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Full-Text Articles in Linguistic Anthropology
The Relationship Between Romanes And English As Spoken By The Portland Gypsies, Margaret Anne Sharp
The Relationship Between Romanes And English As Spoken By The Portland Gypsies, Margaret Anne Sharp
Dissertations and Theses
This thesis examines the relationship between English and Romanes as spoken by the Portland Kalderash Rom (Gypsies). Examples, taken from natural conversations which were taped, translated, and analyzed, show that the intermixing follows rules which guard the linguistic integrity of both languages. Code changing, code mixing, linguistic natural setting. A lexicon of Romanes words, elicited from members of the Gypsy community, is also included. The findings of this study support the thesis that this intermixing of Romanes and English is adaptive in that it insures that all members of the community can speak both languages from an early age.