Romani is a language of Indo-Aryan origin which is spoken in Europe by the people known as 'Gypsies' (who usually refer to themselves as Rom). There are upwards of 3.5 million speakers, and their language has attracted increasing interest both from scholars and from policy-makers in governments and other organizations during the past ten years. This 2002 book is the first comprehensive overview in English of Romani. It provides a historical linguistic introduction to the structures of Romani and its dialects, as well as surveying the phonology, morphology, syntactic typology and patterns of grammatical borrowing in the language. This book provides an essential reference for anyone interested in this fascinating language.

"Matras...has planted on the sands a massive boulder of contribution to knowledge that will not be swept away by any tides." American Journal of Sociology
"The book will be of tremendous use to a broad range of scholars -- not only linguists but also social scientists and other students in various humanistic disciplines. There is nothing like it available in any language, and it fills a pressing need." Romani Studies

Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester. His research interests include the interface of linguistic typology, discourse pragmatics and language processing and language change, as well as multilingualism and dialects. He has published widely on the linguistics of Romani and on language contact. His books include Language Contact (Cambridge University Press, 2009).