Romano Lavo-Lil (Romany Dictionary) | Page 6

the Persian pendashtan.
The English Gypsies can count up to six, and have the numerals for ten
and twenty, but with those for seven, eight, and nine, perhaps not three
Gypsies in England are acquainted. When they wish to express those
numerals in their own language, they have recourse to very uncouth
and roundabout methods, saying for seven, dui trins ta yeck, two threes
and one; for eight, dui stors, or two fours; and for nine, desh sore but
yeck, or ten all but one. Yet at one time the English Gypsies possessed
all the numerals as their Transylvanian, Wallachian, and Russian
brethren still do; even within the last fifty years there were Gypsies
who could count up to a hundred. These were tatchey Romany, real
Gypsies, of the old sacred black race, who never slept in a house, never
entered a church, and who, on their death- beds, used to threaten their
children with a curse, provided they buried them in a churchyard. The
two last of them rest, it is believed, some six feet deep beneath the
moss of a wild, hilly heath,--called in Gypsy the Heviskey Tan, or
place of holes; in English, Mousehold,--near an ancient city, which the
Gentiles call Norwich, and the Romans the Chong Gav, or the town of
the hill.

With respect to Grammar, the English Gypsy is perhaps in a worse
condition than with respect to words. Attention is seldom paid to
gender; boro rye and boro rawnie being said, though as rawnie is
feminine, bori and not boro should be employed. The proper Gypsy
plural terminations are retained in nouns, but in declension prepositions
are generally substituted for postpositions, and those prepositions
English. The proper way of conjugating verbs is seldom or never
observed, and the English method is followed. They say, I dick, I see,
instead of dico; I dick'd, I saw, instead of dikiom; if I had dick'd,
instead of dikiomis. Some of the peculiar features of Gypsy grammar
yet retained by the English Gypsies will be found noted in the
Dictionary.
I have dwelt at some length on the deficiencies and shattered condition
of the English Gypsy tongue; justice, however, compels me to say that
it is far purer and less deficient than several of the continental Gypsy
dialects. It preserves far more of original Gypsy peculiarities than the
French, Italian, and Spanish dialects, and its words retain more of the
original Gypsy form than the words of those three; moreover, however
scanty it may be, it is far more copious than the French or the Italian
Gypsy, though it must be owned that in respect to copiousness it is
inferior to the Spanish Gypsy, which is probably the richest in words of
all the Gypsy dialects in the world, having names for very many of the
various beasts, birds, and creeping things, for most of the plants and
fruits, for all the days of the week, and all the months in the year;
whereas most other Gypsy dialects, the English amongst them, have
names for only a few common animals and insects, for a few common
fruits and natural productions, none for the months, and only a name
for a single day--the Sabbath-- which name is a modification of the
Modern Greek [Greek text: ].
Though the English Gypsy is generally spoken with a considerable
alloy of English words and English grammatical forms, enough of its
proper words and features remain to form genuine Gypsy sentences,
which shall be understood not only by the Gypsies of England, but by
those of Russia, Hungary, Wallachia, and even of Turkey; for
example:-
Kek man camov te jib bolli-mengreskoenaes, Man camov te jib
weshenjugalogonaes.

I do not wish to live like a baptized person. {1} I wish to live like a dog
of the wood. {2}
It is clear-sounding and melodious, and well adapted to the purposes of
poetry. Let him who doubts peruse attentively the following lines:-
Coin si deya, coin se dado? Pukker mande drey Romanes, Ta mande
pukkeravava tute.
Rossar-mescri minri deya! Wardo-mescro minro dado! Coin se dado,
coin si deya? Mande's pukker'd tute drey Romanes; Knau pukker tute
mande.
Petulengro minro dado, Purana minri deya! Tatchey Romany si men -
Mande's pukker'd tute drey Romanes, Ta tute's pukker'd mande.
The first three lines of the above ballad are perhaps the oldest specimen
of English Gypsy at present extant, and perhaps the purest. They are at
least as old as the time of Elizabeth, and can pass among the Zigany in
the heart of Russia for Ziganskie. The other lines are not so ancient.
The piece is composed in a metre something like that of the ancient
Sclavonian songs, and contains the questions which two strange
Gypsies, who suddenly meet, put to each other, and the answers which
they