Off Topic: about the language I

[Lia Laura Puglesi]

Hi:



I don’t think you are being pedantic at all. I really want to take advantage from the fact that you are a linguist to learn more.



Of course, being a person that doesn’t speak English as a first language, you have to forgive the imprecision of certain explanations and terms that I don’t  know exactly how to express. Sometimes, to economize energy, I also economized explanations and I assume everybody understands what I meant to say, as if they could read the rest directly from my mind.



Even when I respect a lot what you, as an expert linguist, know about languages and their origins and when I am not a linguist myself, I have spent many years studying as much material as I could find among the limited resources there where in the place where I come from, and I’m not sure I agree completely with all what you say. I trust that not all the books I have been reading over the years are that mistaken.



On the other hand there are some explanations (those concerning the Basques ) that if you read my imperfect statement, coincide whit what you have said.



It is (…) very curious how the only language left almost untouched in the Peninsula was the Vasco. They are also the oldest ethnical group in Europe and nobody knows with certitude where they came from, but it is almost sure that they don’t come from the Indian region, as all the rest did.



Which respect to the Spanish receiving some influences from the Basque, I still have the notes I took in Argentina about a series of words that come from Basque. I’ll try to remember to bring them when I come back from my visit there. I don’t remember how to spell them properly and the only thing I do remember is that may words where names for food.

Maybe those words are used mostly by Spanish speaking people where the migration of Basques was strong and no as much by others. I don’t know I should research that. Now there is a group of people in Mendoza learning and teaching the Eusquera and I can ask them easily.



But, again you speak English as first language or you learnt it when you were very young and you have more flexibility of vocabulary and uses and I’ll ask you to be patien with me because I am still learning.



Whit respect to  “There are, by consensus, more than 7 Romance languages” It is true, as you say, “this is a problematic area because the term "language" has multiple meanings’



It would have been neater if I gave an “operational definition” of what I meant with the term “language” and I can’t  blame a linguist who feels a annoyed by such an imprecision.  The point is too long to write about it now. I may respond your email by chapters as it is a very complete “compendium” , and as you have made the effort to correct and underline aspects of what I wrote, I feel I should properly cover some of the points you made.



So, lets go with the easy ones now.

You said:  Roma, Sinti and the other languages of the people who used to be called the Gypsies (nowadays that is a derogatory term) are Indic languages.



a- Again leaving aside (for now) the discussion of what is Language and what is Dialect and so forth, what you say is true, the “Romany” is an Indic Language, the same way than the extinct Sanskrit and the Indi and Urdu nowadays, among many more. The language was enriched, though, with many terms and even with grammar borrowed from Slav languages, Hungarian, Romanian ( I confused Romanian and Romauny in Rnglish!) German, Italian, Spanish and several other European languages.

There is a web site at http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/language.htm where you can read:



At least two-third of the world's three million Rom (this is the most conservative estimate; it is impossible to give precise statistics) speak the Danubian dialect which the English specialist B. Gilliat-Smith named Vlax, a term which emphasizes the notable Romanian contribution to its vocabulary but which is today perhaps no longer appropriate. Certain groups, in spite of their Rom origins, have abandoned their language and adopted that of their sedentary neighbours (one example is that of the Rudari and Romanian). The other dialects are presented in the following list, which is not exhaustive. It should also be remembered that classification by geographical groups is today only used for the sake of convenience, since these dialects have spread all over the world with those who use them.


1) The Danubian group (Kalderash, Lovara, Curara, etc.);

2) The western Balkan group (Istrians, Slovenes, Havates, Arlija, etc.);

3) The Sinto group (Eftavagarja, Kranarja, Krasarja, Slovaks, etc.);

4) Rom groups of central and southern Italy;

5) British (Welsh, now extinct; today only Anglo-Romani survive, speaking a mixture of English and Romani);

6) Finnish;

7) Greco-Turk (their existence as a separate group is debatable);

8) Iberian (today represented by Calo, the Hispano-Romani dialect of the Gitanos).

I guess than when I was thinking about the language of the Rom I was actually thinking of that one of the “Gitanos” which strong influence from Spanish and Italian (the one that gitanos speak in Chile and Argentina which lots of recognizable terms)

In what for a long time was contradictory information for me, I/ve read that their language is actually one of the most similar to the languages spoken in India now and the dialects or languages spoken there in the past. I never understood well why the nazis killed so many Romany people in the concentration camps if they were much purer Arian than what the Germans claimed to be. Somebody told me that just the Roms that where in the cities were killed by the Germans and that they lived the ones living in the countryside alone. But I am not sure about it. May be some ones has an answer for this?

 b- I learnt that the term Gypsy was the right term to designate the nomadic nation (even when not all the Gypsies are nomadic and at this point it is impossible to assure that they constitute an ethnical group, the same way it is impossible to say that Irish or Gallegos Basques Pigmies or whoever constitute a pure ethnical group anymore, but that’s not the matter here) that came from a region in India and correspond to the term “Gitanos” o “pueblo Rom” in Spanish. I learnt that in my English classes and I can’t see why you consider it a derogatory term, as I have heard some ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS refer to their grand parents with that term while traveling in Europe. Maybe it is derogatory in Canada or in the USA, but I have never been told so. If that’s the case, I really think someone should correct all the textbooks Oxford University Press and Cambridge are distributing all over the globe, and even warn the professors who administrate the First Certificate exam about tha!
t.



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