The reflection of traditional Gypsy values, attitudes, symbols and life experience in the argot lexic of Roma origin
Abstract
The argot of many European languages is characterized by a wide contribution of Roma origin words. Focusing especially on Spanish and some of the Central European languages (Czech, Hungarian, Romanian) we compare the presence of such Romani origin words in the colloquial language and argot and classify them according to various criteria (e.g. original meaning conservation, modification or change), into several semantic groups.
These groups, present in every investigated language, prove a striking lexical similarity.