Bulgarian Instagram user Hristiyan recently shared a video highlighting the striking similarities between the Romani gypsy language and Hindi. Hristiyan explained that he comes from one of the oldest Bulgarian Roma gypsy tribes — “my ancestors left India 1,500 years ago,” he revealed.
Despite the long passage of time, the Romani gypsy language has retained many similarities with Hindi, Urdu, and other Indo-Aryan languages.
Who are the Romani people?
The Romani people — also known as Roma or Romanies — are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who historically led a nomadic lifestyle. Today, they are spread across many countries, with significant populations in Eastern and Central Europe, particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia.
The English term “Gypsies” (or “Gipsies”) has long been used as an exonym for the Romani people, though “Roma” is now the preferred term.
Linguistic and genetic studies trace the Roma’s ancestry back to South Asia, specifically to the regions corresponding to present-day Punjab, Rajasthan, and Sindh in northwest India and Pakistan. Their migration towards Europe is believed to have occurred in several waves between the 5th and 11th centuries, with the earliest groups arriving in Europe sometime between the 7th and 14th centuries.
Romani language vs Hindi
Romani is an Indo-Aryan language with many dialects. Hristiyan, a member of a Romani tribe from Bulgaria, recently teamed up with an Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi speaker to show how similar their languages are to each other.
{{/usCountry}}Romani is an Indo-Aryan language with many dialects. Hristiyan, a member of a Romani tribe from Bulgaria, recently teamed up with an Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi speaker to show how similar their languages are to each other.
{{/usCountry}}The video shows how they use the same word for objects like water (“paani”) and ear (“kaan”).
Other words show striking similarities, like “kaangli” in Romani becomes “kanghi” in Urdu and Hindi, while “bakro” becomes “bakra”.
In Hristiyan’s dialect of Romani, the word for snake is “saanp”, and fish is called “machcho”. In the same vein, several words of the Romani language would be easily recognisable to people who speak Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati.
The similarities shocked internet users.
“I am shocked. I knew that they originated from India, but I have never expected that Gypsy languages can be so close Hindi/Urdu,” wrote one viewer.
“OMG! How is that possible?” another asked.
“This video is a masterpiece of linguistics, history and semiotic,” an Instagram user said.
One Bulgarian woman recalled: “I remember my dad once told me how, when he was a teenager in the 1960s, he’d go to the cinema, and little Roma kids would sneak in to watch Bollywood movies. Later they’d say they understood everything - that the actors were speaking Romani!”
“My parents speak a rural dialect of Bengali from Kustia... I think we're long lost cousins. Linguistically,” said one viewer.