Romani

[B. Reusch]

Quoted from Encyclopaedia Britannica (?):
>It is in its vocabulary that Romany best reflects the wanderings of its
>speakers. The main sources (apart from the original Indian stock) are
>Iranian (doshman "enemy," from Persian doshman), Armenian, Greek (drom
>"way," from  ó  ), Romanian (bolta "shop," from bolta), Hungarian (bino
>"sin," from bun), and the Slavic languages (glas "voice," rebniko "pond,"
>grob "tomb," dosta "enough," ale "but"). Indo-Aryan words include bokh
>"hunger," from Hindi bhukh; bal "hair," from Sanskrit bala; gelo "gone," the
>past participle of za "go" (compare Bengali jawa, gælo); and rat "blood,"
>from Prakrit ratta.

Does Romani really appear far "apart from the original Indian stock" in all
the examples cited above to illustrate this point?

>main sources (apart from the original Indian stock) are
>Iranian (doshman "enemy," from Persian doshman),

Isn't "doshman" a cognate of Vedic *durmanman* and Epic Skt. *durmanas* and
Homeric (and later) Greek *dusmenEs*?

>Armenian, Greek (drom
>"way," from  ó  ),

see Homeric *dromos* = running, race, race-course; see Vedic and later Skt.
roots *dru* (*drav-a-ti*) and *drA* and *dram*


Beatrice Reusch
University of California, Berkeley