#gypsy language

[gregor-samsung]

Papusza (Joanna Kos-Krauze, Krzysztof Krauze - 2013)

[rhianna]

“On the Zingara or Gypsey Language,” which he read to the Royal Society in 1785.

Very unlike the Colonel was the mythologist, Jacob Bryant (1715-1804).  We know the little man, with his thirteen spaniels, through Madame D’Arblay’s Diaries; she often visited Cypenham, his house near Windsor.  It must have been in his garden here that he collected his materials for the paper “On the Zingara or Gypsey Language,” which he read to the Royal Society in 1785.  For “covascorook, laurel,” is intelligible only by supposing him to have pointed to a laurel, and asked, “What is this?” and by the Gypsy’s answering p. xxin words that mean “This is a tree.”  There are a number of similar slips in the vocabulary, as sauvee, an eagle (rightly, a needle), porcherie, brass (a halfpenny, a copper), plastomingree, couch (coach), and baurobevalacochenos, storm.  This last word posed the etymological skill of even Prof. Pott in his great work on Die Zigeuner, but he hazards the conjecture that cochenos may be akin to the Greek χολη; really the whole may be dismembered into baúro, great, bával, wind, and the English “a-catching us.”  Still, Bryant’s is not at all a bad vocabulary. 

Source:   Lavengro by George Borrow

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22877

[rhianna]

There is the verb for love, camova; but that word is expressive of physical desire, and is connected with the Sanscrit Cama, or Cupid.

The verbs are very few, and with two or three exceptions expressive only of that which springs from what is physical and bodily, totally unconnected with the mind, for which, indeed, the English Gypsy has no word; the term used for mind, zi—which is a modification of the Hungarian sziv—meaning heart.  There are such verbs in this dialect as to eat, drink, walk, run, hear, see, live, die; but there are no such verbs as to hope, mean, hinder, prove, forbid, teaze, soothe.  There is the verb apasavello, I believe; but that word, which is Wallachian, properly means being trusted, and was incorporated in the Gypsy language from the Gypsies obtaining goods on trust from the Wallachians, which they never intended to pay for.  There is the verb for love, camova; but that word is expressive of physical desire, and is connected with the Sanscrit Cama, or Cupid.  Here, however, the English must not triumph over the Gypsies, as their own verb ‘love’ is connected with a Sanscrit word signifying ‘lust.’  One pure and abstract metaphysical verb the English Gypsy must be allowed to possess—namely, penchava, I think, a word of illustrious origin, being derived from the Persian pendashtan. 

Source:   Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book of the Romany; Or, English Gypsy Language With Specimens of Gypsy Poetry, and an Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2733

[rhianna]

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg.

After these observations on what may be called the best preserved kind of Gypsy, I proceed to a lower kind, that of England.  The English Gypsy speech is very scanty, amounting probably to not more than fourteen hundred words, the greater part of which seem to be of Indian origin.  The rest form a strange medley taken by the Gypsies from various Eastern and Western languages: some few are Arabic, many are Persian; some are Sclavo-Wallachian, others genuine Sclavonian.  Here and there a Modern Greek or Hungarian word is discoverable; but in the whole English Gypsy tongue I have never noted but one French word—namely, tass or dass, by which some of the very old Gypsies occasionally call a cup.

[rhianna]

Almost all the Gypsy numbers are decidedly connected with the Sanscrit.

Gypsy language derived from languages of India. 

Source:   Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book of the Romany; Or, English Gypsy Language by Borrow

[rhianna]

Gypsy Language

The Gypsy language, then, or what with some qualification I may call such, may consist of some three thousand words, the greater part of which are decidedly of Indian origin, being connected with the Sanscrit or some other Indian dialect; the rest consist of words picked up by the Gypsies from various languages in their wanderings from the East. 

Source:    Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book of the Romany; Or, English Gypsy Language With Specimens of Gypsy Poetry, and an Account of Certain Gypsyries or Places Inhabited by Them, and of Various Things Relating to Gypsy Life in England   https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2733

[rhianna]

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg.

The probability is that the Gypsy at present exists only in dialects more or less like the language originally spoken by the Gypsy or Zingaro race.  Several dialects of the Gypsy are p. 4to be found which still preserve along with a considerable number of seemingly original words certain curious grammatical forms, quite distinct from those of any other speech.  Others are little more than jargons, in which a certain number of Gypsy words are accommodated to the grammatical forms of the languages of particular countries.  In the foremost class of the purer Gypsy dialects, I have no hesitation in placing those of Russia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Transylvania.  They are so alike, that he who speaks one of them can make himself very well understood by those who speak any of the rest; from whence it may reasonably be inferred that none of them can differ much from the original Gypsy speech; so that when speaking of Gypsy language, any one of these may be taken as a standard.    [4]

[rhianna]

Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg.

The Gypsies of England call their language, as the Gypsies of many other countries call theirs, Romany or Romanes, a word either derived from the Indian Ram or Rama, which signifies a husband, or from the town Rome, which took its name either from the Indian Ram, or from the Gaulic word, Rom, which is nearly tantamount to husband or man, for as the Indian Ram means a husband or man, so does the Gaulic Pom signify that which constitutes a man and enables him to become a husband.  [3]