Vlax Romani language

Vlax Romani is a dialect group of the Romani language. 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]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Central Zone Romani Vlax Romani
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Serbia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	rmy
Glottolog	vlax1238
ELP	Vlax Romani[2]

Name

The language's name Vlax Romani was coined by British scholar Bernard Gilliat-Smith in his 1915 study on Bulgarian Romani, in which he first divided Romani dialects into Vlax and non-Vlax.[5] The name derives from the ethnologically unrelated "Vlachs", as all the Vlax dialects have had an extensive, lexical, phonological and morphological influence from the Romanian language.[6]

There have been multiple waves of migration of Romani out of Romania, some of them being connected to the 19th century abolition of slavery in Romania.[6]

The words Romani and Romania are false cognates, the former deriving from Romani rom – ultimately from Sanskrit, and the latter deriving from Romanian român – ultimately from Latin.

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

1. Vlax Romani at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
2. Endangered Languages Project data for Vlax Romani.
3. Norbert Boretzky and Birgit Igla. Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2004. Teil 1: Vergleich der Dialekte.
4. "Romani, Vlax".
5. Yaron Matras (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 219. ISBN 9781139433242.
6. Yaron Matras (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. p. 7. ISBN 9781139433242.
7. Elšík, Viktor (1999). "Dialect variation in Romani personal pronouns" (PDF). p. 2. Retrieved 17 September 2013.
8. Matras, Yaron (2002). Romani: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-02330-0
9. Hansen, Björn; de Haan, Ferdinand (2009). Modals in the Languages of Europe. Walter de Gruyter: p. 307 ISBN 978-3-11-021920-3.
10. "Journey of Besieged Languages" (PDF). ilholocaustmuseum.org.

External links