Sinte Romani

The name Romani derives from řom, the historical self-designation of speakers of the Romani language group. Romani is sometimes written as Romany (in English), but native speaking people use the word Romani for the language. Historically, Romani people have been known for being nomadic, but today only a small percentage of Romani people are unsettled^[5] due to forced assimilation and government interventions.

Sinte Romani is a dialect of Romani and belongs to the Northwestern Romani dialect group, which also includes Finnish Kalo.^[6] Sinti is the self-designation of a large Romani population that began leaving the Balkans early on in the dispersion of the Romani language group, from the end of the 14th century on, and migrated to German-speaking territory.^[7][8] Sinti in France typically also speak Sinte Romani but refer to themselves as Manuš (or Manouche).^[8][9]

Today Sinte is mainly spoken in Germany, France, Northern Italy, Switzerland, Serbia, and Croatia, with smaller numbers of speakers in Austria, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands.^[4][6][7] Sinti form the largest sub-group of Romani people in Germany, and Germany, in turn, is home to the largest number of Sinte Romani speakers.^[7][8] Nearly all Sinte Romani speakers speak multiple languages, the dominant language of the country they live in being the most common.^[7][10]

Sinte Romani is a non-tonal language with 25 consonants, 6 vowels, and 4 diphthongs.^[7]

Example vocabulary for Sinte Romani is given below, based on samples from Austria, Italy, and Albania collected in the Romani Morpho-Syntax Database (RMS) hosted by the University of Manchester. Words that show the influence of historical German vocabulary are marked with an asterisk (*).

* Words borrowed from historical German

** Words borrowed from the modern dominant languages (i.e., German, Italian, or Albanian)

• Sinti
• Romani language

• Daniel Holzinger, Das Romanes. Grammatik und Diskursanalyse der Sprache der Sinte, Innsbruck 1993
• Norbert Boretzky/Birgit Igla, Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani, Teil 1, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004

• Acton, T. A., & Mundy, G. (1997). Romani culture and Gypsy identity. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire.
• Peter Bakker, Donald Kenrick et al.: What is the Romani language? Series: Interface Collection. Centre de recherches tsiganes and University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield (Hertfordshire) 2000, p. 58.
• Gilbert, J. (2014). Nomadic peoples and human rights. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Guy, W. (2001). Between past and future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.
• Matras, Y. (1999). "Writing Romani: The pragmatics of codification in a stateless language". Applied Linguistics. 20 (4): 481–502. doi:10.1093/applin/20.4.481.
• Matras, Y. (2002). Romani: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Matras, Y. (2010). Romani in Britain: The afterlife of a language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Saul, N., & Tebbutt, S. (2004). The role of the Romanies: Images and counter-images of "Gypsies"/Romanies in European cultures. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
• Smith, T. (1997). "Recognising Difference: The Romani 'Gypsy' Child Socialisation and Education Process. British". Journal of Sociology of Education. 18 (2): 243–256. doi:10.1080/0142569970180207. JSTOR 1393193.
• Wells, R. S.; Yuldasheva, N.; Ruzibakiev, R.; et al. (August 2001). "The Eurasian heartland: a continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 98 (18): 10244–49. Bibcode:2001PNAS...9810244W. doi:10.1073/pnas.171305098. PMC 56946. PMID 11526236.

• A brief overview (in German)
• A 1903 textbook in Sinti by F. N. Finck, (in German), at the Internet Archive: [1]
• Biblical Recording in Sinte Romani
• RMS: Romani Morpho-Syntax Database
• "Endangered Languages Project - Sinte Romani". Endangered Languages Project.