Romani dialects – an overview
Romani is spoken across Europe and beyond, but it has many dialects. Here is how they are grouped and why it matters when you choose what to learn.
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Where Romani comes from
Romani is an Indo-Aryan language. The ancestors of the Roma left north-western India about a thousand years ago, and Romani still shares hundreds of words with Hindi, Punjabi and other languages of India and Pakistan – for example jakh “eye”, paňi “water”, kher “house” and the numbers jekh, duj, trin “one, two, three”. On the long way west Romani borrowed words from Persian, Armenian, Greek and later from the languages of each country where Roma settled.
The main dialect groups
Linguists usually divide Romani dialects into a few large groups. The boundaries are not sharp and classifications differ in detail:
Balkan
Spoken in the southern Balkans and Turkey, for example Arli and Erli.
Vlax
Shaped by a long stay in Romanian-speaking lands and spread widely by later migrations, for example Lovari, Kalderash and Gurbet. Many international Romani materials use Vlax varieties.
Central
North Central – Slovak, Czech and southern Polish Romani – and South Central varieties such as Romungro in Hungary and southern Slovakia.
Northern
North-western varieties such as Sinti/Manouche and Finnish Kale, and north-eastern varieties of Poland, the Baltic states and Russia.
Speakers of neighbouring dialects usually understand each other with some effort; speakers of distant dialects may not. There is no single spoken standard used by all Roma, although standard spellings exist for some varieties.
Which dialect does Čiriklo teach?
Čiriklo teaches North Central Romani, usually called Slovak Romani (in Czech slovenská romština, in Romani romani čhib). It is the most widely spoken Romani variety in Czechia and Slovakia and belongs to the Central (Carpathian) Romani group (ISO 639-3: rmc). The course uses the standard Czech-Slovak Romani spelling and shows eastern Slovak pronunciations where they differ, for example Lačho ďives / Lačho džives (“Good day”).
Romani is not Romanian
Romani and Romanian are unrelated. Romanian is a Romance language descended from Latin; Romani is an Indo-Aryan language of the Roma. The similar names are a coincidence. Romani has sometimes been called the “Gypsy language”, but many Roma consider the word “Gypsy” offensive; the respectful names are Romani, Romani čhib or Romanes.
Ready to start? See How to learn Romani or Romani phrases for beginners.