Native speakers ca. 100–150 (2014)Speakers mostly elderly. More people speak Swedish with some Roma vocabulary. Glottolog trav1236 (Norwegian)tavr1235 (Swedish)trav1237 (Danish) | ||
Scandoromani language top 6 facts
Scandoromani (Swedish: romani, Norwegian: romani, Scandoromani: romani rakripa alt. tavringens rakripa), also known as Tavringer Romani and the Tattare language, is a North Germanic based Para-Romani. It is spoken by the Scandinavian Travellers, a Romani minority community, in Norway (ca. 100–150 elderly speakers), and formerly in Sweden and Denmark.
"Scandoromani" is a term coined by academics. In Sweden, Scandoromani is referred to as resande rommani (Traveller Romani) or svensk rommani (Swedish Romani), while in Norway the same language is known as norsk romani (Norwegian Romani).
Like Angloromani in Britain and Caló (Spanish Romani) in Spain, Scandoromani draws upon a (now extinct) vocabulary of inflected Romani. Much of the original Romani grammar, however, has been lost to the users, and they now communicate in Swedish or Norwegian grammar.
There is no standarised form of Scandoromani, so variations exist in vocabulary, pronunciation, and usage, depending on the speaker. In print, Scandoromani words are often written with Swedish (S) or Norwegian (N) letters (ä, æ, ø, å) and letter combinations to represent Romani sounds, e.g., tj- (/ɕ/) or kj- (/ç/ alt. /tʃ/) to represent the Romani č /tʃ/ and čh /tʃʰ/. Some examples of Scandoromani variant spellings are: tjuro (S) / kjuro (N) 'knife'; gräj (S) / grei (N) 'horse'.