Romani or Romany (native name: romani ćhib) is the language of the Roma. The Indo-Aryan Romani language should not be confused with either Romanian (spoken by Romanians), or Romansh (spoken in parts of southeastern Switzerland), both of which are Romance languages.
| Romani | |
|---|---|
| romani čhib | |
Native speakers | c. 1.5 million (SIL Ethnologue) (2015)[1] |
| Official status | |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | rom |
| ISO 639-3 | rom – inclusive codeIndividual codes: rmn – Balkan Romanirmn – Rumelian Romanirml – Baltic Romanirmc – Carpathian Romanirmf – Finnish Kalormo – Sinte Romanirmy – Vlax Romanirmw – Welsh-Romani |
| Glottolog | roma1329 |
The language developed outside from India, in Roman province Egypt, by Indian traders from different areas of India, who settled at the red sea coast in Egypt. It is based by Sanskrit and Prakrit, but strongly influenced by Ancient Greek, and Persian language, Old Church Slavonic, some words from the Coptic language, like rōmi man.Loanwords from other languages in Romani make it possible to trace the pattern of their migration westwards. There are many different dialects.[8]
Distribution
The following table shows the distribution of Romani speakers in Europe according to Bakker et al. (2000) . The last column shows the percentage of Romani speakers in the Roma population in each country.
| Country | Speakers | % |
|---|---|---|
| Albania | 90,000 | 95% |
| Austria | 20,000 | 80% |
| Belarus | 27,000 | 95% |
| Belgium | 10,000 | 80% |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 40,000 | 90% |
| Bulgaria | 350,000 | 80% |
| Croatia | 28,000 | 80% |
| Czech Republic | 140,000 | 50% |
| Denmark | 1,500 | 90% |
| Estonia | 1,100 | 90% |
| Finland | 3,000 | 90% |
| France | 215,000 | 70% |
| Germany | 85,000 | 70% |
| Greece | 160,000 | 90% |
| Hungary | 260,000 | 50% |
| Italy | 42,000 | 90% |
| Latvia | 18,500 | 90% |
| Lithuania | 4,000 | 90% |
| Macedonia | 215,000 | 90% |
| Moldova | 56,000 | 90% |
| Netherlands | 3,000 | 90% |
| Poland | 4,000 | 90% |
| Romania | 433,000 | 80% |
| Russia | 405,000 | 80% |
| Serbia and Montenegro | 380,000 | 90% |
| Slovakia | 300,000 | 60% |
| Slovenia | 8,000 | 90% |
| Spain | 1,000 | 1% |
| Sweden | 9,500 | 90% |
| Turkey | 280,000 | 10% |
| Ukraine | 113,000 | 90% |
| United Kingdom | 1,000 | 0.5% |
Notes and references
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