Romani: A Linguistic Introduction

Romani is a language of Indo-Aryan origin which is spoken in Europe by the people known as Gypsies (who usually refer to themselves as Rom). There are upwards of 3.5 million speakers, and their language has attracted increasing interest both from scholars and from policy-makers in governments and other organizations during the past ten years. This book is the first comprehensive overview in English of Romani. It provides a historical linguistic introduction to the structures of Romani and its dialects, as well as surveying the phonology, morphology, syntactic typology and patterns of grammatical borrowing in the language. This book provides an essential reference for anyone interested in this fascinating language.

• The first comprehensive overview of the linguistics of Romani available in English • The first thorough modern analysis of Romani dialects and typology • Of interest to general linguists, Indo-Aryanists, and those interested in sociolinguistics and language planning

1. Introduction; 2. Romani dialects: a brief overview; 3. Historical and linguistic origins; 4. Descriptive phonology; 5. Nominal forms and categories; 6. Verb morphology; 7. Syntactic typology; 8. Grammatical borrowing; 9. Dialect classification; 10. Romani sociolinguistics; 11. Language planning and codification.