Genetic Descent

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/13/01 11:25:42 PM Mountain Daylight Time, rao.3 at osu.edu
writes:

> But how was the lexicon preserved?

-- it's a common phenomenon for social groups to either preserve or invent
jargons precisely to limit communication so that they can speak without
outsiders being able to follow their conversation.

Much slang has exactly this function; and often in-group slang changes
precisely when it becomes generally known and therefore loses its ability to
exclude.

Examples range from thieves' cant to the speech of 19th-century Classics
professors, where even when speaking English so many elements of Latin and
Greek vocabulary were used, and so many "learned tags", that people outside
the academic field often couldn't understand them at all.  Technical jargon
often both aids precision in a recondite field, and serves as a social
barrier to outsiders.

In the case of Anglo-Romani, it's clearly a case of a community becoming
English-speaking, but preserving the Rom lexicon as a way of maintaining a
form of communication that non-Rom couldn't understand.

Given the rather specialized social-economic ecological niche occupied by the
Rom, it's virtually inevitable that they would maintain some sort of cant or
in-group slang even when they became basically English-speaking.  It's an
occupational necessity as well as an aid to group identity.