If we restrict ourselves to dialects spoken by Roma groups which are of Romanes origins, up and including the Southern Slavic influences, and neglect the creolised languages, the question of the “degree of purity” of the dialect spoken by different groups of Roma arises.

Purity

Be it Roma themselves or experts, there have been discussions on that topic and several statements about which dialect was the “purest”. This is a rather ridiculous approach and leads to quite a lot of nonsense. The status of Roma groups relative to one another comes to a large part from the perception of the purity of the Romanes. However, this does not mean that one dialect is better that the other.  Roma judge the purity of a Romanes dialect by the absence of locally acquired vocabulary. This means the absence of local words understood by the local population and which are immediately recognised as being non-Romanes. Kalderaša in Russia consider that they speak a “better” Romanes, a view shared by many Russian Roma as their dialect contains a relatively limited Russian vocabulary.

External Influences

For those Kalderaša (and other Vlach Roma) who do not speak Romanian any more, a visit to Romania and Bessarabia often constitute a “shock”. Many of the word they use and consider to be “Romanes” in are simply Romanian.

The variants of the word “window” provides an amusing example among various Northern Roma. Broadly speaking, there are two main variants: one German and one Slavic, For Sinti, the term fenstra [window], used by Russian and Baltic Roma is purely gadžikano, that is, non-Romanes. The Sinti use voxnin, a word of Slavic origins. Russian and Baltic Roma recognise this word as being gadžikano.

Common Trunk

For an objective analysis of the “purity” of a dialect, one must turn to the common trunk of that language. One cannot make a judgement based on words, morphological and syntactical elements that were acquired later. The interesting fact is that in any given variant of Romanes, one finds words or expressions stemming from the common trunk which have disappeared among many other variants. The verb nakhav [to cross], found in Vlax and Balkan variants is absent in Carpathian, Nordic and Ukrainian variants. Masxari [the Virgin Mary] for some Nordic groups is of old Indian origins but is absent in all other groups. Another factor enters this equation: the total vanishing of certain “important” terms from the common trunk.

For example, for most Vlax Roma dialects, there is no common trunk word for life or for to live. They use the lexems trajo [life] and trajiv [to live] both of Romanian origins while the Nordic use the terms džijpen [life] and dživav [to live] of Indian origins. Interestingly enough, all Vlax dialects nevertheless use the term džuvindo [alive] stemming from the same roots as in the Nordic dživav. Among nowadays Balkan Roma, džijpen has also almost vanished but in the 1860’s dživav [to live], džijbe [life] were both present. Even the reflexive form as in nowadays Polska Romanes – dživdjuvav was recorded in the form of dživgjovava. Another such term is lodav in the sense of to reside, to live. Boretzky and Igla have recorded the use of this term among Bosnian Gurbeti but not among Balkan Roma while it is mostly absent for the “new” Vlax vocabulary. The Nordic Roma are still using it in the sense of to camp or among Sinti as lodopen [living quarters].

Evolution

There are also common trunk terms whose meaning have changed according to the groups. Morav is such an example. Among Vlax Roma, morav means to scrub, to rub while for the Nordic groups morav means to wash. Paspati notes the use of morav as to scrub and to rub, in connection with washing showing a dual use among these Roma.

In Vlax and even in some Balkan dialects, naj nowadays means a finger while for Nordic Roma, naj is a fingernail. Paspati notes the use of naj exclusively as fingernail and of angušt as finger as the Nordic (an)gušt. This shows once again the switch of signification found in some dialects while others have retained the original signification.

Different groups have also selected different common trunk lexems for a given meaning entirely loosing the other term. The Nordic groups use the words xačuvav [to burn oneself] and xačerav/xačkirav [to burn something] while the Vlax use phabuvav and phabarav; in the Balkan dialects one finds thabljovav and thabarav/tharav for the same meanings. Another such example is given by men [neck] used by Balkan and Nordic dialects while Vlax and Ukrainians use kor for the same meaning.

In the dialect spoken by Sliven Roma, both terms exist, men as neck and kor as back of the neck. This suggest that these alternative terms were present in the common trunk with a somewhat different meaning and that during the creation of the dialects, one or the other term was chosen over the other, often thus loosing the “specialisation” of the terminology.

Conclusion

Finally, one should note that certain lexemes which are by now associated with given specific groups were still to be found among Balkan Roma in the XIXth century and sometimes have still survived although in many cases, these also vanished by now. Terms such as urjavav [to dress];  mamuj [against, in front of and sometimes alongside (Russia)]; udžakerav [to wait]   are nowadays found mostly among the Nordic metagroup although they can be traced back to the Balkan.

This evolution is not limited to Romanes: many other languages, such as German, in its Austrian and German forms – and even in Germany itself – shows many such phenomena as does English between its British and American variants although they are recognised as being one language as Churchill once said namely that England and the USA were two countries separated by a common language.  So what are the implications of these facts for the purity of a given Romanes? De facto, for all the dialects where the common-trunk substrate is strong, it is not possible to pass value judgements on their degree of “purity”. All such dialects contain and show elements which have either vanished or changed signification rendering their classification  in various “degrees of purity” impossible and irrelevant.