GYPSY LANGUAGE, a tongue spoken by a wandering race scattered over Europe, Si beria and most of western Asia, Egypt, north ern Africa, most of the countries of the Amer ican continent and parts of Australia, India and China. It is not known definitely when the gypsies began to flood into Europe; but it was probably at a date earlier than history has recorded, since the many modifications of their tongue, customs and folklore would seem to indicate this. They were early known as Azti gan, from which term is derived their German name Sigeuner (Italian Zingasi, Spanish Gi tano) ; but the meaning of the term is un known. It seems not to have been used by the gypsies themselves. Some writers contend that the gypsies, under the name Komodromoi, were known to the West as early as the 6th century, while others maintain that they did not appear in Europe and western Asia until the 14th cen tury. The derivation of the name Aztigan has been the subject of much discussion, with little to support the various theories advanced. Some have contended that it is of the same origin as the Mexican word Aztec, that is, that it is from the Nahuat language, and that the gypsy belongs to the great Nahuat family. This derivation is based on the purely acciden tal resemblance of °Aztec') and Aztigan. Other writers have derived the word from the Per sian schang,D a harp, or stringed instrument similar to the zither, or from the Persian uzang,x' meaning black. Still others have seen in Aztigan the Athinganoi, the Melki-Zedekite sect of Asia Minor. Numerous other deriva tions of the name Aztigan have been advanced, all more or less fanciful and ynsupported by satisfactory authority. The gypsies call them selves Rom (feminine Romini) in Europe; but it is in no way certain that this is the name they bore when they first came out of Asia. In fact it is almost certain it was not; for they appear to have been early known as °Gam') in Italy and the adjacent islands. Their first his torical movement seems to have been out of Hungary into western and southern Europe. It is not at all certain that at this early period they were as nomadic as they soon afterward became. At any rate the treatment they re ceived in Europe tended to make them wan derers, for they seem to have been wanted no where. They were murdered wholesale, en slaved, legislated avainst, treated as heathen and outcasts, denied the rights of the Christian Church, and driven from one country to an other, exile being forced upon them under pain of death. From the British Isles to Russia;
from Germany to Italy they were ever in fear of being literally crucified, hanged or burned. This naturally confirmed them, as a race, in their wanderings and made them tenacious of their language, customs, folklore and religious beliefs and superstitions. Christianity, which gave them neither sympathy nor tolerance, naturally obtained little or no hold upon them. But while they thus retained their racial and tribal life, they naturally gathered to them selves many of the customs and considerable of the vocabulary of the countries through which they passed; so that it is often difficult to tell whether many of the words in use in the g language today are of European origin or have been handed down from their ancient tongue. This is all the more difficult since the gypsy language, which has been the subject of much discussion and investigation, is now generally admitted to be of Indo-European origin and to be a sister tongue of the Germanic, the Slave, the Celtic and the Greek and Roman tongues. Men like Pon and Miklosich, who made an ex haustive and scientific study of the gypsy lan guage, have come to the conclusion, based upon incontestable evidence, that it must have been, at one time, a more or less distinct tongue spoken by an extensive homogeneous race; and it has ever exhibited strong independent family characteristics such as could only have been developed by a comparatively pure race. But more recent studies have shown, by the comparison of the gypsy language as now spoken in various parts of Europe and Asia, tt it has undergone very fundamental changes in the course of the nomadic life of the race. In the meantime the languages of India have passed through many changes, as have also the Indo-European tongues in Europe. The task of determining the origin of the gypsy lan guage is, therefore, so formidable that it ap pears, with our present knowledge of the sub ject, impossible. But the studies already under taken have proved, for a certainty, its Indian origin. This does not necessarily mean that the gypsies were originally from India; but it does mean that they speak a tongue similar to the Sanskrit, from whatever part of the earth came the races who first spoke it, whether from India, central or western Asia or some other part of the continent.