Caló (Spanish Romani)
| Caló | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Spain, Portugal, south of France, Latin America |
|
Native speakers
|
up to 400,000 in Brazil (2014) 40,000 in Spain (1980) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | calo1236 |
Caló (Spanish: [kaˈlo]; Catalan: [kəˈɫo]; Galician: [kaˈlɔ]; Portuguese: [kɐˈlɔ]) is a language spoken by the Spanish and Portuguese Romani. It is a mixed language (referred to as a Para-Romani language in Romani linguistics) based on Romance grammar, with an adstratum of Romani lexical items through language shift by the Romani community. It is often used as an argot, a secret language for discreet communication amongst Iberian Romani. Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish caló are closely related varieties that share a common root.
Spanish caló, or Spanish Romani, was originally known as zincaló. Portuguese calão, or Portuguese Romani, also goes by the term lusitano-romani.
Calé is the endonym of the Romani people in Iberia and caló means "the language spoken by the calé. However, the calé are commonly known in Portuguese- and Spanish- speaking countries by the exonyms ciganos and gitanos.
In Calé and other varieties of Romani, kalo means "black or "absorbing all light", hence closely resembling words for "black" and/or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g. Sanskrit काल kāla "black", "of a dark colour"). Hence caló and calé may have originated as ancient exonyms. For instance, the name of the Domba people – among whom the Roma are now believed to have emerged – also implies "dark-skinned", in some modern Indian languages.
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