scripture Gift Mission now called SGM Lifewords produced "The Kushti Bokkengro (The Good Shepherd)" in 1985 and another booklet called "The Drom (The Way)" in 1995. These were selected passages from the Bible.

There is no complete book of the Bible in Romany, but some of these items can now be found online on www.youversion.com listed under "Romany: Angloromani".

Swadesh list

References

Further reading

• Acton, Thomas. 1989. The Value of “Creolized” Dialects of Romanes. In International Symposium Romani Language and Culture. Sarajevo.
• Acton, Thomas and Gerwyn Davis. 1979. Educational Policy and Language Use Among English Romanies and Irish Travellers (Tinkers) in England and Wales. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 19-22: 91-110.
• Acton, Thomas, Vangelis Marselos, and Laszlo Szego. 2000. The Development of Literary Dialects of Romanes, and the Prospects for an International Standard Dialect. In Language, Blacks, and Gypsies, ed. Thomas Acton and Morgan Dalphinis. London: Whiting and Birch.
• Borrow, George. 1923. Romano Lavo-Lil. London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld.
• Deterding, David. 1997. The formants of monophthong vowels in Standard Southern British English pronunciation. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 27: 47-55.
• Hancock, Ian. 1996. Duty and Beauty, Possession and Truth: The Claim of Lexical Impoverishment as Control. In Gypsies: A book of interdisciplinary readings, ed. Diane Tong. New York: Garland Publishers.
• "Anglo-Romani" University of Washington USA.
• Manchester University Romani Project

External links

• Speakromany.com a project from English Gypsies reviving their language
• Distribution of Romani Dialect by region
• AngloRomani Linguistic Information