Gypsy Dictionary

Gypsy Dictionary is a word list of the English Gypsy Language (which the author calls Romany or Romanes), published under the general title Romano Lavo-Lil: Word-Book of the Romany, or English Gypsy Language, and compiled by the nineteenth-century English writer George Borrow (1803–1881). A lifelong traveller across Europe who associated for many years with Roma communities in various countries, Borrow had previously assembled vocabularies of dialects in Spain, Transylvania, and elsewhere; by his own account the word list in this volume had lain in manuscript for many years before serving as the basis for the book completed in 1873. The volume is built around the word list but also includes a rhyming list of Romany verbs, Romany sentences and proverbs, passages of scripture transliterated into Romany, the Lord's Prayer in the Transylvanian dialect, and English Gypsy songs (such as lullabies, love songs, and blessing songs), together with records of Gypsy personal and place names and fortune-telling customs. The latter part of the book further examines Gypsy communities in London districts such as Wandsworth and Potteries, as well as in Kirk Yetholm, Scotland. In his introduction Borrow discusses the origins and present state of Romany, arguing that the pure original Gypsy tongue has largely vanished and that what survives consists either of relatively pure dialects preserving distinctive grammatical forms (in Russia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Transylvania) or of mixed jargons that merely adopt the grammar of the surrounding language; he notes that English Gypsy, though limited in vocabulary and grammatically damaged, still retains a number of roots of Indian origin and remains mutually intelligible with the continental dialects. The book is at once an important nineteenth-century documentary record of Romany and a cultural reader for understanding the life and oral traditions of the English Gypsies.