Roma minority in Romania
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| Total population | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (2011 census: 621,573) | ||||||
| Languages | ||||||
| Romani and other languages (Romanian, Hungarian, Turkish) | ||||||
| Religion | ||||||
| Orthodoxy · Catholicism · Calvinism · Pentecostalism · Islam | ||||||
.JPG)
Romani people (Roma in Romani; Țigani in Romanian) in Romania, Gypsy, constitute one of the country's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, they number 621,573 people or 3.08% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians.
The Romani people originate from the northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab.
The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines.
More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.
Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.
In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.
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