Speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language asrromani ćhib "the Romani language" orrromanes (adverb) "in a Rom way". This derives from the Romani wordrrom, meaning either "a member of the (Romani) group" or "husband". This is also the origin of the term "Roma" in English, although some Roma groups refer to themselves using otherdemonyms (e.g. 'Kaale', 'Sinti').[23]
In the 18th century, it was shown by comparative studies that Romani belongs to the Indo-European language family.[24] In 1763 Vályi István, aCalvinist pastor fromSatu Mare inTransylvania, was the first to notice the similarity between Romani andIndo-Aryan by comparing the Romani dialect ofGyőr with the language (perhapsSinhala) spoken by threeSri Lankan students he met in the Netherlands.[25] This was followed by the linguist Johann Christian Christoph Rüdiger (1751–1822) whose bookVon der Sprache und Herkunft der Zigeuner aus Indien (1782) posited Romani was descended fromSanskrit. This prompted the philosopherChristian Jakob Kraus to collect linguistic evidence by systematically interviewing the Roma inKönigsberg prison. Kraus's findings were never published, but they may have influenced or laid the groundwork for later linguists, especiallyAugust Pott and his pioneeringDarstellung der Zigeuner in Europa und Asien (1844–45). By the mid-nineteenth century the linguist and authorGeorge Borrow was able to state categorically his findings that it was a language with its origins in India, and he later published a glossary,Romano Lavo-lil.[26] Research into the way the Romani dialects branched out was started in 1872 by theSlavicistFranz Miklosich in a series of essays. However, it was the philologistRalph Turner's 1927 article “The Position of Romani in Indo-Aryan” that served as the basis for the integration of Romani into the history of Indian languages.
Romani is sometimes classified in theCentral Zone orNorthwestern Zone Indo-Aryan languages, and sometimes treated as a group of its own.[28][29]Romani shares a number of features with the Central Zone languages.[30] The most significantisoglosses are the shift of Old Indo-Aryanr̥ tou ori (Sanskritśr̥ṇ-, Romanišun- 'to hear') andkṣ- tokh (Sanskritakṣi, Romanij-akh 'eye').[30] However, unlike other Central Zone languages, Romani preserves many dental clusters (Romanitrin 'three',phral 'brother', compareHinditīn,bhāi).[30] This implies that Romani split from the Central Zone languages before theMiddle Indo-Aryan period.[30] However, Romani shows some features of New Indo-Aryan, such as erosion of the original nominal case system towards a nominative/oblique dichotomy, with new grammaticalized case suffixes added on.[30] This means that the Romani exodus from India could not have happened until late in the first millennium.[30]
Many words are similar to theMarwari andLambadi languages spoken in large parts of India. Romani also shows some similarity to the Northwestern Zone languages.[30] In particular, the grammaticalization of enclitic pronouns as person markers on verbs (kerdo 'done' +me 'me' →kerdjom 'I did') is also found in languages such asKashmiri andShina.[30] This evidences a northwest migration during the split from the Central Zone languages consistent with a later migration to Europe.[30]
Based on these data,Yaron Matras[31] views Romani as "kind of Indian hybrid: a central Indic dialect that had undergone partial convergence with northern Indic languages."[30]
In terms of its grammatical structures, Romani is conservative in maintaining almost intact the Middle Indo-Aryan present-tense person concord markers, and in maintaining consonantal endings for nominal case – both features that have been eroded in most other modern Indo-Aryan languages.[30]
Romani shows a number of phonetic changes that distinguish it from other Indo-Aryan languages – in particular, the devoicing of voiced aspirates (bh dh gh >ph th kh), shift of medialt d tol, of shorta toe, initialkh tox, rhoticization of retroflexḍ, ṭ, ḍḍ, ṭṭ, ḍh etc. tor andř, and shift of inflectional-a to-o.[30]
After leaving the Indian subcontinent, Romani was heavily affected by contact with European languages.[30] The most significant of these wasMedieval Greek, which contributed lexically, phonemically, and grammatically to Early Romani (10th–13th centuries).[30] This includes inflectional affixes for nouns, and verbs that are still productive with borrowed vocabulary, the shift toVO word order, and the adoption of a preposed definite article.[30] Early Romani also borrowed fromArmenian andPersian.[30]
Romani andDomari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.[32][33] This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be the "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent, but more recent research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central Zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.[34][35]
The following table presents thenumerals in theRomani,Domari andLomavren languages, with the corresponding terms inSanskrit,Hindi,Odia, andSinhala to demonstrate the similarities.[36] Note that the Romani numerals 7 through 9 have been borrowed fromGreek.
The first attestation of Romani is from 1542 AD in western Europe.[30] The earlier history of the Romani language is completely undocumented, and is understood primarily through comparative linguistic evidence.[30]
Linguistic evaluation carried out in the nineteenth century by Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882–1888) showed the Romani language to be a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), not aMiddle Indo-Aryan (MIA), establishing that the ancestors of the Romani could not have left India significantly earlier than AD 1000.
The principal argument favouring a migration during or after the transition period to NIA is the loss of the old system of nominal case, and its reduction to just a two-way case system, nominative vs. oblique. A secondary argument concerns the system of gender differentiation. Romani has only twogenders (masculine and feminine). Middle Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) generally had three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and some modern Indo-Aryan languages retain this old system even today.
It is argued that loss of the neuter gender did not occur until the transition to NIA. Most of the neuter nouns became masculine while a few feminine, like the neuterअग्नि (agni) in thePrakrit became the feminineआग (āg) inHindi andjag in Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages have been cited as evidence that the forerunner of Romani remained on the Indian subcontinent until a later period, perhaps even as late as the tenth century.
There is no historical proof to clarify who the ancestors of the Romani were or what motivated them to emigrate from theIndian subcontinent, but there are various theories. The influence ofGreek, and to a lesser extent ofArmenian and theIranian languages (likePersian andKurdish) points to a prolonged stay inAnatolia, Armenian highlands/Caucasus after the departure from South Asia. The latest territory where Romani is thought to have been spoken as a mostly unitary linguistic variety is theByzantine Empire, between the 10th and the 13th centuries. The language of this period, which can be reconstructed on the basis of modern-day dialects, is referred to asEarly Romani orLate Proto-Romani.[37][38]
TheMongol invasion of Europe beginning in the first half of the thirteenth century triggered another westward migration. The Romani arrived inEurope and afterwards spread to the other continents. The great distances between the scattered Romani groups led to the development of local community distinctions. The differing local influences have greatly affected the modern language, splitting it into a number of different (originally exclusively regional) dialects.
Today, Romani is spoken by small groups in 42 European countries.[39] A project atManchester University in England is transcribing Romani dialects, many of which are on the brink of extinction, for the first time.[39]
Today's dialects of Romani are differentiated by the vocabulary accumulated since their departure fromAnatolia, as well as throughdivergent phonemic evolution and grammatical features. Many Roma no longer speak the language or speak various newcontact languages from the local language with the addition of Romani vocabulary.
Dialect differentiation began with the dispersal of the Romani from the Balkans around the 14th century and on, and with their settlement in areas across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.[40] The two most significant areas of divergence are the southeast (with epicenter of the northern Balkans) and west-central Europe (with epicenter Germany).[40] The central dialects replaces in grammatical paradigms withh.[40] The northwestern dialects appendj-, simplifyndř tor, retainn in the nominalizer-ipen /-iben, and lose adjectival past-tense in intransitives (gelo,geli →geljas 'he/she went').[40] Other isoglosses (esp. demonstratives, 2/3pl perfective concord markers, loan verb markers) motivate the division into Balkan, Vlax, Central, Northeast, and Northwest dialects.[40]
Matras (2002, 2005) has argued for a theory of geographical classification of Romani dialects, which is based on the diffusion in space of innovations. According to this theory,Early Romani (as spoken in the Byzantine Empire) was brought to western and other parts of Europe through population migrations of Rom in the 14th–15th centuries. These groups settled in the various European regions during the 16th and 17th centuries, acquiring fluency in a variety of contact languages. Changes emerged then, which spread in wave-like patterns, creating the dialect differences attested today. According to Matras, there were two major centres of innovations: some changes emerged in western Europe (Germany and vicinity), spreading eastwards; other emerged in the Wallachian area, spreading to the west and south. In addition, many regional and local isoglosses formed, creating a complex wave of language boundaries. Matras points to the prothesis ofj- inaro >jaro 'egg' andov >jov 'he' as typical examples of west-to-east diffusion, and of addition of prothetica- inbijav >abijav as a typical east-to-west spread. His conclusion is that dialect differences formed in situ, and not as a result of different waves of migration.[41]
According to this classification, the dialects are split as follows:
Vlax Romani dialects, chiefly associated with the historical Wallachian and Transylvanian regions, with outmigrants in various regions throughout Europe and beyond[42]
In a series of articles (beginning in 1982) linguistMarcel Courthiade proposed a different kind of classification. He concentrates on the dialectal diversity of Romani in three successive strata of expansion, using the criteria of phonological and grammatical changes. Finding the common linguistic features of the dialects, he presents the historical evolution from the first stratum (the dialects closest to the Anatolian Romani of the 13th century) to the second and third strata. He also names as "pogadialects" (after thePogadi dialect ofGreat Britain) those with only a Romani vocabulary grafted into a non-Romani language (normally referred to asPara-Romani).
A table of some dialectal differences:
First stratum
Second stratum
Third stratum
phirdom, phirdyom phirdyum, phirjum
phirdem
phirdem
guglipe(n)/guglipa guglibe(n)/gugliba
guglipe(n)/guglipa guglibe(n)/gugliba
guglimos
pani khoni
kuni
pai, payi khoi, khoyi
kui, kuyi
pai, payi khoi, khoyi
kui, kuyi
ćhib
shib
shib
jeno
zheno
zheno
po
po/mai
mai
The first stratum includes the oldest dialects:Mećkari (ofTirana),Kabuʒi (ofKorça),Xanduri,Drindari,Erli,Arli,Bugurji,Mahaʒeri (ofPristina),Ursari (Rićhinari),Spoitori (Xoraxane),Karpatichi,Polska Roma,Kaale (fromFinland),Sinto-manush, and the so-calledBaltic dialects.
In the second there areĆergari (ofPodgorica),Gurbeti,Jambashi,Fichiri,Filipiʒi (ofAgia Varvara)
The third comprises the rest of the Romani dialects, includingKalderash,Lovari,Machvano.
Romani is the only Indo-Aryan language spoken almost exclusively in Europe.[44]
The most concentrated areas of Romani speakers are found in theBalkans and central Europe, particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Slovakia.[45] Although there are no reliable figures for the exact number of Romani speakers, the estimated amount of Romani speakers in the European Union is around 3.5 million, this makes it the largest spoken minority language in the European Union.[45]
The language is recognized as a minority language in many countries. At present the only places in the world where Romani is employed as an official language are theRepublic of Kosovo (only regionally, not nationally)[46] and theŠuto Orizari Municipality within the administrative borders ofSkopje,North Macedonia's capital.
Some traditional communities have expressed opposition to codifying Romani or having it used in public functions.[44] However, the mainstream trend has been towards standardization.[44]
Different variants of the language are now in the process of being codified in those countries with high Romani populations (for example,Slovakia). There are also some attempts currently aimed at the creation of aunified standard language.
A standardized form of Romani is used in Serbia, and in Serbia's autonomous province of Vojvodina, Romani is one of the officially recognized languages of minorities having its own radio stations and news broadcasts.
In Romania, a country with a sizableRomani minority (3.3% of the total population), there is a unified teaching system of the Romani language for all dialects spoken in the country. This is primarily a result of the work ofGheorghe Sarău, who made Romani textbooks for teaching Romani children in the Romani language.[50] He teaches a purified, mildlyprescriptive language, choosing the original Indo-Aryan words and grammatical elements from various dialects. The pronunciation is mostly like that of the dialects from the first stratum. When there are more variants in the dialects, the variant that most closely resembles the oldest forms is chosen, likebyav, instead ofabyav,abyau,akana instead ofakanak,shunav instead ofashunav orashunau, etc.
An effort is also made to derive new words from the vocabulary already in use,i.e.,xuryavno (airplane),vortorin (slide rule),palpaledikhipnasko (retrospectively),pashnavni (adjective). There is an ever-changing set of borrowings fromRomanian as well, including such terms asvremea (weather, time),primariya (town hall),frishka (cream),sfïnto (saint, holy).Hindi-basedneologisms includebijli (bulb, electricity),misal (example),chitro (drawing, design),lekhipen (writing), while there are alsoEnglish-based neologisms, likeprintisarel < "to print".
Romani is now used on the internet, in some local media, and in some countries as a medium of instruction.[44]
Romani poem by Jan Döme Horváth printed on wall at Cejl prison,Brno
Historically, Romani was an exclusively unwritten language;[44] for example, Slovak Romani's orthography was codified only in 1971.[51]
The overwhelming majority of academic and non-academic literature produced currently in Romani is written using a Latin-based orthography.[52]
The proposals to form a unified Romani alphabet and one standard Romani language by either choosing one dialect as a standard, or by merging more dialects together, have not been successful - instead, the trend is towards a model where each dialect has its own writing system.[53] Among native speakers, the most common pattern is for individual authors to use an orthography based on the writing system of the dominant contact language: thusRomanian inRomania,Hungarian inHungary and so on.
To demonstrate the differences, the phrase /romani tʃʰib/, which means "Romani language" in all the dialects, can be written asrománi csib,románi čib,romani tschib,románi tschiwi,romani tšiw,romeni tšiv,romanitschub,rromani čhib,romani chib,rhomani chib,romaji šjib[24] and so on.
A currently observable trend, however, appears to be the adoption of a loosely English- and Czech-oriented orthography, developed spontaneously by native speakers for use online and through email.[54]
The Romani sound system is not highly unusual among European languages. Its most marked features are a three-way contrast between unvoiced, voiced, and aspirated stops, and the presence in some dialects of a second rhotic⟨ř⟩.[55]
Conservative dialects of Romani have final stress, with the exception of some unstressed affixes (e.g. the vocative ending, the case endings added on to the accusative noun, and the remoteness tense marker).[55] Central and Western European dialects often have shifted stress earlier in the word.[55]
General Romani is an unusual language, in having two classes of nominals, based on the historic origin of the word, that have a completely different morphology. The two classes can be calledinherited andborrowed,[24] but this article uses names from Matras (2006),[31]ikeoclitic andxenoclitic. The class to which a word belongs is obvious from its ending.
The first class is the old, Indian vocabulary (and to some extentPersian, Armenian and Greek loanwords).[24] The ikeoclitic class can also be divided into two sub-classes, based on the ending.[31]
The ending of words in this sub-class is -o with masculines, -i with feminines, with the latter ending triggering palatalisation of precedingd, t, n, l toď, ť, ň, ľ.[24]
The vocative and nominative are a bit "outside" of the case system[61] as they are produced only by adding a suffix to the root.
Example: the suffix for singular masculine vocative of ikeoclitic types is-eja.[62][63]
čhaveja! - you, boy (or son)!
cikneja! - you, little one!
phrala! - brother!
The oblique cases disregard gender or type:-te /-de (locative),-ke /-ge (dative),-tar/-dar (ablative),-sa(r) (instrumental andcomitative), and-ker- /-ger- (genitive).[57]
Example: The endings for o/i ending nominals are as follows:
sg. nom.
sg. acc.
sg. voc.
pl. nom.
pl. acc.
pl. voc.
'boy' (masculine)
čhav-o
čhav-es
čhav-eja
čhav-e
čhav-en
čhav-ale
'woman' (feminine)
řomn-i
řomn-ja
řomn-ije
řomn-ja
řomn-jen
řomn-ale
Example: the suffix for indirect root for masculine plural for all inherited words is-en,[61][64] the dative suffix is-ke.[65][66]
o xuxur - mushroom
xuxuren - the indirect root (also used as accusative)
Nilaj phiras xuxurenge. – In the summer we go on mushrooms (meaning picking mushrooms)
There are manydeclension classes of nouns that decline differently, and show dialectal variation.[57]
Parts of speech such as adjectives and the article, when they function as attributes before a word, distinguish only between a nominative and an indirect/oblique case form.[67] In the Early Romani system that most varieties preserve, declinable adjectives had nominative endings similar to the nouns ending in-o (masculine-o, feminine-i) but the oblique endings-e in the masculine,-a in the feminine. The ending-e was the same regardless of gender. So-called athematic adjectives had the nominative forms-o in the masculineand the feminine and-a in the plural; the oblique has the same endings as the previous group, but the preceding stem changes by adding the element-on-.[68]
Romani derivations are highly synthetic and partly agglutinative. However, they are also sensitive to recent development - for example, in general, Romani in Slavic countries show an adoption of productiveaktionsart morphology.[70]
The core of the verb is the lexical root, verb morphology is suffixed.[70]
The verb stem (including derivation markers) by itself has non-perfective aspect and is present or subjunctive.[57]
Similarly to nominals, verbs in Romani belong to several classes, but unlike nominals, these are not based on historical origin. However, the loaned verbs can be recognized, again, by specific endings, which are Greek in origin.[70]
The Romani verb has three persons and two numbers, singular and plural. There is no verbal distinction between masculine and feminine.
Romani tenses are, not exclusively, present tense, future tense, two past tenses (perfect and imperfect), present or past conditional and present imperative.
Depending on the dialect, the suffix-a marks the present, future, or conditional.[57] There are many perfective suffixes, which are determined by root phonology, valency, and semantics: e.g.ker-d- 'did'.[57]
There are two sets of personal conjugation suffixes, one for non-perfective verbs, and another for perfective verbs.[57] The non-perfective personal suffixes, continued fromMiddle Indo-Aryan, are as follows:[57]
Non-perfective personal suffixes
1
2
3
sg.
-av
-es
-el
pl.
-as
-en
These are slightly different for consonant- and vowel-final roots (e.g.xa-s 'you eat',kam-es 'you want').[57]
The perfective suffixes, deriving from late Middle Indo-Aryanenclitic pronouns, are as follows:
Perfective personal suffixes
1
2
3
sg.
-om
-al /-an
-as
pl.
-am
-an /-en
-e
Verbs may also take a further remoteness suffix whose original form must have been-as(i) and which is preserved in different varieties as-as,-ahi,-ys or-s.[57] With non-perfective verbs this marks the imperfect, habitual, or conditional.[57] With the perfective, this marks thepluperfect or counterfactual.[57]
Valency markers are affixed to the verb root either to increase or decrease valency.[57] There is dialectal variation as to which markers are most used; common valency-increasing markers are-av-,-ar-, and-ker, and common valency-decreasing markers are-jov- and-áv-.[57] These may also be used to derive verbs from nouns and adjectives.[57]
Romani makes use ofvalency-changing morphology which increases or decreases the valency of its verbs.[76]
Romani syntax is quite different from most Indo-Aryan languages, and shows more similarity to theBalkan languages.[69]
Šebková and Žlnayová, while describing Slovak Romani, argues that Romani is afree word order language[24] and that it allows fortheme-rheme structure, similarly to Czech, and that in some Romani dialects in East Slovakia, there is a tendency to put a verb at the end of a sentence.
However, Matras describes it further.[77] According to Matras, in most dialects of Romani, Romani is aVO language, withSVO order in contrastive sentences andVSO order in thetic sentences.[69] The tendency of some dialects to put the verb in final position may be due to Slavic influence.
Clauses are usuallyfinite.[69] relative clauses, introduced by therelativizerkaj, are postponed.[69] Factual and non-factual complex clauses are distinguished.[69]
Romani has lent several words to English such aspal (ultimately from Sanskritbhrātar "brother"[79]). Other Romani words in general British slang aregadgie (man),[80]shiv orchiv (knife).[81] Urban British slang shows an increasing level of Romani influence,[80] with some words becoming accepted into the lexicon of standard English (for example,chav from an assumed Anglo-Romani word,[80] meaning "small boy", in the majority of dialects).[82] There are efforts to teach and familiariseVlax-Romani to a new generation of Romani so that Romani spoken in different parts of the world are connected through a single dialect of Romani. The Indian Institute of Romani Studies,Chandigarh published several Romani language lessons through its journalRoma during the 1970s.[83]
Occasionally loanwords from otherIndo-Iranian languages, such asHindi, are mistakenly labelled as Romani due to surface similarities (due to a shared root), such ascushy, which is fromUrdu (itself a loan fromPersianxuš) meaning "excellent, healthy, happy".[79]
^Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation (4 June 2018)."Nasjonale minoriteter" [National minorities].regjeringen.no (in Norwegian). Norwegian Government Security and Service Organisation. Retrieved2019-04-08.
^Matras (2006) "In some regions of Europe, especially the western margins (Britain, the Iberian peninsula, Scandinavia), Romani-speaking communities have given up their language in favor of the majority language, but have retained Romani-derived vocabulary as an in-group code. Such codes, for instance Angloromani (Britain), Caló (Spain), or Rommani (Scandinavia) are usually referred to as Para-Romani varieties."
^abcdefghijklmnopqrŠebková, Hana; Žlnayová, Edita (1998).Nástin mluvnice slovenské romštiny (pro pedagogické účely)Archived 2016-03-04 at theWayback Machine. Ústí nad Labem: Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity J. E. Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem: p. 4.ISBN80-7044-205-0. "V 18. století bylo na základě komparatistických výzkumů jednoznačně prokázáno, že romština patří do indoevropské jazykové rodiny a že je jazykem novoindickým" ["In the 18th century, it was conclusively proved on the basis of comparative studie that Romani belongs to the Indo-European language family and is a New-Indian language"]
^Marcel Courthiade, “Appendix Two. Kannauʒ on the Ganges, cradle of the Rromani people”, in Donald Kenrick,Gypsies: from the Ganges to the Thames (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2004), 105.
^Borrow, George (1873).Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book of the Romany; Or, English Gypsy Language. London: John Murray. pp. 3–10.The Gypsy language, then, or what with some qualification I may call such, may consist of some three thousand words, the greater part of which are decidedly of Indian origin, being connected with the Sanscrit or some other Indian dialect; the rest consist of words picked up by the Gypsies from various languages in their wanderings from the East.
^Schrammel, Barbara; Halwachs, Dieter W. (2005). "Introduction".General and Applied Romani Linguistics - Proceeding from the 6th International Conference on Romani Linguistics (München: LINCOM): p. 1.ISBN3-89586-741-1.
^Matras (2002), p. 48. "Striking nonetheless are the grammatical similarities between Romani and Domari: the synthetisation of Layer ii affixes, the emergence of new concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative."
^Matras (2006), p. 760. "The morphology of the two languages is similar in other respects: Both retain the old present conjugation in the verb (Domari kar-ami 'I do'), and consonantal endings of the oblique nominal case (Domarimans-as 'man.OBL',mans-an 'men.OBL'), and both show agglutination of secondary (Layer II) case endings (Domarimans-as-ka 'for the man'). It had therefore been assumed that Romani and Domari derived form the same ancestor idiom, and split only after leaving the Indian subcontinent."
^Beníšek, Michael (2020). "The Historical Origins of Romani". In Matras, Yaron; Tenser, Anton (eds.).The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics.Palgrave Macmillan. p. 18.
^Norbert Boretzky: Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004 p. 18–26
^abcdMatras, Yason (2005). Schrammel, Barbara; Halwachs, Dieter W.; Ambrosch, Gerd (eds.)."The classification of Romani dialects: A geographic-historical perspective"(PDF).General and Applied Romani Linguistics - Proceeding from the 6th International Conference on Romani Linguistics. LINCOM. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 21 September 2013. Retrieved14 September 2013.
^Kamusella, T. Language in Central Europe's History and Politics: From the Rule of cuius regio, eius religio to the National Principle of cuius regio, eius lingua?Journal of Globalization Studies. Volume 2, Number 1, May 2011[2]
^Šebková, Hana; Žlnayová, Edita (1998).Nástin mluvnice slovenské romštiny (pro pedagogické účely)Archived 2016-03-04 at theWayback Machine. Ústí nad Labem: Pedagogická fakulta Univerzity J. E. Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem: p. 4.ISBN80-7044-205-0. "U nás k tomu došlo v roce 1971, kdy jazyková komise při tehdy existujícím Svazu Cikánů-Romů (1969–1973) přijala závaznou písemnou normu slovenského dialektu romštiny."
Hübschmannová, Milena (1974).Základy Romštiny [Basics of the Romani language] (in Czech). Praha: Academia Praha.
Hübschmannová, Milena (1993).Šaj pes dokaveras - Můžeme se domluvit [Shaj pes dovakeras - We can make an agreement] (in Czech). Olomouc: Pedagogická fakulta UP Olomouc.ISBN80-7067-355-9.
Matras, Yaron (2006)."Romani"(PDF). In Brown, Keith (ed.).Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics (Second ed.). Oxford: Elsevier. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2017-10-11. Retrieved2012-08-12.
Walter Simson.A History of the Gipsies: with specimens of the Gipsy language. Edited, with preface, introduction, and notes, and a disquisition on the past, present and future of Gipsydom, by James Simson. London: Sampson Low & Marston, 1865.A History of the Gipsies with Specimens of the Gipsy Language by Walter Simson
Peter Bakker,Milena Hübschmannová.What Is the Romani Language?. Hatfield: University Of Hertfordshire Press, 2000.
