At the end of the 18th century it was found out that Romani language is similar to Sanskrit and since that moment linguists, philologists and indologists have studied various dimensions of this Indic language which is more than a thousand years old and more than eight thousand kilometres off its country of origin. Until recently, the interest for Romani language has been more or less academic.
Primarily, linguists strived to determine which group of Indic languages Romani belongs to. Nowadays the theory by Ralph Turner (1927) is generally accepted proving that the older stratum of the Romani language has characteristics of Central Indic languages, while north-western Indic languages influence its newer stratum.

There are significant correspondences with Hindi or Punjabi in lexics while Marwari (one of the dialects spoken in Rajasthan) is closer to Romani in phonetics. Some examples can be given as a matter of interest. Words before slash are Romani, words after slash are Hindi or Marwari (marked with m.) bal/bál – hair, nakh/ nák – nose, kan/kán – ear, muj/munh – mouth, dand/dant – tooth, gav/ganv – village, dar/dar – fear, ladž/ládž – shame, dori/dorí – string; kalo,kali/kálo (m.), káli – black; baro, baribaro (m), bari – big; lolo/lál – red, učo/unčo (m) – high; miro, miri/mero (m), meri – my, tiro, tiri/tero (m.), teri – your; dža!/džä! – go!, šun/šun (m) – hear; dikh!/dekh! – look!, džan!/džan! – understand, phir!/phir! – come, ma dara!/mat dar! – don’t worry, jekh/ek – one, duj/do – two, deš/das – ten, biš/biš (m) – twenty, etc.

And there are plenty of similar examples which would cover several more pages. Professor Norbert Boretzky in his outstanding dictionary of Romani dialects from the territory of former Yugoslavia (1994) lists Romani etymons in its appendix – i.e. non-derived words according to their etymological origin (2): the percentage of Indic etymons significantly exceeds other etymons. Moreover, the original Indic etymons and the so-called old borrowings (words of Persian or Armenian origin) have higher syntactic potential than words that penetrated Romani from other languages later.  This wants to say that many suffixes can be attached to Indic etymons that enable the creation of new derived terms. For instance, the syntactic potential of the etymon bar-o is as follows:

The etymon bar-o is therefore a base for the derivation of seventeen terms that are multiplied by the multitude of its semantic field - a set of various meanings that group round one term.
The Indic background breeds not only lexeme (word) etymons, but also onomasiological etymons, i.e. word-forming etymons or, to be more precise, meaning-forming or term-forming etymons which also largely outnumber onomasiological devices (specifically derivation suffixes) borrowed from other languages. All indicated suffixes, individual ones as well as cumulated ones, under the example of bar-o are also of Indic origin.

Whereas Romani lexicon is closer to Hindi, Marwari, Punjabi etc., its grammar is in many ways similar to Bengali – eastern Indic language.  For instance: tu džas / tu džaiš – you gou, me džava / ami džabo – I will go, amen geľam / amra gelam – we went. Like Romani, Bengali has a dative ending  –ke, locative ending –te, ablative ending (with meaning of possessive) –der (rom -dar, -tar) etc.

The academic interest for Romani in relation to other Indic languages is not an end in itself. It can at least partly clarify the “Indian history“ of Roma which is not supported by any direct written sources. The Romani language indeed preserves some phenomena that cannot be found in the language of Indian ancient written records or in contemporary literary languages. Therefore Romani is living proof of certain development stage in Indic languages that is probably not retained anywhere else. Further comparative studies – not only of Romani and well-known literary Indic languages, but also of Romani and various Indic dialects that have not been scientifically studied yet – could determine in more detail the period of time in which the Romani people were leaving India.

The Romanies came to various language environments during their wandering to Europe and thus, similarly to any language in the world, Romani adopted new terms and new language influences. There is no language in the world that is totally „pure“ in the sense of not having words borrowed from other languages. Do the Czechs know, for instance, that they put on Persian pyjama (pa-e-djame – leg clothes) and Persian slippers (papuče - paa-posh – footgear) and drive a German screw (šroub) with a German screwdriver (šroubovák), wear a Latin shirt (košile), eat Turkish wild cherries (višně) and breathe Jungmann’s air imported from Russia (vzduch - vozduch), and so on and on? Similarly, the Romani language borrows terms.

Loanwords are particularly Greek and mostly do not have any marker of borrowed words yet: masculine nouns have endings –os, -is, -as, -us, feminine nouns –a (gerekos – coat, firhangos – blinds, rokľa – skirt etc.). Greek etymona are words such as skamind – table (Slovak Romani) or chair (Hungarian Romani), charťas – smith, zumin – soup, paramisi – fairy tale, žamba – frog (which is borrowed from Slavs by Greeks) etc.

While a lot of Romani dialects share the same Greek etymons, they differ in the latest loanwords: whereas Chorachane Roma („Turkish“ – Muslim Roma) say dunja – Arabish – Old Turkish „world“, other groups say világo (from Hungarian), luma (from Rumanian), svetos (from Slovak) and so on.
Specialists agree that already in the territory of India various Romani jatis (groups of the same relations and occupations) spoke slightly different dialect which was still very similar. This so-called “primary differentiation“ was than followed by secondary differentiations according to different influences of various language environments in which individual Romany jatis or sub-ethnic groups lived.

In the territory of the former Czechoslovak Republic four “Romani languages“ live next to each other: the so-called Slovak, Hungarian and Vlax Romani and language of the Sinti. The most wide-spread is the Slovak Romani dialect that has two main varieties: eastern Slovak Romani and western Slovak Romani. The Hungarian Roma are not few, but most of them have assimilated from the language aspect. Still Hungarian Romani preserved a lot of archaic features. The Vlax Roma are fewer than the Slovak or Hungarian Romani people, but their language is kept alive because members of all generations speak it. Roma – Sinti are not many, most of them were slaughtered in the World War II. Beside other things, the tragic genocide experience from the Nazi Germany contributed to the fact that Sinti would not disclose their language to the “Gadje“ – Non-Roma. Nazi anthropologist Eva Justin, called Loľi čhaj (Red Romani girl) was accepted by the Sinti community as „theirs“ due to her knowledge of Sinti‘s language and she abused their confidence and condemned them to death in the concentration camps by her pseudo research.
Can speakers of the individual “Romani languages“ understand each other? They can understand similarly as a Czech knows what a Slovak says, or as a Czech can understand a Polish, Serb, Croat or Russian and vice versa. Not only does the “similarity“ of various dialects matter, but also the communication experience of speakers and their willingness and ability to make themselves understood are important.

Since April 1971 when the First World Romani Congress was held and the International Union of Roma was found (nowadays International Romani Union), representatives of the Roma worldwide have been meeting regularly to solve their political, cultural and language problems. Members of various sub-ethnic groups, i.e. speakers of various Romani dialects communicate basically only in Romani because their “second languages“ are different. The number of similar meetings has grown proportionally with the intensity of the Roma’s ethno-emancipation efforts. Beside other efforts, this struggle is the most adequate reaction to the aggressive racism in recent years. International congresses, festivals and meetings of the Romani people manifest that the Romani language – even as a set of different dialects – can fulfil its communication role. Nevertheless, members of the groups that assimilated in the past and all the Roma who cannot speak Romani have problems with understanding.

Namely Spanish Kale, Finnish Kale, English Romanichel, Romanian Vatrasi, groups of Romani musicians in Hungaria and others belong to assimilated groups. A lot of Romani politicians and cultural figures (Peter Mercer from England, Nicolás Jiménez from Spain, Dr. Nicolae Gheorghe from Romaania, famous writer Menyért Lakatoš from Hungary and others) begin to learn their original ethnic language or organize the teaching of Romani on a wider basis in their countries.
Whereas interesting aspects of Romani language have enthused linguists for more than two centuries, ignorant and disdainful public opinion sees Romani as a “slang“. The surprising question: “Has Gypsy language any grammar at all?“ is often asked even by educated people.
No language can exist without any grammar. We shall indicate at least principal grammar categories of Romani: eleven parts of speech (including the article), gender (masculine and feminine – like in Hindi), number (sg., pl.), tenses: present, perfect, imperfect, future; moods: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, present and past conditional; adjectival participle, adverbial participle, analytic passive, and syntactic passive. Verb diatheses are expressed by active, factitive and causative verbs (in Hungarian Romani there are causatives of first and second degree) and by syntactic passives. Basic verbs form frequentative aspect. The Romani language has also a rich onomasiological (meaning-forming) system which it can create new terms with.

In fact, the official assimilative politics lasting essentially until 1989 supported such ignorant attitudes towards Romani. Nowadays the Romani people have opportunity to cultivate and use their language officially in various social functions not only in our country, but also elsewhere in the world. However this is a difficult and long-lasting task. To accomplish it, it will not do to use the richness of the traditional Romani language spoken once by the čirlatune, čačikane Roma (original and true Roma), Romani that is full of šukar lava (beautiful words) of traditional songs and fairytales, Romani with effective onomasiological system capable of its continuous enrichment with new words. It is necessary to have a social will, endeavor and courage for attempts and failures in using the Romani language in functions in which it has not had opportunity to be used yet. It is also indispensable to have specialists of Roma origin in particular who will sensitively regulate the development of the Romani language.

For the present, such a will can be noted in Romani articles on the pages of Romani press (especially in the magazine of Romani studies Romano džaniben), in several Romani literary publications, in the fact that the Romani language has been taught as a university subject at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague since 1991. And also the numbers of Romani linguists grow. While only one Romani linguist (Professor Ian Hancock from Texas University in Austin, USA) was present in the first international linguistic conference on the Romani language in Hamburg in 1993, in the second conference with a similar topic in Amsterdam in 1994, five Romani linguists and philologists presented their contributions – and the same number of papers was read in Romani.

Every language in the world probably had to overcome similar difficulties that affect Romani today, some languages in ancient times, others in recent past. But there are languages that are still seeking ways how to fulfil new social functions and express themselves in new forms nowadays. In the first place, it is the Roma who have to show how they are going to master this difficult period. But it does not depend on the Romani people only. In the conclusion of the international conference of ethnic minority languages organized by Lapland University in Rovaniemi (Finland) in 1991 the following opinion was expressed: Even though a language is created by an ethnic group, it becomes a part of the world culture as a preserver of cultural values. And therefore other nations have cultural obligation to participate in the preservation of languages if their speakers want to preserve them. This obligation is then an ethic imperative for those majority communities that made dignified humane existence impossible for ethnic minorities derogating and inhibiting their culture and language.  

Finally we can wish together with Anela Žigová:

Milena Hübschmannová: Romani ćhib – Romani: Several basic information on Romani language (Published In: Boulletin of the Museum of Romani Culture No. 4/1995)

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