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Scottish Cant

Variety of the Romani language

Field	Value
name	Scottish Cant
altname	Scots-Romani
states	United Kingdom
region	Scotland
speakers	460 in Scotland
date	2011
ref	e25
familycolor	Indo-European
fam2	mixed language
iso3	trl
glotto	trav1235
glottorefname	Traveller Scottish
ethnicity	Scottish Romani

Scottish Cant, Scots Romani, Scotch Romani or the Scottish Romani language is a cant and variety of the Romani language spoken by Lowland Romani (Lowland Gypsies), who primarily live in the Scottish Lowlands.Kirk, J. & Ó Baoill, D. Travellers and their Language (2002) Queen's University Belfast

Classification

Up to 50% of Scottish Cant originates from Romani-derived lexicon.

The Scottish Gaelic element in the dialects of Scottish Cant is put anywhere between 0.8% and 20%.

Romani vocabulary

The percentage of traditional Romani lexical vocabulary is said to be up to 50% of the lexicon; some examples are:

gadgie "man" (Romani gadžó "a non-Romani person")
pannie "water" (Romani paní)

Use of archaic Scots

Scottish Cant uses numerous terms derived from Scots which are no longer current in Modern Scots as spoken by non-Travellers, such as mowdit "buried", mools "earth", both from muild(s), and gellie, from gailey (galley), "a bothy".

Gaelic influences

Loans from Gaelic include words like:

cluishes "ears" (Gaelic cluasan or cluais, a dative form of cluas "ear")
shain "bad" (Gaelic sean "old")

Recordings

Hamish Henderson and other folklorists recorded various conversations about the Scottish Cant language, with speakers including Lizzie Higgins and Jeannie Robertson. He also recorded Belle Stewart singing a version of "Dance to Your Daddy" in both Cant and Scots.

References

Wilde 1889, cited in Not just lucky white heather and clothes pegs: putting European Gypsies and Traveller economic niches in context. In: Ethnicity and Economy:Race and class revisited. C. Clark (2002). Strathclyde University.
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".
"Tobar an Dualchais".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

scots-dialects languages-of-scotland romani-in-scotland mixed-languages cant-languages endangered-languages-of-europe endangered-germanic-languages para-romani endangered-indo-european-languages

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