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Romani is the first language, and family and community language, of upwards of 3-4 million people and possibly many more in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Documentation and research on the language draws on a tradition of more than two centuries, yet it remains relatively unknown and often engulfed by myths. In recent decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the language including language maintenance and educational projects, the creation of digital resources, language policy initiatives, and a flourishing community of online users of the language. This Handbook presents state of the art research on Romani language and linguistics. Bringing together key established scholars in the field of linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, it introduces the reader to the structures of Romani and its dialect divisions, and to the history of research on the language. It then goes on to explore major external influences on the language through contact with other key languages, aspects of language acquisition, and interventions in support of the language through public policy provisions, activism, translation, religious and literary initiatives, and social media. This comprehensive and groundbreaking account of Romani will appeal to students and scholars from across language and linguistics.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction (Yaron Matras and Anton Tenser).- Chapter 2: The Historical Origins of Romani (Michael Benísek).- Chapter 3: Historical Sources on the Romani Language (Ignasi-Xavier Adiego).- Chapter 4: Romani Lexicon (Andrea Scala).- Chapter 5: Romani Phonology (Márton András Baló).- Chapter 6: Romani Morphology (Viktor Elsík).- Chapter 7: Romani Syntactic Typology (Evangelia Adamou and Yaron Matras).- Chapter 8: The Impact of Turkish on Romani (Victor A. Friedman).- Chapter 9: The Impact of Slavic Languages on Romani (Anna-Maria Meyer).- Chapter 10: The Impact of Hungarian on Romani (Zuzana Bodnárová and Jakob Wiedner).- Chapter 11: Romani and Contact Linguistics (Yaron Matras and Evangelia Adamou).- Chapter 12: Para-Romani Varieties (Peter Bakker).- Chapter 13: Romani Dialectology (Viktor Elsík and Michael Benísek).- Chapter 14: Language Policy and Planning in Romani (Dieter W. Halwachs).- Chapter 15: Romani Bible Translation and the Use of Romani in Religious Contexts (Wilco van den Heuvel).- Chapter 16: Romani in Child Directed Speech (Pavel Kubanik).- Chapter 17: Romani on the Internet (Daniele Viktor Leggio).- Chapter 18: Romani Language Literature (Sofiya Zahova).
About the author
Yaron Matras is Professor in Linguistics at the University of Manchester, UK.
Anton Tenser is a Docent in Romani Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and an affiliated scholar at the College of Wooster, USA.
Summary
Romani is the first language, and family and community language, of upwards of 3-4 million people and possibly many more in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Documentation and research on the language draws on a tradition of more than two centuries, yet it remains relatively unknown and often engulfed by myths. In recent decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the language including language maintenance and educational projects, the creation of digital resources, language policy initiatives, and a flourishing community of online users of the language. This Handbook presents state of the art research on Romani language and linguistics. Bringing together key established scholars in the field of linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, it introduces the reader to the structures of Romani and its dialect divisions, and to the history of research on the language. It then goes on to explore major external influences on the language through contact with other key languages, aspects of language acquisition, and interventions in support of the language through public policy provisions, activism, translation, religious and literary initiatives, and social media. This comprehensive and groundbreaking account of Romani will appeal to students and scholars from across language and linguistics.
