Lexical Slavisms in Romani Dialects

Abstract

As Romani dialects are spoken in all countries inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples it is not astonishing that they abound with Slavic loans. However, most of the Slavic words occurring in texts are not real loans, since they are not used regularly. But there is an older layer of slavisms borrowed earlier and learned by children as elements of L1. The aim of this paper is to identify these older elements as to their precise origin which is often made easier by the fact that Slavic languages display phonetically differing word forms. Most interesting are the Slavic words found in the Northern dialects that are no longer in contact with Slavic languages. In the first part of this paper, a number of dialects are analyzed with regard to their behaviour of borrowing; in the second part, a commented list of Slavic loans of special interest is given.