Adaptation strategies of Romani-origin words in the ethnolinguistic repertoire of the Romungros

The shift from Romani to majority languages has resulted in the emergence of several contact varieties across Europe (see Bakker 2020), which have been variously labelled as creoles, Romani mixed dialects, Para-Romani varieties, ethnolects, or secret languages (see Matras et al. 2007, 144), as well as registers or styles of the respective majority language (Matras 2002, 246). In Hungary, a similar phenomenon occurs among the Romungros, descendants of South Central Romani speakers, who use an ethnolinguistic repertoire—a concept defined by Benor (2010)—, which, in their case, is characterised by the integration of Romani lexical and morphological elements into Hungarian.

Drawing on a dataset of 2143 sentences compiled from written and oral sources (both primary and secondary, published and unpublished), we will examine a key strategy for adapting Romani-origin roots in the ethnolinguistic repertoire of the Romungros (hereafter referred to as ERR): the reinterpretation of various affixes of Hungarian and Romani origin.

In the domain of verbs, one example is the Romani indicative present tense third-person singular marker -el, which is reinterpreted as an invariant adaptation marker. It aligns with the Hungarian denominal derivational and adaptation marker -(V)l while violating vowel harmony and, by attaching not only to verb stems (e.g. ERR penel ‘say’ < Romani phen- ‘say’, ERR sunel ‘hear, listen’ < Romani šun- ‘hear’), but also to stems that cannot take the third person singular -el suffix in Romani, such as perfective stems and nouns (e.g. ERR hájel/kajel ‘eat’ < Romani hāj-/xaj- ‘eat PFV’, ERR kulel ‘shit V’ < Romani khul ‘shit N’; cf. Hungarian csetel ‘chat V’ < English chat V), becoming an all-purpose adaptation marker.

Another example of this key strategy within the verbal morphology of ERR involves the Hungarian denominal suffix -(V)z(ik), reinterpreted in ERR as a deverbal adaptation marker, and most frequently containing the vowel component [aː], which never appears after consonant-final stems in standard Hungarian (e.g. ERR bes-ázik < Romani beš- ‘sit’). The use of the suffixes -(V)l and -(V)z(ik) in ERR also differs from their use in Hungarian in other ways, where these competing suffixes are supposed to be in complementary distribution, with -(V)z(ik) covering a broader domain; however, in rare cases, when the phonological and lexical criteria are in conflict, they may be used on the same word (Ladányi 2007), and this less frequent scenario is the one that is mirrored in ERR.

ERR also employs the strategy of reinterpretation in the domain of nouns. One example is the use of the Romani adaptation suffixes -o, -ó, -a, and -i, ultimately of Greek origin, which are added to non-Romani nouns when borrowing them into Romani, but in ERR, they are exclusively used with Romani-origin words (e.g. ERR dajó < Romani daj ‘mother’).

Another suffix used in the nominal morphology of ERR is -esz. This multi-functional suffix goes back to the second person singular present indicative suffix -es, possibly reinforced by another affix of the same form, -es-, most likely the Romani oblique singular marker of masculine nouns. In ERR, it primarily derives nouns from verbs, as seen in examples like csóresz ‘theft’ < R. čōr- ‘steal’ or szovesz ‘sleep N’ < R. sov- ‘sleep V’.

We will briefly discuss the functional and pragmatic aspects of using this kind of Romani morphology in ERR. Finally, we will highlight that the innovative features of ERR, such as its flexibility in incorporating Romani roots, the use and the reinterpretation of Romani linguistic features and the violations of the grammatical rules of standard Hungarian are rooted in linguistic creativity and serve to mark group identity.