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Also known as Domari language

language

Key facts

Native to
Azerbaijan , Mauritania , Iran , Iraq , Israel , Lebanon , Egypt , Libya , Tunisia , Algeria , Morocco , Pakistan , Palestine , Syria , Turkey , Jordan , Sudan , and perhaps neighboring countries
Region
Middle East and North Africa , Caucasus , Central Asia
Ethnicity
Dom
Native speakers
280,000 (2015)
Language family
Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Central (Hindustani) Domari
Dialects
Northern Domari Southern Domari
Writing system
Latin , Arabic , Hebrew
Iso 639 3
rmt
Glottolog
doma1258

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Show 2 more facts
number of speakers, writers, or signers
1340000
Sources (6)

via Wikidata · CC0

~11 min read

Article

Domari is an endangered Indo-Aryan language, spoken by 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, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon. Based on the systematicity of sound changes, it is known with a fair degree of certainty that the names Domari and Romani derive from the Indo-Aryan word ḍom. Although they are both Central Indo-Aryan languages, Domari and Romani do not derive from the same immediate ancestor. The Arabs referred to them as Nawar as they were a nomadic people that originally immigrated to the Middle East from the Indian subcontinent.

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 a historical and dialectological evaluation of secondary sources.

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