Romani in Contact: The History, Structure and Sociology of a Language

by Yaron Matras (Editor)

A language of Indic origin heavily infuenced by European idioms for many centuries now, Romani provides an interesting experimental field for students of language contact, linguistic minorities, standardization, and typology. Approaching the language via its ever-surfacing character as a language in contact, the volume gives expression to part of the wide range or research represented in today's field of Romani linguistics. Contributions focus on problems in typological change and structural borrowing, lexical borrowing and lexcial reconstruction, the Iranian influence on the language, interdialectal interference, language mixing, Romani influences on slang and argot, grammatical categories in discourse, standardization and literacy in a multilingual community, and plagiarism of data in older sources. The authors discuss dialects spoken in the Czech and Slovak Republics, Serbia, Macedonia, Germany, Poland, and Romania, as well as related varieties in Spain and the Middle East.

225 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1995

About the author

Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester, and Editor of the journal Romani Studies. His involvement with Romani issues began in the advocacy and civil rights arena. Matras was media relations officer to the Roma National Congress from 1988-1995, and founding editor of RomNews, one of the very first advocacy information services on Romani issues. He has worked closely with the Open Society Institute's Roma programmes, is a founding member of the European Academic Network on Romani Studies, and has led several large-scale research projects on Romani language and culture, including an international research consortium on Romani migrations. He is the author of over a dozen books and numerous chapters and articles on Romani language and culture, and speaks the Romani language fluently.