Anglo-Romani (Long, was Re: Genetic Descent)

[Vidhyanath Rao]

"Rick Mc Callister" <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote,
in a message dated July 14,  regarding calo:

> The big problem is the actual origin of the lexicon [...]
> So, Professor Rao, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look at calo/

I prefer not use any titles in this list, as I am not a linguist. My
primary interest is Sanskrit, and IE studies as impacting on it. I have
done a bit reading on bilinguals due to personal reasons. What was being
said on the original thread seemed, at times, to be at odds with my
unerstanding. I am not really qualified to go beyond that, especially
Romani etymology, as that would require knowledge of East/Central
European languages that I do not have. All I can suggest is to consult
Turner's Comparative Dictionary of Indo-Aryan Languages if Indic origin
of a word is suggested: Romani words must be from late MIA stage, and a
Sanskrit dictionary is not really suitable for this.

In other respects, Calo seems to be in the same boat as Anglo-Romani.

---
H. W. Hatting wrote

>The central question for me would be:
> is Anglo-Romani *now*
> (a) a different language influenced to a big extent by English lexicon and
> grammar or
> (b) a group-language variant of English using lexicon from a non-English
> source?

> V. Rao has clearly shown that Romani went through a stage of strong English
> influence in the past. For me, the question to answer in order to classify
> Romani as (a) or (b) is whether there is an uninterrupted chain of
> "Romani-as-a-first-language" speakers which leads to the speakers of "old"
> Anglo-Romani to its speakers today (which means (a)), or whether the chain
> was broken, and Anglo-Romani became a dead language, learnt by its speakers
> when being initiated into the Romani community by elder people,

The latter is asserted to be the case at least since 1960.
Unfortunately, 19c writers do not seem to address this question. Leland
cites one instance of a mother correcting her child when he used a wrong
Romani word. But he also cites a case of a knife-sharpener telling his
companion some Romani words the latter did not know. Clearly there was a
great deal of person-to-person variation that makes any further analysis
impossible. [And the possibility of words being 'borrowed' from
Continental Gypsies would make it worse.]

My position is that in 1800 Romani (of some sort) was still being spoken
in England. By 1900 (1850?), Gypsies of England (but not Wales) were
speaking basically English that could be mixed with Romani based jargon.
Any attempt to draw a finer line would be pointless.