Language fact file – Romani

Language fact file: Romani

Romani is spoken as a recognised minority language in: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia,  Sweden, Ukraine

Number of speakers: approximately 4.6m

Learn some: Greet someone in Romani by saying ‘sastipe!’, which means ‘health to you’.

Fast facts:

Romani has its roots in northern India, sharing similarities with Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali. Researchers believe that ancestors of the Roma left India between 1,000 and 1,500 years ago, the language has been preserved remarkably well, allowing linguists to make this connection.

However, there are many dialect versions of Romani, which vary according to where the community has settled and which have borrowed from the local languages.

As Romani was predominantly a spoken language for most of its history, it has no formal writing system and can be written using various alphabets, including Cyrillic, Latin and Greek.