From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2852
Date: 2000-07-21
----- Original Message -----From: Mark OdegardSent: Friday, July 21, 2000 9:07 AMSubject: [tied] RomanyYes, it's a very interesting proposal, and recent historical and dialectological studies seem to support it.BTW, the initial consonant of Proto-Romani *Dom (m.), *Domni (f.) and *Domba (pl.) was a retroflex stop (the underdotted d of the standard Indological transcription). The Middle Eastern Roma call themselves Dom with a non-rhotacised stop, while those in Armenia are known as Lom. Interestingly, while we're at it, the Balto-Slavic and Spanish Roma use an alveolar trill [r], but the French and German ones have a uvular fricative/approximant [R], like the local Gaje (non-Gypsies).PiotrAn interesting web page:It says, with some considerable coherence, that the route of the Roma (Gypsies) was over the Mountains to Central Asia and then along the Silk Road into the Caucusus, Armenia, thence westward into Anatolia and Byzantium:all Romani dialects spoken today from Wales in Britain to Siberia contain these same loan words from Dardic, Persian. Armenian, Byzantine Greek, Old Slavic and Rumanian. Had the exodus from India been through Afghanistan, as European scholars still maintain, Romani would have loan words from Pushtu and the other languages spoken there and could not have picked up the Dardic words and grammatical elements from the Upper Indus Valley.The word 'Roma' is said to be descended from Dom, Domba, a caste name.Other sites seem to follow a different theory on how the Roma entered Europe, having them avoid Central Asia altogether. Still, a reversal of the Indic migration makes for interesting reading.Mark.