Patrin

Dedicated to Romani (Gypsy) culture and history and to extending awareness of the continuous Roma struggle to achieve and maintain dignity and freedom. Patrin is a learning resource and information centre about Romani culture, social issues, and current events.

Photos of the Rrom people at the site of Photographer Yves Leresche.

While the various tribes of the Rrom originated from India there are people who are known as Gypsies but who are not Rrom. The Travellers are of Irish or Scottish stock and speak a secret language they have constructed out of Irish English with borrowings from Romany and Irish Gaelic

Many words are alterations of existing words, often backwards spelling, swapped syllables, or at least altered vowels. One word has entered into mainstream English as "moniker" (name, nickname), which came from Shelta _munik_, supposedly a perverse form of Irish _ainm_ "name".cite

A Vocabulary of Shelta, transcribed from The Secret Languages of Ireland, by R. A. Stewart Macalister, Cambridge University Press 1937, gives fascinating examples of this little known language.

glodaχ ‘dirt’, ‘dirty’. That the mīdril may tarsp you, you glodach kriš bʹōrʹ ‘That the devil may kill you, you dirty old woman’ (G); glodach of the tʹera ‘dirt [i.e. ashes] of the fire’. Irish cladach ‘dirty’.

More information on Irish Travellers here