maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society

Romany

Romany has been spoken by Romanichal Gypsies in Britain for over 500 years. The pure Romani language mixed with spoken English, formed the modern Romany speech sometimes known as the Pogadi Chib (mixed up language), or to scholars as Anglo-Romani. It is spoken by Gypsies in Britain and where they have settled in Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Many Romany words have come into British English slang such as kushti, mush, chav and wonga. Romany is not fully intelligible with other Romani languages found in Europe and the Americas, although it has some shared vocabulary.

Wester Boswell Compositions

Sylvester "Wester" Boswell (1812-1890) was an English Gypsy who spoke Romanes. In the 1870s he translated some well-known Scripture selections into Romany from English. These were published as "Genuine Romany Compositions" on pages 226-235 of a book called the "Dialect of the English Gypsies" by Bath C. Smart and Henry Thomas Crofton. The book was compiled in 1874 and published in London in 1875. In the Romany compositions, the words were written down using an orthography developed by A.J. Ellis which was used by the English Dialect Society. They adopted the Greek letter χ to represent "the sound being nearly that of ch in German". The parts of Romanes which were English borrowings were italicised.

The portions were:

• The Ten Commandments from Exodus
• Psalm 23 - The Lord is my Shepherd (O Doovel see meero bokorengro)
• The Seven Loaves Miracle in Mark 8:1-8
• Various passages from Luke
• The Good Shepherd (kooshto bokromengro) in John 10:11-18

Digital Edition

These selections, were digitised from an original copy in the Bible Society archives in Cambridge in 2015. This was done as part of the United Bible Societies (UBS) Romani Affinity Group digitisation project.

This is a historical text maintained by theBritish and Foreign Bible Society.