Abstract
THE majority of people are surprised when they are told that in almost every country of Europe, and even in America, there is spoken to-day a language which was brought out of India by a tribe or tribes between twelve and fifteen hundred years ago. This is the language of the people known to us as Gypsies, to themselves as Rom or the like, a word which phono-logically is the exact equivalent of the modern Indian Dom, a general name for an outcast, so-called criminal tribe, who in many places act as scavengers and burners of corpses, and in all places are ready to augment their earnings by stealing or other anti-social practices. The Gypsies of Palestine and Syria still call themselves Dom, just as with them a spoon, roi in European gypsy, is dowi (and in modern Hindi doi).
The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales: being the Older Form of British Romani preserved in the Speech of the Clan of Abram Wood.
By Dr. John Sampson. Pp. xxiii + 230 + 419. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1926.) 84s. net.
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TURNER, R. The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales: being the Older Form of British Romani preserved in the Speech of the Clan of Abram Wood . Nature 118, 291–293 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118291a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118291a0
