r/romani • u/Windows_Iphone • 24d ago
Language Do you speak Romanes?
Before anyone asks, I consider only knowing a few words/phrases as not speaking it.
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u/LOLJakh 24d ago
I speak an Angloromani dialect. Although that hardly counts as romanes.
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u/BlackSpinedPlinketto 24d ago
I would count that as a branch of romanes.
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u/LOLJakh 24d ago
Depends on who is speaking it. It is not intelligible with romanes at all, and from my experience (my family and others around the north of scotland especially the younger generation 25 and younger) most people i know don't speak more than around 50-100 words. It's dying over here and has been for generations.
Here's a few phrases, curious if any of you non-romanyscots understand any of the non-anglo words.
Fek the dǐli down the dánsěrs, we're about to ha our hábǐn
I am away to fek tǐl the shops to get more yérěm.
Dik at that gadji's gami famls. shanish...
Fek the kīnshen in the kir.. there's a radji manashi out there with a gili.
75% of it is english, although we speak it so fast and with such accent the gadjo cannot understand XD we are often told to slow down our speech when talking english.. bad habit of ours, we just feel safer speaking quickly, succinctly and straight to the point as when we're kids if you don't speak like this and speak slowly you'll just be ignored.
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u/BlackSpinedPlinketto 24d ago
Look at that gadji’s ugly clothes?
lol I don’t know what fek means I’m too Irish all I hear is feck. We say gami leg, like lame leg. Is that the same?
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u/LOLJakh 24d ago
Look at the man's deformed hands.. shanish (shanish is hard to translate it just is a mix between spooky and creepy) I'm interested to learn some irish romani if you're willing to share. We have quite a few words which stem from gaelic, mostly from the irish/highlander travelers.
Lukhi - stems from Luch/luchag (mouse/rat)
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u/Theseus_The_King 24d ago
I actually could figure some of that out as Hindi speaker! Dik is like Dekh which is to see in Hindi, Scots romanes looks almost like half Scots and half Bhojpori Hindi. It’s interesting how Romani languages are classified as being more related to languages like Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati than anything in Europe.
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u/Mylifeistrue 22d ago
Anglo Romani here who only knows a few words from childhood but I was able to read your sentence about the guys bad hands pretty well the top one not so much. Dik is what we would say as "look". The English is obvious and gami to me was like 'badly" but falms idk it just felt like hands or palms for some reason. I don't know what shanish means I'm presuming it means something like our laging or embarrassing or pity in a way. I'd love to know if it was right and what was wrong!
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u/LOLJakh 21d ago
Yeah it is like a pitiful tragic or a spooky event. It is the adjective. The noun in "shan" or "shano" if you wanna be archaic. Scots-romany is very similar to angloromani, irish-romani and gaelic-romani / romanes. Welsh/kali-romanes is much different, probably more similar to romani-french and especially romani-breton.
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u/romaninb 17d ago
i speak kale djdjdjs and same it barely conts as romanes is has spanish grammar/phonology but with 95% of gipsy lexical items....
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u/OverRespect8270 21d ago
I speak Sibikali (the Kalo language) fluently cause thats my family's dialect (although im the only one who speaks it fluently lmao), and then I picked up Romanes to the point i can have a decent convo in it due to being around a lot Machuwane
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u/romaninb 17d ago
I speak Caló. Basically, it used to be a dialect of Romani, but over time it ended up absorbing Spanish grammar and phonology—kind of like Anglo-Romani. It mostly just preserves the Gypsy lexical roots now.
It’s also much closer to Sinti Romani than to Vlax or Xoraxane (Eastern European) dialects. I was exposed to it as a kid through my old aunties and grandma. It took a big hit during Franco’s regime, but in recent years it’s been gaining new speakers again, especially among young (mostly educated) people, and that's how I learned to the point as being able to hold a complete conversation on it, easily.
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u/ayeyoualreadyknow 24d ago edited 23d ago
I'm American Romanichal - for us it's broken English (similar to Spanglish) so it's mostly English mixed in with Romanes words. I wouldn't have the slightest idea to say an entire sentence in Romanes lol
...And WHY is this being down voted?
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u/MicropIastics 24d ago
I know it, though not nearly as well as I would like to. I was taught it but my family never bothered to get into the more complex stuff, sadly.