Roma

The Swedish Romani language, historically and today

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ABC LINN Negglo

Today it is World Romani Day. Jon Petterson contributes an article about his variety of Swedish Romani. 

The first known source of Romani speakers is a document describing a traveling party of a people never seen before arriving Stockholm in 1512. Originally mistaken for being Tartars they came to be called Thatra. Today the term tattare is still in use in Scandinavia. In Sweden it’s considered to be a disparaging term, but in Norway it is used as a self-definition for Romanies.

From the 16th and 17th century, the sources mentioning Romanies with the synonymous terms tartare and ziguenare are very few. In 1637 a royal decree proclaimed that Romanies should settle or leave the country within three months.

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The future of the Romani language

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Romanis historical distribution

Today, April 8, is International Romani Day.

The Romani language belongs to the family of neo-Indian languages. It is closely related to Hindi and has its roots in Sanskrit. However, Romani shares features of European languages as well, as some European languages influenced Romani (Greek, Romanian, Turkish and some Slavonic languages). This makes Romani unique, not only because Romani is the only Indian language spoken outside of India, but also because it is an Indo-European language related to other European languages.

Romani developed outside of India during the period of Roma migration from India to Europe some 1,000 years ago. On their way to Europe, Roma came in contact with different languages and those languages influenced the Romani lexicon and … ↪