Romani language

Romani or Romany (native name: romani ćhib) is the language of the Roma. The Indo-Aryan Romani language should not be confused with either Romanian (spoken by Romanians), or Romansh (spoken in parts of southeastern Switzerland), both of which are Romance languages.

Romani
romani čhib
Native speakers	c. 1.5 million (SIL Ethnologue) (2015)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Hellenic[2] Romani
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Albania Austria Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Colombia[3] Finland France Germany[4] Hungary[5] Kosovo[a] Macedonia Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Serbia Sweden[6] Ukraine[7] United Kingdom
Language codes
ISO 639-2	rom
ISO 639-3	rom – inclusive code Individual codes: rmn – Balkan Romani rmn – Rumelian Romani rml – Baltic Romani rmc – Carpathian Romani rmf – Finnish Kalo rmo – Sinte Romani rmy – Vlax Romani rmw – Welsh-Romani
Glottolog	roma1329
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The language developed outside from India, in Roman province Egypt, by Indian traders from different areas of India, who settled at the red sea coast in Egypt. It is based by Sanskrit and Prakrit, but strongly influenced by Ancient Greek, and Persian language, Old Church Slavonic, some words from the Coptic language, like rōmi man.Loanwords from other languages in Romani make it possible to trace the pattern of their migration westwards. There are many different dialects.^[8]

Distribution

The following table shows the distribution of Romani speakers in Europe according to Bakker et al. (2000) . The last column shows the percentage of Romani speakers in the Roma population in each country.

Country	Speakers	%
Albania	90,000	95%
Austria	20,000	80%
Belarus	27,000	95%
Belgium	10,000	80%
Bosnia and Herzegovina	40,000	90%
Bulgaria	350,000	80%
Croatia	28,000	80%
Czech Republic	140,000	50%
Denmark	1,500	90%
Estonia	1,100	90%
Finland	3,000	90%
France	215,000	70%
Germany	85,000	70%
Greece	160,000	90%
Hungary	260,000	50%
Italy	42,000	90%
Latvia	18,500	90%
Lithuania	4,000	90%
Macedonia	215,000	90%
Moldova	56,000	90%
Netherlands	3,000	90%
Poland	4,000	90%
Romania	433,000	80%
Russia	405,000	80%
Serbia and Montenegro	380,000	90%
Slovakia	300,000	60%
Slovenia	8,000	90%
Spain	1,000	1%
Sweden	9,500	90%
Turkey	280,000	10%
Ukraine	113,000	90%
United Kingdom	1,000	0.5%