Romani

Also known as Romany, Gypsy, Gipsy, romanes, Romani language, rmy, Roma, Roma language

language of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family

AI overview

Romani is the language spoken by the Romani people and belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family, making it distantly related to languages like Hindi and English. Understanding Romani matters because it is the native language of a distinct ethnic group whose history, culture, and linguistic heritage have often been overlooked or marginalized in mainstream society.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Subclass of: Central Indo-Aryan
Has part: Caló
Country: Sweden

Show 18 more facts

indigenous to: Romani people
has grammatical gender: masculine
has grammatical case: instrumental case
topic's main category: Category:Romani language
Wikimedia language code: rmy
writing system: Devanagari
native label: Romani chib
number of speakers, writers, or signers: 46000000
linguistic typology: fusional language
P10369: Never Gonna Give You Up
short name: цыганская
exact match: publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/language/ROM
category for films in this language: Category:Romani-language films
studied by: Romani studies
different from: Romance languages
described by source: Omniglot
entry in abbreviations table: Țig.
P8168: Somerton and Frome

Sources (6)

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Encyclopedic overview

Romani (/ˈrɒməni, ˈroʊ-/ ROM-ə-nee, ROH-; also Romanes /ˈrɒmənɪs/ ROM-ən-iss, Romany; Romani: rromani ćhib) is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani people. The largest Romani dialects are Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers), Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Romani (300,000). Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.

The differences between the various varieties can be as large as, for example, the differences between the Slavic languages.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Romani” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.