PLUMBERS, and even politicians, think meanly of Gypsies. The _Oxford
English Dictionary_, apparently regarding them as a species of vermin
rather than a nation, denies them the barren honour which it awards to
Gallovidians, and spells their name with a little _g_. As an old witch
complained to Lavengro, some very respectable persons go so far as to
“grudge the poor people the speech they talk among themselves,” and, like
the magistrate, brand it “no language at all, merely a made-up
gibberish.” Mrs. Herne very properly retorted, with an ironical curtsey:
“Oh, bless your wisdom, you can tell us what our language is without
understanding it”; for to learn to understand Romani is a far easier task
than to trace it to its sources.
The central mystery of a mysterious race, it is their greatest treasure,
whether, with Borrow, we regard it as a means “to enable habitual
breakers of the law to carry on their consultations with more secrecy,”
or share the enthusiasm of scholars who have found in it the most
fascinating, yet most baffling, problem of linguistics. On the language
of the Gypsies one of the greatest philologists wrote two volumes,
containing more than a thousand closely-printed pages, although he
confessed he had never heard it spoken; another devoted eight years to
the gradual publication of a huge quarto which, when completed, weighed
nearly a hundred ounces; and countless humbler contributors have added
their stones to the cairn of learning under which Romani lies buried.
All believed that in this unwritten tongue, the conversational currency
of “the most unfortunate and degraded of beings,” lay hid answers to
riddles which have perplexed the learned for five hundred years: Where
was the original home of the Gypsies? When did they leave it? By what
route did they reach Europe? But the hopes of scholars have been
grievously disappointed, and at the end of a century of diligent gleaning
and scientific analysis the mystery of Gypsy origin is as deep as it was
at the beginning!
Far from being gibberish, Romani is an inflected language possessing more
cases for its noun than did Latin; and it is Indian, although the
Gypsies, true to their reputation, have begged words with which to
supplement their vocabulary from Persians, Greeks, Slavs and other
peoples among whom they have dwelt. It has been said that “the Arabic of
the Bedouin in this century is incomparably more nearly identical with
that of the tribes through whose borders the children of Israel were led
by Moses than is any one of our contemporary European tongues with its
ancestor of the same remote period.” A similar cause has enabled the
Gypsies, ever wandering, separating and reuniting, to resist more
successfully than a sedentary race could have resisted the gradual
changes which ultimately part a language into mutually incomprehensible
dialects. Their speech is an echo which has reverberated through the
centuries, for in it may be heard ancient Indian forms that have been
lost in India itself, and dearest of all to the philologist, though most
perplexing, a number of words which are almost pure Sanskrit. But if you
ask the linguistic student of the _Roma_ whence they come, you will
receive no reply more definite than a reference to north-west Hindustan
and the inhospitable mountains thereabouts; while for the date of the
Gypsy exodus you may choose at will any period between 300 B.C. and 1300
A.D. and find high philological authority for your choice.
To satisfy, or, better still, to stimulate curiosity about the language
of the “Brahmins of the roads,” a short nursery story in the dialect of
the coppersmiths is here reprinted from the pages of the _Journal of the
Gypsy Lore Society_, by the kind permission of Mr. E. O. Winstedt, to
whom it was dictated by one of Kola’s sons-in-law. Most of the
consonants may, without serious error, be pronounced as in English, _r_
being rolled as in “rural,” _g_ hard as in “gas,” and s unvoiced as in
“sago.” The symbol _zh_ represents the French _j_ or the _z_ in English
“azure,” while _sh_ is the corresponding unvoiced sound in “ash”: with
_t_ prefixed the latter becomes _tsh_, the double sound heard twice in
“church,” which would be written _tshə_(_r_)_tsh_. In Romani the letter
_h_ is often found after _p_, _t_ and _k_, where, except in the mouths of
Irish speakers, it is not used in English. Thus _ph_ and _th_ have not
the values they have in “philosophy” and “theology,” nor _kh_ (as in
Oriental languages) that of the _ch_ in Scottish “loch,” but the _h_ must
be sounded after the other consonant: _p+h_, _t+h_, and _k+h_. The
vowels may be pronounced as in Italian, the additional vowel _ə_
representing the vowels in English “but” and “cur,” and the diphthongs
_ai_ and _au_ being similar to the sounds in “aisle” and “ounce.” The
vowel in English “law” is written _aw_. For examples the following words
may be taken:—
_but_ (much) as “boot.”
_hai_ (and) as “high.”
_háide_! (come!) as “high-day.”
_kothé_ (there) as “coat-hay.”
_le_ (take) as “lay.”
_meklé_ (they allowed) as “make-lay.”
_per_ (belly) as “pair.”
_ye_ (even) as “yea.”
The acute accents indicate the stressed syllables and do not alter the
quality of the vowels. They were not marked in the original, and are
added here merely to assist readers and not as an accurate record of the
coppersmiths’ method of accentuation.