User:Inayasingh/Carpathian Romani

Carpathian Romani, an array of dialects spoken within Eastern Europe, has many names, including Romungro Romani, Bashaldo, Central Romani, and Karpacki Romani. Traditionally, Carpathian Romani is the language spoken by most Romanian people within Central-Eastern Europe, the most highly concentrated within countries such as Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, and Hungary. Carpathian Romani, like all other Romani dialects, shares distinct features with Indian languages, such as Sanskrit and Hindi. It has borrowed lexical elements from both Indic and as well as Baltic languages that have been incorporated within the language, and has been heavily influenced by Slavic languages such as Ukrainian. A major reason for the endangerment of this particular language can be traced back to the persecution of the Romani people throughout history, and most significantly during the Holocaust. There are approximately 472,470 people who continue to speak Carpathian Romani today, with the highest percentage in Slovakia.

History
Romani people, as a group, initially originated from the Punjab region of India and migrated to Europe sometime within the 10th century, It is speculated that this mass emigration was due to Arabic invasions– however, there is no clear reason for the Romani diaspora. It could be due to several different reasons, not just the invaders who took over Punjab and many of the surrounding regions of India. The Romani people are also known as "Gypsies," due to the locals' assumption that they actually originated from Egypt and not India. Roma people largely settled in countries in Eastern Europe such as Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia– with the speakers of the Carpathian Romani language settling mostly in Northern Hungary and some of the countries that border it. Unfortunately, many Roma were either cast out of society for their "otherness," or enslaved and ridiculed by the local population. In addition, many people viewed them as untrustworthy and "evil" due to their dark skin and brightly-colored clothes. According to Vekerdi, Carpathian or Romungro Romani, which was formerly spoken all over Hungary as well as neighboring countries, rapidly died out during the end of the 19th century due to an increase in antiziganism and the unfortunate persecution of the Romani people in general. Now, the vast majority of the original Romungro speakers' descendants only speak Hungarian, Ukrainian, or Slovak– and the Romungro Romani dialect has largely died out.

Culture
Romani culture is unique and, unfortunately, rare to witness because of its long history of persecution and oppression from others. Traditionally, Roma people have lived nomadic lifestyles– traveling from place to place and working as entertainers, musicians, fortune-tellers, metalworkers, and livestock traders. Nowadays, Roma people have been noted working in all sorts of fields, and most have settled in one place and no longer continue their ancestors' nomadic lifestyles. In addition, because the Roma people are so scattered around the globe, from Europe to the Middle East to parts of Asia, a lot of their culture cannot be defined by just one category. Carpathian Romani people, however, have a mix of Hungarian and other similar Slavic countries' cultures intertwined with their own. Because of this, Romungro people tend to speak both Hungarian and Carpathian Romani, and include both Hungarian and Romani customs within their daily lives, due to assimilation.

Dialects
Elšík uses this classification and dialect examples (geographical information from Matras ): According to Vekerdi, there are five types of Balkan Romani dialects which have still survived today. The first one is categorized as the Vlax dialects, which includes sub-dialects such as Lovāri, Māšāri, and Drizāri. The second dialect is named the Gurvāri dialects (also known as Cerhāri or Maškar), which borrows heavily from Vlax dialects due to the high proximity of Lovāri and Cerhāri speakers within North-Eastern Hungary. The third dialect is Carpathian Romani, also known as Romungro and even Hungarian Gypsy. This dialect is very different from Vlax and Gurvāri dialects, and cannot be understood by speakers of these dialects. It also contains three sub-dialects, which differentiate between each other with slight vowel length differences. The fourth dialect is a variant form of Romungro, called the Vend Gypsy dialect. This dialect is mostly spoken within regions of South-West Hungary, and contains borrowed elements from languages such as Croatian, German, and Slovenian which are not present in the Romungro dialects. The last dialect is called the Sinto dialect, which contains a significant amount of German borrowed elements within the language, and is the most dissimilar out of all the Romani dialects.

Writing and Numeral System
The Carpathian Romani writing system and numeral system consists of Indo-Aryan as well as Greek influences. In regards to the numeral system in particular, numbers such as 7,8,9, and 30 have borrowed heavily from their Greek counterparts. If we analyze the numeral system from 1-30, the pattern closely follows that of many other Indo-Aryan languages. Additionally, numbers such as 40, 50, 60, and 70 have alternative names that have been used: 40 (dujvarbisch [d̥uʲʋ̥arb̥iʃ]), 50 (pantschvardesch [pant͡ʃʋ̥ard̥eʃ]), 60 (trinvarbisch [trinʋarb̥iʃ]), and 70 (trinvarbisch taj desch [trinʋ̥arb̥iʃ taʲ d̥eʃ]). Greek has also had a significant influence on Carpathian Romani lexical items and its syntactic typology as well– for instance, the Romungro word for flower is "luludi," while the Greek word for flower is "louloúdi"– both are very similar. Additionally, the Romungro word for bone is "kókalo," and the Greek word for bone is "kókkalo"– again, very similar. These are just a few examples of the ways Greek, and by extension, Latin has influenced Carpathian Romani as a language. However, in terms of Indic languages that have influenced the Carpathian Romani language, Hindi can be seen as at least partially an influence within the numeral system. If we look at numbers 1-5, which are "jek", "duj", "trin", "schtar", and "pantsch" in Romungro, and compare them to Hindi's words for 1-5, we see many similarities. "Jek" sounds very close to "ek," "duj" close to "do," "trin" close to "teen," "schtar" close to "chaar," and finally "pantsch" closely resembles "paanch."

Vocabulary/Lexis
The Carpathian Romani dialect contains many borrowed elements from Sanskrit as well as Latin, which are coincidentally sister languages. Additionally, the Carpathian Romani dialect contains a significant amount of Slavic lexemes and the diagnostic features of the language include: “sina” for “he/she was”, 3rd person pronouns: “ov”, “oj”, “on”, demonstratives in “ada”, loan verbs are adapted with “-in”, imperfect in “-ahi”. The standard Romani alphabet, used throughout all of the Romani alphabets, is established by the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society :

a b c č čh d dj dž e f g h x i j k kh l lj m n nj o ö p ph r s š t th u v z ž

Examples
Some example sentences from the Carpathian Romani dialect include: "O jiv bilajlas," which translates to "The snow thawed/melted"; "Bičhadjal ole čhāve?" which translates to "Where did you send the boy?"; "Naštig khelav, ande djāsoste sim," which translates to "I cannot dance/celebrate, I am in mourning"; "Kadala žuvlja lem gādžake," which translates to "I have married this woman"; "Xuli tēle pa grast!" which translates to "Get off the horse!" and "Hatjāres romānes?" which translates to "Do you understand Romani?"