Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Do the Romani have a specific language?
Romani (/ˈrɒməni, ˈroʊ-/;[9][10][11][12] also Romany; Romani: romani čhib) is any of several languages of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.[13] According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own. The largest of these are Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers),[14] Balkan Romani (600,000),[15] and Sinte Romani (300,000).[16] Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.[17]
Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language, an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the "Ciganos" of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló, Angloromany, and Scandoromani. Most of the speaker communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.
The Romani people originate from Northern India, most likely from the northwestern Indian states Rajasthan and Punjab. Linguistic evidence indicates that the roots of Romani language lie in India; the language shares grammatical characteristics with Indian languages, as well as a large part of the basic lexicon, such as body parts or daily routines. More specifically, Romani shares its basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.
The results of a genetic study in 2012 suggest that the Romani originated in North Western India and migrated as a group. The study indicates that the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of North India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestors of modern European Roma.
Two language groups have coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula since prehistory—the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian languages) and the Sami languages. Due to later migrations, Finnish, Yiddish and Romani have also been spoken for over a hundred years. Denmark also has a minority of German-speakers. More recent migrations has added even more languages. Apart from Sami and the languages of minority groups speaking a variant of the majority language of a neighboring state, the following minority languages in Scandinavia are protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Yiddish, Romani Chib, Romanes and Romani.
The Romani people are today found in many countries. Typically, Romani adopt given names that are common in the country of their residence. Seldom do modern Romani use traditional names from their own language, such as Papush, Luludi, Patrin, etc. Being the only Indo-Aryan language that has been spoken exclusively around Europe since the Middle Ages, speakers use many terms for their language. They generally refer to their language as "řomani čhib" translated as ‘the Romani language’, or "řomanes", ‘in a Rom way’. The English term, Romani, has been used by scholars since the 19th Century, where previously they had used the term 'Gypsy Language'.
Baltic Romani is group of dialects of the Romani language spoken in the Baltic states and adjoining regions of Poland and Russia. Half of the speakers live in Poland. It also called Balt Romani, Balt Slavic Romani, Baltic Slavic Romani, and Roma. Romani began as an Indo-European language, which morphed into an Indo-Iranian language, and then into an Indo-Aryan language. After that the Romani language broke down into Balkan Romani and Central Romani. Baltic Romani came from the Central Romani dialect which branches off into other dialects. There are a total of around 35,000 users in all countries.
Para-Romani are various mixed languages of non-Indo-Aryan linguistic classification containing considerable admixture from the Romani language. They are spoken as the traditional vernacular of Romani communities, either in place of, or alongside, varieties of the Romani language. Some Para-Romani languages have no structural features of Romani at all, taking only the vocabulary from Romani.
The official number of Romani people is disputed in many countries; some do not collect data by ethnicity; in others, Romani individuals may refuse to register their ethnic identity for fear of discrimination, or have assimilated and do not identify exclusively as Romani. In some cases, governments consult Romani organizations for data.
Morphology
The language began as an Indo-European language morphed into an Indo-Iranian language. From there it morphed into an Indo-Aryan language which eventually led to Romani. After that the Romani language broke down into Balkan Romani and Central Romani. Baltic Romani came from the Central Romani dialect which branches off to the many other dialects listed above.
Romani shares a number of features with the Central Zone languages.[23] The most significant isoglosses are the shift of Old Indo-Aryan r̥ to u or i (Sanskrit śr̥ṇ-, Romani šun- 'to hear') and kṣ- to kh (Sanskrit akṣi, Romani j-akh 'eye').[23] However, unlike other Central Zone languages, Romani preserves many dental clusters (Romani trin 'three', phral 'brother', compare Hindi tīn, bhāi).[23] This implies that Romani split from the Central Zone languages before the Middle Indo-Aryan period.[23] However, Romani shows some features of New Indo-Aryan, such as erosion of the original nominal case system towards a nominative/oblique dichotomy, with new grammaticalized case suffixes added on.[23] This means that the Romani exodus from India could not have happened until late in the first millennium.[23]
Numerous cases have been cited regarding the ill-treatment of the Romani population by the Bulgarian police. There is widespread discrimination against the Romani in Bulgarian society, and , the Bulgarian government has not implemented any laws legislating against the discrimination of Romani. Bulgarian state security forces have been known to arbitrarily arrest and abuse street children of Romani ethnic origin.
The Romani are subjected to harassment in Bulgaria, including the hazing of Romani army conscripts and poor police responses to crimes committed against Romani. A high percentage of Romani children do not attend school, both due to poverty and a lack of teachers who speak their native language.
Baltic languages, such as Baltic Romani, have unique rules that their numerals follow when they are written. Their numerals govern their nominals but not to the degree that Slavic languages do. Baltic genitives mark partial objects and sometimes subjects and also play a prominent role in the syntax of numeral constructions. Baltic languages are very similar as both Latvian and Latvian Romani share the same opposition of preverbs and verb particles.
Balkan Romani Bohemian Romani Carpathian Romani Finnish Kalo language Laiuse Romani language Lotegorisch Romani alphabets Zargari Romani Peaky Blinders (TV series)
Language standardization is presently also being pursued in the revival of the Romani language among various groups – in Spain, Great Britain and elsewhere – which have ceased to speak the language. In these cases, a specific dialect is not revived, but rather a standardized form derived from many dialects is developed. The Spanish politician Juan de Dios Ramírez Heredia promotes Romanò-Kalò, a variant of Standard Romani with the extant Caló words inserted back, aiming to both the Gitano tradition and communication with other Romani people.
Linguistic and phonological research has traced the Roma people's first place of origin to places in the Indian subcontinent, specifically linking Proto-Romani groups to Central India. Many report in extracts from popular literature that Romani emerged from the North-west regions of India, rather than from Central India. Features of phonological developments which emerged during the early transition stage from Old to Middle Indic prove that the history of Romani began in Central India. 
The Romani language shares many features with the Central Indo-Aryan languages such as the Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Rajasthani languages; it also shares connections with Northern Indo-Aryan languages like Kashmiri, and the language itself contains a cluster of Persian and Arabic words. Linguists use these phonological similarities as well as features of phonological developments which emerged during the early transition stage from Old to Middle Indic to conclude that the history of Romani began in Central India.
Other factors such as blood groups and unwritten customs also suggest Central Indian origins of the Roma. The Roma find issues with documenting their own exact origin due to a lack of finding specific records left by ancestors. Their history however is retold by clan family customs, such as singing and storytelling. 
Records cannot identify exactly why the Roma migrated from India; there are a number of possible motives, such as famine and military invasions on the part of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) and/or Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030 CE).
The Romani language is divided into several dialects which together have an estimated number of speakers of more than two million. The total number of Romani people is at least twice as high (several times as high according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.Rom means man or husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, related with the Sanskrit words "dam-pati" (lord of the house, husband), "dama" (to subdue), "lom" (hair), "lomaka" (hairy), "loman", "roman" (hairy), "romaça" (man with beard and long hair). Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम "doma" (member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers).
Balkan Romani (also known as Balkan Gypsy) is a specific dialect, spoken by groups within the Balkans, which include countries such as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, etc. The Balkan Romani language is typically an oral language. This dialect is endangered because, not only is it looked down upon by other Europeans, but it only has about 763,670 speakers left in the world.
The origins of the Romani language are in India, and the core of the vocabulary and grammar still resemble modern Indic languages like Urdu, Kashmiri, and Punjabi. Linguists have been investigating the dialects of Romani since the second half of the eighteenth century, and although there are no ancient written records of the language, it has been possible to reconstruct the development of Romani from the medieval languages of India to its present forms as spoken in Europe. Although the language remains similar at its core, it is sometimes quite difficult for Romani people from different regions to understand one another if they have not had any exposure to other dialects before.
The history of Romani in Greece goes back over 600 years to the 15th century. The name Gypsy sometimes used for the Romani people was first given to them by the Greeks who supposed them to be Egyptian in origin. Due to their nomadic nature, they are not concentrated in a specific geographical area but are dispersed all over the country. The majority of the Greek Romani are Orthodox Christians who speak the Vlachoura-Roma language in addition to Greek. Most of the Romani who live in Western Thrace are Muslims and speak a dialect of the same language.
Balkan Romani () is one of several related languages of the Romani people, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. Many varieties of Romani are divergent and sometimes considered languages of their own. The largest of these are Vlax Romani (about 900,000 speakers), Balkan Romani (700,000), Carpathian Romani (500,000) and Sinti Romani (300,000). In Macedonia Balkan Romani is spoken. Šuto Orizari is the largest Romani-speaking settlement in the country.
If the Romany (Gypsies) are included, then the earliest arrivals were in the Middle Ages. DNA surveys have linked Romanies to present-day South Asian populations and the Romany language is a member of the Indo-Aryan language family. Romanies are believed to have begun travelling westward around 1000 CE, and have mixed with South-west Asian and European populations over many centuries.
The morphology of the Balkan Romani language is again heavily influenced by both the Turkish and Greek languages. Many people view this language as a sort of melting pot because there are so many different influences on it. Turkish and Greek might be the most influential languages on Balkan Romani but other languages, such as Armenian, have also influenced it. Part of the substrate of Balkan Romani appears to be derived from medieval northern Indian languages.
'Anglo-Romani' is a term used to describe usage of words of Romani origin within English conversation. The original Romani language was spoken in England until the late nineteenth century; perhaps a generation longer in Wales. It was replaced by English as the everyday and family language of British Romani, but this does not mean the language disappeared entirely. Words of Romani origin were still used as part of a family-language. Words which are occasionally inserted into English conversation are referred to in linguistic literature on Romani as 'Para-Romani': the selective retention of some Romani-derived vocabulary following the disappearance of Romani as an everyday language of conversation.
Caló (; ; ; ) is a language spoken by the Spanish and Portuguese Romani. It is a mixed language (referred to as a Para-Romani language in Romani linguistics) based on Romance grammar, with an adstratum of Romani lexical items through language shift by the Romani community. It is often used as an argot, a secret language for discreet communication amongst Iberian Romani. Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish are closely related varieties that share a common root.
Romani (also known as the Romani Chib) is the language spoken by the Romani people, a nomadic ethnic group originating in northern India. Due to the geographic origins of its speakers, Romani is an Indo-Aryan language, closely related to languages spoken in modern-day India, and sometimes written with an Indic Script (see Romani writing systems). Around 90% of Sweden's Romani people speak Romani, meaning that there are approximately 9,500 Chib speakers. In Sweden, there is no major geographic center for Romani like there is for Finnish, Sami, or Meänkieli, but it is considered to be of historical importance by the Swedish government, and as such the government is seen as having an obligation to preserve them, a distinction also held by Yiddish.[11]