Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- List of Abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 Angloromani: A Different Kind of Language?
- 2 The Roots of Romani
- 3 The Historical Position of British Romani
- 4 The Structural Composition of Angloromani
- 5 The Conversational Functions of Angloromani
- 6 Conclusions: The Decline, Death and Afterlife of a Language
- Appendix I Lexicon of Angloromani
- Appendix II Predecessor expressions by origin
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
4 - The Structural Composition of Angloromani
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- List of Abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 Angloromani: A Different Kind of Language?
- 2 The Roots of Romani
- 3 The Historical Position of British Romani
- 4 The Structural Composition of Angloromani
- 5 The Conversational Functions of Angloromani
- 6 Conclusions: The Decline, Death and Afterlife of a Language
- Appendix I Lexicon of Angloromani
- Appendix II Predecessor expressions by origin
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
The data corpus
The discussion in the following two chapters (as well as the documentation of Romani vocabulary in Appendix I) drawns on a corpus of interview recordings, carried out mainly between 2005 and 2008 with around forty individuals who describe themselves as English or Welsh Gypsies. They live in various parts of England and Wales, including the Northeast (County Durham and West Yorkshire), the Northwest (Lancashire and Cheshire), south Wales, West Midlands, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The great majority reside in mobile caravans (‘trailers’) but have usually been based in the same caravan site for a generation or even longer. Some have moved from caravans into houses sometime during the past decade but still keep caravans alongside the house, which they use either continuously for some members of the family, or just seasonally, when they travel to other parts of the country. Others, by far a small minority of those interviewed, tend to stay on one site for periods of between several months and two or three years and then move on to a different site in another part of the country. Seasonal travelling in caravans especially during the summer months and occasionally to fairs and other gatherings is common among all participants.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Romani in BritainThe Afterlife of a Language, pp. 95 - 129Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010