The Northeastern (Baltic-Russian) dialect group in Romani

© Anton Tenser

Lithuanian Romani is a dialect of Romani that has been in contact with Slavic languages for around 5 centuries. Initially it was in contact with Polish, a dominant language in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the 18th-19th century. After that, it was in contact with Russian, a dominant language of the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Being in contact with these Slavic languages for such a long time, Lithuanian Romani has plenty of borrowed lexical material from them. It also has borrowed wholesale some morphological paradigms, like the conjunction continuum of OR-AND-AND.CONTRASTIVE-BUT, and the Slavic aspectual verb prefixes, exemplified here. There is a further restructuring in the Lithuanian Romani, under the influence of Polish and Russian, affecting case marking in the language.

Example 1

Calquing of the Russian (Slavic) structure: a reflexive particle on verbs: Notice that Lithuanian Romani adds a reflexive particle (in a meaning similar to 'himself') to the verb 'to laugh', thereby imitating the structure of that verb in Russian:

Lithuanian Romani:

[Listen to example] jow sal pe
he laugh.3SG RFLX ('himself')
he is laughing

Russian:

on smejot-sa
he laugh.3SG-RFLX

but compare to other dialects of Romani:

jov sal
he laugh.3SG

Example 2

Russian structure is also imitated in the choice of case ending that accompanies the objects of certain verbs. In the following example, with the verb 'to become', the object takes the Instrumental case, like in Russian:

Lithuanian Romani:

[Listen to example] me terdjovow direktoro-sa
I become.1SG director-INSTR
I become director

Russian:

ja stanovljusj director-om
I become.1SG director-INSTR

but compare to other dialects of Romani:

me kerdjovav direktoro
I become.1SG director.NOM

Example 3

Lithuanian Romani borrows the entire set of prefixes that are used in Russian to modify the verb (glossed here as SLASP for 'Slavic Aspect' - the typical Slavic system of expressing aspect on the verb):

Lithuanian Romani:

[Listen to example] po-čamude tre phenja
SLASP-kiss.IMPER your.OBL sister.OBL

Russian:

po-celuj svoju sestru
SLASP-kiss.IMPER your.RFLX.ACC sister.ACC

but compare to other dialects of Romani:

čumide tira phenja
kiss.IMPER your.OBL sister.OBL