Romano Lavo-Lil (Romany Dictionary) | Page 4

Gutenberg note: In this book a lot of non-European
characters are used which cannot easily be reproduced. Rather than
omit these entirely I have commented where they occur in the text. If
there's sufficient demand I'll try to produce an updated text with these
characters. David Price, 28 June 2000}

THE ENGLISH GYPSY LANGUAGE

The Gypsies of England call their language, as the Gypsies of many
other countries call theirs, Romany or Romanes, a word either derived

from the Indian Ram or Rama, which signifies a husband, or from the
town Rome, which took its name either from the Indian Ram, or from
the Gaulic word, Rom, which is nearly tantamount to husband or man,
for as the Indian Ram means a husband or man, so does the Gaulic Pom
signify that which constitutes a man and enables him to become a
husband.
Before entering on the subject of the English Gypsy, I may perhaps be
expected to say something about the original Gypsy tongue. It is,
however, very difficult to say with certainty anything on the subject.
There can be no doubt that a veritable Gypsy tongue at one time existed,
but that it at present exists there is great doubt indeed. The probability
is that the Gypsy at present exists only in dialects more or less like the
language originally spoken by the Gypsy or Zingaro race. Several
dialects of the Gypsy are to be found which still preserve along with a
considerable number of seemingly original words certain curious
grammatical forms, quite distinct from those of any other speech.
Others are little more than jargons, in which a certain number of Gypsy
words are accommodated to the grammatical forms of the languages of
particular countries. In the foremost class of the purer Gypsy dialects, I
have no hesitation in placing those of Russia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and
Transylvania. They are so alike, that he who speaks one of them can
make himself very well understood by those who speak any of the rest;
from whence it may reasonably be inferred that none of them can differ
much from the original Gypsy speech; so that when speaking of Gypsy
language, any one of these may be taken as a standard. One of them--I
shall not mention which--I have selected for that purpose, more from
fancy than any particular reason.
The Gypsy language, then, or what with some qualification I may call
such, may consist of some three thousand words, the greater part of
which are decidedly of Indian origin, being connected with the Sanscrit
or some other Indian dialect; the rest consist of words picked up by the
Gypsies from various languages in their wanderings from the East. It
has two genders, masculine and feminine; o represents the masculine
and i the feminine: for example, boro rye, a great gentleman; bori rani,
a great lady. There is properly no indefinite article: gajo or gorgio, a
man or gentile; o gajo, the man. The noun has two numbers, the
singular and the plural. It has various cases formed by postpositions,

but has, strictly speaking, no genitive. It has prepositions as well as
postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and
sometimes the postposition: for example, cad o gav, from the town;
chungale mannochendar, evil men from, i.e. from evil men. The verb
has no infinitive; in lieu thereof, the conjunction 'that' is placed before
some person of some tense. 'I wish to go' is expressed in Gypsy by
camov te jaw, literally, I wish that I go; thou wishest to go, caumes te
jas, thou wishest that thou goest; caumen te jallan, they wish that they
go. Necessity is expressed by the impersonal verb and the conjunction
'that': hom te jay, I must go; lit. I am that I go; shan te jallan, they are
that they go; and so on. There are words to denote the numbers from
one up to a thousand. For the number nine there are two words, nu and
ennyo. Almost all the Gypsy numbers are decidedly connected with the
Sanscrit.
After these observations on what may be called the best preserved kind
of Gypsy, I proceed to a lower kind, that of England. The English
Gypsy speech is very scanty, amounting probably to not more than
fourteen hundred words, the greater part of which seem to be of Indian
origin. The rest form a strange medley taken by the Gypsies from
various Eastern and Western languages: some few are Arabic, many are
Persian; some are Sclavo-Wallachian, others genuine Sclavonian. Here
and there a Modern Greek or Hungarian word is discoverable; but in
the whole English Gypsy tongue I have never noted but one French
word--namely, tass or dass, by which some of the very old Gypsies
occasionally call a cup.
Their vocabulary