ROMANY LANGUAGE. The strongest proof that the gypsies came originally from India is found in their language.
For all its dialects are clearly Indo-Aryan, that is to say, modifica tions of the language from which have sprung all the Aryan languages of modern India and Ceylon, and of which Sanskrit, with its oldest document the Rgveda, is the literary expression. Moreover, gypsy is not only derived from the same original source as the other Aryan languages of India, but must for many centuries after the Vedic age have shared their development within or near the borders of India. For in general it shows the phonetic and grammatical changes which the Indian languages as a whole did not reach long before the beginning of the Christian era.
The question in which dialect-group of these languages gypsy had its origin has been much discussed. One school holds that it belongs to the north-western and espe cially to the Dardic, which comprises certain dialects of the Hindu Kush and includes also the more important Kashmiri. These languages, in some respects more conservative than those further in India, have kept certain features of the old Sanskrit sound-system unchanged, e.g., the preservation of two or more sibilants (S, s, s) or of an r preceded by a consonant. The gypsy dialects also show some of these peculiarities. But the preserva tion by descendants of characteristics that existed in the parent language is not proof that they have any specially close relation ship (other than common origin). The existence of the same early innovations in both is proffered by those who hold that gypsy belonged originally to a more central group of dialects, of which a typical modern representative in India is Hindi. It is with these it shares its earliest sound-changes. Gypsy does not, how ever, share other later innovations of the central group which had set in or were setting in at the time of Agoka (c. 250 B.C.). They must, therefore, have severed their relations with this group before that date. The word rom,
south-east European tom, Armenian Gy. lom, Palestinian Gy. dom, is the
same word as the Skt. domba-,
low caste of dancers and
from whom the Poms of India also derive their name. It is probable that wandering tribes, perhaps of the same character as some of the criminal tribes of modern India, speaking a central dialect, made their way to the north-west (probably western Panjab or Peshawar district) before the middle of the 3rd century B.C. There, among speakers of the north-western dialect-group, they stayed until, at some time before the 9th century A.D., they left India behind them in a migration which spread them all over western Asia, Europe and even America.
It is not known whether the gypsies left India in one or several separate migrations or whether there were even at that time marked dialectical variations in the language they spoke. But at the present day there are at least three distinct groups of dialects, the Asiatic, the Armenian, and the European. One of the most noticeable differences lies in the treatment of the original voiced aspirates of Sanskrit. The Asiatic dialects have either preserved these or, losing the aspiration, have reduced them to simple voiced sounds; the European and Armenian dialects, on the other hand, have changed them to surd aspirates: Skt. bh,dh,gh become Asiatic b, d, g, but Armenian and European ph,th,kh (pt,e,k`). Thus we find Skt. bhrtita
dhiimdh
ghrtdm
in Eur. Gy.
in Pal. Gy. bar, dif, gir.
To-day there is considerable dialectical variation even within a single group such as the European, dating probably from the time of separation within Europe itself. These dialects differ according to locality and to the degree in which they have been influenced by surrounding languages. In this respect they may vary from the comparatively pure Indian idiom of, for example, some of the Balkan gypsies or even of the gypsies of Wales, to mere jargons consisting of a framework of the local language, for example, English, in which a certain portion of the vocabulary is replaced by gypsy words.