A Few Notes on Persian Loanwords in Romani
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62229/Keywords:
Romani, Persian, Turkish, Lomavren, historical phonology, lexicographic sourcesAbstract
The Iranian lexicon in Romani has not been studied in depth from a more comprehensive perspective and multiple challenges arise when trying to identify direct Persian loans. Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan share a substantial number of cognates and most lexicographic works with etymological glosses generally give precedence to the latter. Mediation via Turkish or another Balkan L2 needs to be evaluated before weighing the likelihood of a direct Persian origin, and a fine-tuned phonological analysis needs to be carried out. In some cases, comparison with the Lomavren corpus can provide valuable clues for the elucidation of murkier etymological pathways. A sound survey of dialectal isoglosses is also required for a clearer picture of the underlying lexical borrowing processes. The paper provides a set of sample cases glossed using this approach, which could form the basis of more extensive future research.References
Achim, Viorel (2004), The Roma in Romanian History, Central European University Press, Budapest, New York.
Apte, Vaman Shivram (1993), The Student's Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi.
Aryanpur Kashani, Manoochehr (2017), The Aryanpur Progressive English-Persian Persian-English Dictionary (Comprehensive), Computer World, Teheran.
Baló, Márton A. (2020), "Romani Phonology", in Matras Y. & Tenser A. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119-153.
Boretzky, Norbert, Igla, Birgit (1994) Wörterbuch Romani-Deutsch-Englisch für den südosteuropäischen Raum: mit einer Grammatik der Dialektvarianten, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.
Boretzky, Norbert (2012), Studien zum Wortschatz des Romani, Faber, Veliko Tarnovo.
Calvet, Georges (2021), Dictionnaire tsigane-français: dialecte kalderash, L'Asiathèque Maison des langues du monde, Paris.
Chyet, Michael L. (2002), Kurdish-English Dictionary. Ferhenga Kurmancî-Inglîzî, Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
Clauson, Gerard (1972), An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Courthiade, Marcel (2009), Morri Angluni Rromane Ćhibǎqi Evroputni Lavustik, Romano Kher, Budapest.
Courthiade, Marcel (2016), "Knowledge Based on Sources and Historical Data versus Knowledge Based on Clichés and Legends in the Indian Stage of Rromani History", in Analele Universității "Ovidius" din Constanța. Seria Filologie, XXVII(2), pp. 237-282.
Ershadi, F.A. (2014), Farhang-e vājgan-e tarki dar zabān va adabiyyāt-e fārsi. Turkish Lexicon in Persian [Language and] Literature, Entesharat-e Bagh-e Andishe, Erdebil.
Finck, Franz Nikolaus (1905), "Die Sprache der Armenischen Zigeuner", in Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, VIIIe Série, Volume VIII, N. 5, St. Pétersbourg.
Friedman, Victor A. (1989), "Toward defining the Position of Turkisms in Romani", in Šipka M. (ed.), Jezik i Kultura Roma, Institut za proučavanje nacionalnih odnosa, Separat, Sarajevo, pp. 251-267.
Friedman, Victor A. (2020), "The Impact of Turkish on Romani", in Matras Y. & Tenser A. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119-153.
Ghavami, Golnaz Modarresi (2018), "Phonectis", in Sedighi A. & Shabani-Jadidi P. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 128-151.
Hancock, Ian (1995), "On the migration and affiliation of the Ḍōmba: Iranian words in Rom, Lom and Dom Gypsy", in Matras Y. (ed.), Romani in contact. The history, structure and sociology of a language, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp. 25-51.
Jaba, Auguste (1879), Dictionnaire Kurde-Français, Imprimerie de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences, St-Petersburg.
Johanson, Lars (2010), "Turkic Language Contact", in Hickey R. (ed.), The Handbook of Language Contact, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 653-672.
Lee, Ronald (2010), Rromano Alavari Kalderashitska-Inglezitska. Romani Dictionary Kalderash-English, Magoria Books, Toronto.
Maggi, Mauro, Orsatti, Paula (2018), " From old to new Persian", in Sedighi A. & Shabani-Jadidi P. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 26-78.
Mānušs, Leksa, Neilands, Jānis, Rudevičs, Kārlis (1997), Čigānu–latviešu–angļu etimoloģiskā vārdnīca un latviešu–čigānu vārdnīca. Romany–Latvian–English etymological dictionary and Latvian–Romany dictionary, Zvaigzne ABC, Riga.
Matras, Yaron (2004), Romani. A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge Unviersity Press, Cambridge.
Mégret, Jean-Claude (2016), Dictionnaire de la Romani Commune (langue tsigane), L'Harmattan, Paris.
Parker, Philip M. (2008), Webster's Turkish-English Thesaurus Dictionary, ICON Classic, San Diego.
Pisowicz, Andrzej (1985), Origins of the New and Middle Persian Phonological Systems, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Krakow.
Pomorska, Marzanna (2013), Materials for a Historical Dictionary of New Persian Loanwords in Old Anatolian and Ottoman Turkish frm the 13th to the 16th Century, Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków.
ROMLEX, Online comparative lexical database of Romani, http://romani.uni-graz.at/ romlex.
Sampson, John (1926), The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Sarău, Gheorghe (1998), Dicționar rrom (spoitoresc)-român, Kriterion, București.
Sarău, Gheorghe (2006), Dicționar rrom-român, Editura Sigma, București.
Sarău, Gheroghe (2012), Dicționar român-rrom, Editura Sigma, București.
Scala, Andrea (2014), "The mixed language of the Armenian Bosha (Lomavren) and its inflectional morphology: some considerations in light of Armenian dialectal variation", in Annali del Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Linguistici e Comparati Sezione linguistica, Università degli studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", N.S. 3, pp. 233-250.
Stachowski, Kamil (2020), "Phonetic Renderings in Turkish Arabisms and Farsisms", in Türkbilig, 2020/40, pp. 23-47.
Stachowski, Marek (2019), "Slavic languages in contact, 2: Are there Ottoman Turkish loanwords in the Balkan Slavic languages?", in Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 136, pp. 99-105.
Steingass, Francis Joseph (1892), Persian-English Dictionary. Including the Arabic words and phrases to be met with in Persian Literature, Librairie du Liban Publishers, Beirut.
Tahirović-Sijerčić, Hedina (2013), Rromano Alavari Gurbetcko-Englecko/ Englecko-Gurbetcko. Romani Dictionary English-Gurbeti/ Gurbeti-English, Magoria Books, Toronto.
Tietze, Andreas, Lazard, Gilbert (1967), "Persian Loanwords in Anatolian Turkish", in Oriens, Vol. 20, pp. 125-168.
Turner, Ralph Lilley (1926), "The position of Romani in Indo-Aryan", in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society,Third series, V (4), pp. 145-189.
Vekerdi, Jozsef (2000), A magyarországi cigány nyelvjárások szótára. A Comparative Dictionary of Gypsy Dialects in Hungary, Terebess Kiadó, Budapest.
Voskanian, Vardan (2002), "The Iranian loanwords in Lomavren, the secret language of the Armenian Gypsies", in Iran & the Caucasus, 6 (1-2), Brill, Leiden, pp. 169-180.
Windfuhr, Gernot (2009), "Dialectology and Topics", in Windfuhr G. (ed.), The Iranian Languages, Routledge, London, pp. 5-42.
www.tureng.com
