Miklosich's vocabulary of Galician Romani and its affinities with today's North Central Romani of Halychyna
Abstract
The paper examines a vocabulary of a dialect of the Gypsies of Galicia published by Miklosich (1876) in his compendium on Romani dialects. The material is analysed from a dialectological point of view and compared with data of the Romani dialect (called Halychyna Romani) that was documented during fieldwork of the author in West Ukrainian towns of Sambir and Boryslav in 2011 to 2012.
It is shown that the vocabulary represents a North Central Romani dialect, although it also contains features atypical of Central Romani that are closer to neighbouring Northeastern Romani, as well as some unique dialect-specific expressions. All these features also occur in the recently documented dialect so that it is concluded that there is a definite historical link between the variety of Miklosich's vocabulary and present-day Halychyna Romani.
The most obvious difference between both is that the glossary contains certain conservations that are no longer used in the current dialect.