Domari language

Domari
Dōmʋārī, Dōmʋārī ǧib, Dômarî ĵib, دٛومَرِي‎, דּוֹמָרִי‎
Native toAzerbaijan, Mauritania, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Sudan, and perhaps neighboring countries[1]
RegionMiddle East and North Africa, Caucasus, Central Asia
EthnicityDom
Native speakers
280,000 (2015)[2]
Dialects
  • Northern Domari
  • Southern Domari
Latin, Arabic, Hebrew
Language codes
ISO 639-3rmt
Glottologdoma1258
Domari is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Domari is an endangered Indo-Aryan language, spoken by Dom people scattered across the Middle East and North Africa. The language is reported to be spoken as far north as Azerbaijan and as far south as central Sudan, in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon.[1] Based on the systematicity of sound changes, it is known with a fair degree of certainty that the names Domari and Romani derive from the Indo-Aryan word ḍom.[4] Although they are both Central Indo-Aryan languages, Domari and Romani do not derive from the same immediate ancestor.[5] The Arabs referred to them as Nawar as they were a nomadic people that originally immigrated to the Middle East from the Indian subcontinent.[6]

Domari is also known as "Middle Eastern Romani", "Tsigene", "Luti", or "Mehtar". There is no standard written form. In the Arab world, it is occasionally written using the Arabic script and has many Arabic and Persian loanwords.[7] Descriptive work was done by Yaron Matras,[8] who published a comprehensive grammar of the language along with a historical and dialectological evaluation of secondary sources.[1]

Domari is an endangered language, as there is currently pressure to shift away from it in younger generations, according to Yaron Matras.[9] In certain areas such as Jerusalem, only about 20% of the Dom people speak the Domari language in everyday interactions. The language is mainly spoken by the elderly in the Jerusalem community. The younger generation are more influenced by Arabic, therefore most only know basic words and phrases. The modern-day community of Doms in Jerusalem was established by the nomadic people deciding to settle inside the Old City from 1940 until it came under Israeli administration in 1967 (Matras 1999).[10]

  1. ^ a b c Matras 2012.
  2. ^ Domari at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) Closed access icon
  3. ^ Herin 2016.
  4. ^ "History of the Romani language". Romani Project. University of Manchester. Archived from the original on 2023-01-26. Retrieved 20 December 2017.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Matras2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Matras 2000.
  7. ^ Williams 2000.
  8. ^ Matras 1996.
  9. ^ Matras 1999.
  10. ^ Language Contact. p. 57.