The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales: being the Older Form of British Romani preserved in the Speech of the Clan of Abram Wood

Abstract

THE majority of people are surprised when they are told that in almost every country of Europe, and even in America, there is spoken to-day a language which was brought out of India by a tribe or tribes between twelve and fifteen hundred years ago. This is the language of the people known to us as Gypsies, to themselves as Rom or the like, a word which phono-logically is the exact equivalent of the modern Indian Dom, a general name for an outcast, so-called criminal tribe, who in many places act as scavengers and burners of corpses, and in all places are ready to augment their earnings by stealing or other anti-social practices. The Gypsies of Palestine and Syria still call themselves Dom, just as with them a spoon, roi in European gypsy, is dowi (and in modern Hindi doi). The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales: being the Older Form of British Romani preserved in the Speech of the Clan of Abram Wood. By Dr. John Sampson. Pp. xxiii + 230 + 419. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1926.) 84s. net.