Re: [tied] Romany

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 2854
Date: 2000-07-21

What's really interesting is the dating sequence. If we are to accept the exodus of Romany out of India at about 1200, they would be just ahead of the Mongols, or more interestingly, maybe in the company of them. Are there any Mongolic borrowings? The lack of such borrowings, though, is probably not that important. As I remember it, it was the Mongols specifically who re-opened the Silk Road. I would not be suprised if a small element of the original Golden Horde was Romany. As for their sojourn in Armenia and Persia, you also wonder about their relationship to the Il-Khans.
 
Even more interesting, though, is the migratory paradigm. Remarkable as it is, we have a parallel in the Tocharians, Western IE speakers located in Xinjang, and even that of the Hungarians. Unlike the Tocharians or Hungarians, the Roma never managed to found their own nation-state.
 
There is also the fact, that from our point of view in the West, much of European history is propelled by movements of peoples from the east -- Scythians, Huns, Avars, Mongols, Turks, etc. Usually, it's movement via the Steppe, but with the Turks -- and the Roma -- it was via Anatolia. And much of this movement was one people being pushed westward by the depredations of a group to the east of them.
 
We can even speak of the Slavs in this context, in how that expanded to fill the vacuum left by the wreck of the Hunnic confederacy, and managed to overrun just about all of the Western Steppe and the Balkans. Looking a map, you'd think Bulgarian entered Bulgaria via Ukraine and Romania, but (if I'm remembering this right), it came via Hungary, wheeling down the Danube into Macedonia and then back east.
 
My point, if there is one, is to call attention to the immense speed and immense distances a language can move. I think we should not marvel as we usually do when it comes to Tocharian.
 
Mark.
----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 10:36 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Romany
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 9:07 AM
Subject: [tied] Romany

Yes, 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).
 
Piotr
 
An 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.