Language, dialect and accent



Language, dialect and accent

The Romany language is the language spoken by Romany Gypsies, and has been passed down orally over generations. Romany speech was first recorded in 1542 and has gradually become more anglicised. Nowadays Romany is still used and sometimes additional words have been borrowed from other sources; such as regional dialects, slang, Cant and older forms of English. Knowledge and use of the language varies from family to family and the words in common use also vary between regions. Many families consider that the language should be kept secret and teachers need to be sensitive to individual children’s feelings about this.

There are community languages associated with Irish and Scottish Traveller communities called Cant, Gammon and occasionally Shelta. Irish Traveller children often speak with strong Irish accents, though they may hardly ever have been to Ireland. Anglo-Irish can be quite distinctive in its sentence construction, for example, "That there fella's been boxin' me " (That boy over there has been hitting me). English Gypsy speech also has its own distinctive structures and vocabulary with, at present, little influence from written English. Many Gypsies regularise irregular verbs, for example, ran=runned, caught=cotched, gave=gov. Some words, commonly heard in Essex, are listed below, together with their

origins.1

|kushti (Ind)2 |nice, lovely |mokkadi (Roumanian) |Ritually unclean |

|dinilo (Ind) |crazy, mad |divvi (Slav) |stupid, silly |

|chavvi (Ind) |boy, son |frit (slang) |frightened |

|mort (Scots Cant) |woman |mush (Ind) |man |

|chai (Ind) |daughter, girl |rakkli (Ind) |woman |

|trailer |caravan |Gaugo |non-Gypsy |

| | |(pronounced Gorger ) | |

|dik akai (Ind) |look here |ladged (Ind) |embarrassed |

|holler |shout |bold, brazen |impolite |

|swear (Anglo-Irish) |promise |curse (Anglo-Irish) |swear |

Some families consider it unlucky to say certain words aloud, monkey and rat being the most common. When these words come up in reading, children may prefer to substitute gorilla or chimpanzee and ‘long-tail'.

(1) See Acton T. and Kendrick D. (1984) ' Rokkeripen To-Divvus ' Romanistan Publications, London for

further information.

(2) Ind=related to Sanskrit, linking the geographical origin of the Romany Gypsies to India

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