THE Gypsies of England call their language, as the Gypsies of many other countries call theirs, _Romany_ or _Romanes_, a word either derived from the Indian _Ram_ or _Rama_, which signifies a husband, or from the town Rome, which took its name either from the Indian _Ram_, or from the Gaulic word, _Rom_, which is nearly tantamount to husband or man, for as the Indian _Ram_ means a husband or man, so does the Gaulic _Pom_ signify that which constitutes a man and enables him to become a husband.
Before entering on the subject of the English Gypsy, I may perhaps be expected to say something about the original Gypsy tongue. It is, however, very difficult to say with certainty anything on the subject. There can be no doubt that a veritable Gypsy tongue at one time existed, but that it at present exists there is great doubt indeed. The probability is that the Gypsy at present exists only in dialects more or less like the language originally spoken by the Gypsy or Zingaro race. Several dialects of the Gypsy are to be found which still preserve along with a considerable number of seemingly original words certain curious grammatical forms, quite distinct from those of any other speech. Others are little more than jargons, in which a certain number of Gypsy words are accommodated to the grammatical forms of the languages of particular countries. In the foremost class of the purer Gypsy dialects, I have no hesitation in placing those of Russia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Transylvania. They are so alike, that he who speaks one of them can make himself very well understood by those who speak any of the rest; from whence it may reasonably be inferred that none of them can differ much from the original Gypsy speech; so that when speaking of Gypsy language, any one of these may be taken as a standard. One of them—I shall not mention which—I have selected for that purpose, more from fancy than any particular reason.
The Gypsy language, then, or what with some qualification I may call such, may consist of some three thousand words, the greater part of which are decidedly of Indian origin, being connected with the Sanscrit or some other Indian dialect; the rest consist of words picked up by the Gypsies from various languages in their wanderings from the East. It has two genders, masculine and feminine; _o_ represents the masculine and _i_ the feminine: for example, _boro rye_, a great gentleman; _bori rani_, a great lady. There is properly no indefinite article: _gajo_ or _gorgio_, a man or gentile; _o gajo_, the man. The noun has two numbers, the singular and the plural. It has various cases formed by postpositions, but has, strictly speaking, no genitive. It has prepositions as well as postpositions; sometimes the preposition is used with the noun and sometimes the postposition: for example, _cad o gav_, from the town; _chungale mannochendar_, evil men from, _i.e._ from evil men. The verb has no infinitive; in lieu thereof, the conjunction ‘that’ is placed before some person of some tense. ‘I wish to go’ is expressed in Gypsy by _camov te jaw_, literally, I wish that I go; thou wishest to go, _caumes te jas_, thou wishest that thou goest; _caumen te jallan_, they wish that they go. Necessity is expressed by the impersonal verb and the conjunction ‘that’: _hom te jay_, I must go; lit. I am that I go; _shan te jallan_, they are that they go; and so on. There are words to denote the numbers from one up to a thousand. For the number nine there are two words, _nu_ and _ennyo_. Almost all the Gypsy numbers are decidedly connected with the Sanscrit.