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Slavic languages affected all levels of Romani: phonology (system of sounds), lexicon (vocabulary), morphology (word structure), and syntax (sentence structure). The most obvious, but at the same time extensive level is the lexical one, and this article will be devoted to it.

It can be said that the study of the influence of Slavic languages ​​on Romani began with the work of the Austro-Slovene linguist Franz Miklosich “Die slavischen Elemente in den Mundarten der Zigeuner” ‘The Slavic elements in the vernaculars of the gypsies’ (1872). While describing the language of the Roma living in German territories, he found a significant number of borrowings from Slavic languages ​​(Serbian, Bulgarian, Polish).  

To begin with, it’s important to note here that due to long-term contacts between Slavic and Romani and also similarities between the Slavic languages, it is not always evident from which Slavic language a feature was borrowed. But at the same time those layers of borrowings frequently reflex historical migration routes of the Roma and cultural contacts. To illustrate, North Russian Romani obviously contains words from South and West Slavic languages: 

blato “swamp” (Bulgarian блато (blato));

vendzlo “knot” (Polish węzeł).

In the Romani language, there are frequent borrowings of quantifiers (special words to express the number of objects or parts of one object) from Slavic languages, such as celo ‘whole’ (Russian целый/celyi, Slovenian се̑l, Polish саɫу), dosta ‘enough’ (Croatian dosta, Czech dost, Russian достаточно/dostatochno), para ‘a couple of’ (Czech páry, Croatian par) and svako/vsako ‘every’ (Serbian свако/svako, Belarusian усялякі/us’al’aki). In this regard, there are such phrases as svako drom ‘every time’, which is a contamination of Slavic svako and Romani drom ‘way’ (and maybe the phrase itself is an adaptation of a similar expression in South Slavic languages). 

In a number of dialects of the Romani language, Slavic numerals can be found; the most common is the word for “thousand” (for example, Slovenian tisȯ́ča, Czech tisíc): 

tysiące in Lithuanian Romani;

tišic in East Slovak Romani.

Among other things, modern linguists have discovered borrowings from Slavic languages in dialects of the Romani language that are geographically remote from Slavic countries , such as Anglo-Romani and Welsh Romani (spread on the territories of the Great Britain), and among which, for example, one can find dosta ‘enough’, dzhamba ‘toad’, mačka ‘cat’.

Due to the presence of a large number of borrowings, the question arises of their adaptation and implementation into the language. In many cases, borrowed words replace the inherited (original) ones, however, there are cases of using both words that once had the same meaning (i.e. synonyms), but now with a shift in their meanings. For instance, mlada (a word from South Slavic languages) is used to denote "bride" in the Serbian Kalderaš language, and the original bori is used for or "daughter-in-law".

From the point of view of adapting Slavic words to the grammar of the Romani language, there are a number of difficulties. So, it must be said that, unlike the Slavic languages, in Romani there are not 3 genders of nouns, but two, therefore, in a number of Balkan dialects, masculine and neuter borrowings receive a masculine ending: kridlos (masculine) from Slovak krídl-o (neuter) "wing". Feminine nouns usually retain (in rare cases receive) the ending –a, which is common to both Slavic and Romani languages: ulica in the Slavic languages and in Romani. 

Special indicators are also often used for borrowed verbs. An example is the South Slovak Romani language, where special suffixes are added to the verb: sledoválinel (in this case, the suffixes –al- and –in-) from the Slovak verb sledovat’. 

In conclusion, it is necessary to mention one interesting way of forming new words in the Roma language – calquing, this method involves borrowing words by literally translating them. For instance, in Slavic languages, the word "homeless" consists of parts with the meaning prefix "without" and word stem "house", in the Romani language this word has the same internal form – bikherengro, in which bi “without” and kher “home”.

In conclusion, the impact of Slavic languages on Romani is significant and multifaceted, what can be seen in all areas of the language, but the most prominent effect being on the vocabulary. The long-standing contact between these language groups has resulted in numerous borrowings, not only in lexicon but also in grammatical structures related to loanwords.