Balkan Romani language
| Balkan Romani | |
|---|---|
| (Official language in Romania) | |
| Native to | Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Turkey |
| Ethnicity | Romani, Jerlídes (Macedonia, southern Serbia). Muslim. |
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Native speakers
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709,570 (date missing) |
|
Indo-European
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| Dialects |
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | balk1252 |
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Balkan Romani is a group of dialects of the Romani language spoken in various Roma groups in the Balkans. This language is at risk with only 709,570 native speakers worldwide.The dialect is spoken by all generations of speakers and the transmission to children is normal. In addition, the dialect is used by all speakers in the private domain (basilectal function) and by the older generation and the female speakers in the semi-public domain (mesolectal function).
Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, Intermediate Divisions, Western, Romani, Balkan
The word "Rom" is derived from the Romani language and it means "human being", "someone who belongs to the Roma ethnic group" and "man, husband". Major speakers of Balkan Romani language are mostly Romani. August Friedrich Pott: the first who scientifically examined the Romani language and based on linguistic findings found out that India is the original homeland of the Roma people.
Balkan dialects, also known as Balkan I, are spoken in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Iran, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine. This group includes inter alia Arli Romani (Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia), Sepečides-Romani (Greece, Turkey), Ursari Romani (Moldavia, Romania) and Crimean Romani (Ukraine).
Zis dialects, also called Balkan II, are a distinct subdivision within the Balkan group. Bugurdži, Drindari and Kalajdži Romani are spoken in Macedonia, Kosovo and in northern and central Bulgaria.
Elšík uses this classification and dialect examples (geographical information from Matras ):
The sound inventory of Romani does not differ significantly from that of other European languages, most of which belong to the Indo-European family.
The consonant system of Balkan Romani differs in one significant aspect from those of other European languages: it has the aspirated plosives (aspirated stops) characteristic of Indian languages. In the case of Romani, these are the voiceless aspirated plosives /ph, th, kh/, which in the majority of Romani variants, at least at the beginning of a word, have a semantically distinct function.
Turkish lexical influence is a defining and extremely important part of the Romani dialect in the Balkans. Most of the words however, originate from Persian origin. Loans from Persian, Armenian, and Byzantine Greek make up the pre-European lexicon. Ultimately, it is hard to trace the definite origin of all the words because the words of Balkan Romani originate from many sources and the sources of those languages creates a complex puzzle [1].
Turkish grammar plays a large role in Balkan Romani. The use of Turkish conjugations is widely embedded within Balkan Romani and oftentimes, it is difficult to tell the difference between the grammar of the two languages depending on geography. Balkan Romani has compartmentalized grammar originating from Turkish verbal paradigms along with some Greek influence.[2] Much of the morphology of the language has Greece and Turkish origins, which is why the language is viewed by many professionals as a "mixed" language and thus it is hard to see where one language ends and the other begins. All Romani dialects use Greek derived nominal endings, masculine nouns and loan nouns.[3]
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