Romani is an Indo-Aryan language descended from Sanskrit, carried out of India and enriched by every region the Roma have passed through. Its grammar and core vocabulary reveal the community’s origins and migration as clearly as any document.
Romani is not uniform but a family of dialects spanning Europe and beyond, shaped by contact with Greek, Persian, Armenian, Slavic, Hungarian, Romanian and other languages. Alongside the spoken language, a growing written literature — poetry, memoir and fiction — has given Roma authors a printed voice across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Sources & further reading: RomArchive (Literature), Council of Europe language factsheets and Wikipedia.
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The Romani language
Indo-Aryan roots shared with Sanskrit and the modern languages of north-west India.
Dialects
A family of varieties spanning Europe and the wider diaspora.
Literature
A growing body of Romani poetry, memoir and prose.
Identity
Language as a cornerstone of belonging and continuity.
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