Vlax Romani varieties are spoken mainly in

Southeastern Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical sub-region of Europe, consisting primarily of the region of the Balkans, as well as adjacent regions and Archipelago, archipelagos. There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of t ...

by the

Romani people {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , po ...

.Norbert Boretzky and Birgit Igla. Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2004. Teil 1: Vergleich der Dialekte. Vlax Romani can also be referred to as an independent language or as one dialect of the

Romani language Romani ( ; also Romanes , Romany, Roma; ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani people. The largest of these are Vlax Romani language, Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers), Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Roma ...

. Vlax Romani is the second most widely spoken dialect subgroup of the Romani language worldwide, after Balkan Romani.

Name

The language's name ''Vlax Romani'' was coined by British scholar Bernard Gilliat-Smith in his 1915 study on Bulgarian Romani, in which he first divided Romani dialects into ''Vlach'' and ''non-Vlach''. The Vlax Roma, a subgroup of the Romani people that speak the Vlax Romani language, originate from the former Roma slaves in the principalities of

Moldavia Moldavia (, or ; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ) is a historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River. An initially in ...

and

Wallachia Wallachia or Walachia (; ; : , : ) is a historical and geographical region of modern-day Romania. It is situated north of the Lower Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians. Wallachia was traditionally divided into two sections, Munteni ...

(with the name "Vlax", which comes from "Vlach", coming from the latter), now

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

. The words ''Romani'' and ''Romania'' are false cognates, the former deriving from Romani ''rom'' – ultimately from Sanskrit word ḍoma/डोम, and the latter deriving from Romanian ''român'' – ultimately from Latin.

Classification

Vlax Romani is classified in two groups: Vlax I, or Northern Vlax (including Kalderash and Lovari), and Vlax II, or Southern Vlax. Elšík uses this classification and dialect examples (geographical information from Matras):

Writing systems

Vlax Romani is written using the Romani orthography, predominantly using the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

with several additional characters. In the area of the former

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, however, it can also be written in the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

References

Languages of Albania Languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina Languages of Hungary Languages of Israel Languages of Romania Languages of Serbia Languages of Slovenia Romani in Albania Romani in Bosnia and Herzegovina Romani in Moldova Romani in Romania Romani in Slovenia Dialects of Romani Vlax {{IndoAryan-lang-stub