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:

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:

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:

	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