Domari language
| Domari | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Sudan, and perhaps neighboring countries |
| Region | Middle East and North Africa, Caucasus, Central Asia |
| Ethnicity | Dom |
|
Native speakers
|
4 million (2012) |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | doma1258 |
Domari is an Indo-Aryan language, spoken by older Dom people scattered across the Middle East and North Africa. The language is reported to be spoken as far north as Azerbaijan and as far south as central Sudan, in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon. Based on the systematicity of sound changes, we know with a fair degree of certainty that the names Domari and Romani derive from the Indo-European word ḍom. The language itself actually derives from an Indo-European language. It shares many similarities to Punjabi and Rajasthani, two languages that originated in India. The Arabs referred to them as nawar as they were a nomadic people that originally immigrated to the Middle East from India.
Domari is also known as "Middle Eastern Romani", "Tsigene", "Luti", or "Mehtar". There is no standard written form. In the Arab world, it is occasionally written using the Arabic script and has many Arabic and Persian loanwords. Descriptive work was done by Yaron Matras, who published a comprehensive grammar of the language along with an historical and dialectological evaluation of secondary sources (Matras 2012).
Domari is an endangered language and is currently being shifted away from in younger generations, according to Yaron Matras. In certain areas such as Jerusalem, only about 20% of these Dom people, known as “Middle Eastern Gypsies”, speak the Domari language in everyday interactions. The language is mainly spoken by the elderly in the Jerusalem community. The younger generation are more influenced by Arabic, therefore most only know basic words and phrases. The modern-day community of Doms in Jerusalem was established by the nomadic people deciding to settle inside the Old City from 1940 until the 1967 occupation (Matras 1999).
The best-known variety of Domari is Palestinian Domari, also known as "Syrian Gypsy", the dialect of the Dom community of Jerusalem, which was described by R.A. S. Macalister in the 1910s. Palestinian Domari is an endangered language, with fewer than 200 speakers, the majority of the 1,200 members of the Jerusalem Domari community being native speakers of Palestinian Arabic.
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