Vlax Romani language
Vlax Romani is a dialect group of the Romani language (Gipsy). Vlax Romani varieties are spoken mainly in Southeastern Europe by the Romani people.[3] Vlax Romani can also be referred to as an independent language[4] or as one dialect of the Romani language. Vlax Romani is the second most widely spoken dialect subgroup of the Romani language worldwide, after Balkan Romani.
Vlax Romani | |
---|---|
řomani čhib | |
Native to | Bosnia, Romania, Serbia, Albania, Hungary, Israel; scattered in numerous other states |
Native speakers | 538,480 (2002–2014)[1] |
Indo-European
| |
Official status | |
Recognised minority language in | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | rmy |
Glottolog | vlax1238 [2] |
Name
The language's name is derived from the "Vlachs", a medieval exonym referring to the Romanians, as all the Vlax dialects share an extensive influence from Romanian on vocabulary, phonology and morphology.[5] There have been many waves of migration of Roma out of Romania, some of them being connected to the 19th century abolition of slavery in Romania.[5] This name was coined by British scholar Bernard Gilliat-Smith in his 1915 study on Bulgarian Roma, in which he first divided Roma dialects into Vlax and non-Vlax.[6]
The similarity of the words Romani and Romania is a coincidence, as they are not etymologically related. Vlachs are also a distinct ethnic group different from the “Vlax” classification of Roma.
Classification
Vlax Romani is classified in two groups: Vlax I, or Northern Vlax (including Kalderash and Lovari), and Vlax II, or Southern Vlax.[3]
Elšík[7] uses this classification and dialect examples (geographical information from Matras[8]):
Sub-group | Dialect | Place |
---|---|---|
Ukrainian Vlax | - | Ukraine |
Northern Vlax | Cerhari | Hungary |
Hungarian Lovari | ||
Slovakia | ||
Austrian Lovari | Austria | |
Polish Lovari | Poland | |
Norwegian Lovari | Norway | |
Serbian Kalderaš | Serbia | |
Italian Kalderaš | Italy | |
Russian Kalderaš | Russia | |
Taikon Kalderaš | Sweden[9] | |
American Vlax | USA | |
Southern Vlax | Vallachian | Romania |
Ihtiman | Bulgaria (named after the city) | |
Gurbet | Serbia and Bosnia | |
Korça | Albania (named after the city) | |
Italian Xoraxane | Italy (Xoraxane translates as "Muslims" in the dialect) | |
Ajia Varvara | Greece (named after a suburb of Athens) |
Writing systems
Vlax Romani is written using the Romani orthography, predominantly using the Latin alphabet with several additional characters. In the area of the former Soviet Union, however, it can also be written in the Cyrillic script.[10]
References
- Vlax Romani at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Vlax Romani". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Norbert Boretzky and Birgit Igla. Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2004. Teil 1: Vergleich der Dialekte.
- "Romani, Vlax".
- Yaron Matras (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 7. ISBN 9781139433242.
- Yaron Matras (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 219. ISBN 9781139433242.
- Elšík, Viktor (1999). "Dialect variation in Romani personal pronouns" (PDF). p. 2. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
- Matras, Yaron (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-02330-0
- Hansen, Björn; de Haan, Ferdinand (2009). Modals in the Languages of Europe. Walter de Gruyter: p. 307 ISBN 978-3-11-021920-3.
- "Journey of Besieged Languages" (PDF). ilholocaustmuseum.org.
External links
Vlax Romani edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |