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| The Anglo-Romani Project
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At the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester we have a project team who research the Romani language. Previously, all of our research work has been on European Romani dialects, but recently we have piloted a two-year project into Anglo-Romani which aims to document English and Welsh Romani spoken in Britain.
 As shown on this website, by CJ Eastwood, the Romani language originated in India. It spread throughout Europe, absorbing many European influences, and many different dialects of Romani emerged. The language reached Britain in the 16th century, after groups of Roma immigrated into the country via France, Germany and Scandinavia.
Romani was spoken in England until the late 19th century, when it was replaced by English as the everyday language of the English Gypsies. However, not all of the Romani language was lost; a large number of words were retained, and inserted into English sentences. This created a language, which when spoken, was unintelligible to outsiders, in other words, a 'secret' or 'in-group' language.
Nowadays, many English Gypsies still have this Romani vocabulary which they insert into English, although this tends to be used to a greater degree in the older generation.
Our research focuses on collecting as many of these words as we can, to see how English Romani has developed since the Roma arrived in Britain, and also how it varies between speakers. We visit English Gypsies across the country, and record them speaking Romani words, which we elicit from a word-list. We then transcribe all our interviews and store the data electronically.
 We will be using our data for academic publications, but we also plan to use it to help create educational materials for use in primary and secondary schools which have Gypsies in attendance. We are currently working on an interactive CD-ROM (in co-operation with the Traveller Education Services), which will include information on the journey of the Romani language from India to present-day Britain, as well as many words and phrases, pictures and videos, and interactive language games. We hope this will be interesting and educational for both Gypsy and non-Gypsy children.
A number of interviews have been completed at this stage, in places such as Blackburn, Salford, County Durham, Leatherhead, Bradford and Blackpool.
We are always looking to interview more English Romani speakers, so if you are interested in helping us with our work, email me at
Hazel.Gardner@manchester.ac.uk,
or alternatively visit our website here
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