Focus ROMI.HR

It is worth starting with how the Slavic languages ​​influenced the phonetics (sound system) of the Romani language. One of the main borrowed phonetic features was the palatalization of consonants. In linguistics, palatalization of consonants is called the way of pronunciation with the tongue closer to the roof of the mouth (the "palate"). As a result of language contact, in some dialects of the Romani language, k before the vowels e and i can be pronounced as kj (kj). There is also a devoicing of final consonants, that is, for example, gad “shirt” is pronounced as [gat] instead of [gad].   

The next level of the language, which has been affected by significant changes, is morphology (structure of the word). Among the most noticeable manifestations of the influence of Slavic languages, one can note a number of borrowed suffixes and prefixes:

the suffixes -ic(a) and –k(a), which are used to indicate smallness and as a marker of female gender: lurdica ‘wife of a soldier’ from lurdo ‘soldier’; khelitorka ‘female dancer’ from khelitori ‘dancer’;

the prefix pra- with the meaning ‘great’: East Slovak Romani prapapus ‘great grandfather’. 

Speaking of borrowed affixes, it is worth mentioning the prefix ni-, used in Slavic languages for negation (for comparison, Czech nikdo, Croatian nitko ‘nobody’). In the dialects of the Romani language it’s possible to find such negative pronouns as niko(n) / nikoj ‘nobody’, nik(h)aj ‘nowhere’, nikaring ‘nowhere’. 

The majority of Slavic languages doesn’t have such a category as article (a special word before a noun to indicate whether we are talking about something specific or general), with the exception of Macedonian and Bulgarian. Under the influence of Slavic languages, some dialects of the Romani language either completely lose the article (for example, in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland) or significantly reduce its use: piravav dudali instead of piravav e dudali ‘I am opening the window’ (dialect of Roma in Poland). 

Slavic languages influenced the system of degrees of comparison of adjectives in the Roman language, that is, a greater or lesser degree of manifestation of the quality or characteristic. In the dialects of Romani, common in the Balkan territories, the Slavic prefix po- (for example, по-малък/po-malŭk in Bulgarian) in some cases replaced the original suffix –eder-: feder ‘better’ can be replaced by the form polačho (prefix po- + lačho ‘good’). In Russian, the suffix -sh- (-ш-) is often used to form degrees of comparison, which has also influenced the Romani language, which is widespread in this region; in some cases, this suffix can be found in the North Russian Romani: miro ternedyrsho pšal ‘my younger brother’ and Russian мой младший брат/moj mladshyj brat.

Among the features of sentence construction (in linguistics this is called syntax), we can highlight an interesting feature observed in some dialects, which is associated with the influence of South Slavic languages. In these languages, the imperative (a special way to build a sentence to express an urge to act) in the third person singular (i.e. he, she, it) is expressed by the particle neka (an example from the Croatian language - neka dođe! ‘let him come!’). In the language of the Roma living in this region, linguists have recorded a similar construction  - nek avel! ‘let him come!’.

The Roma's long-term interaction with Slavic peoples has resulted in changes in various aspects of the language, from the emergence of new sounds to transformations in the construction of sentences. This article presents only a small part of the features of the Romani dialects that emerged as a result of centuries of interaction with neighboring languages. From region to region, these features will vary significantly, which is due to the influence of various linguistic environments.