Linguistic Features
The research by Muñoz and Lopez de Mungia has confirmed that Erromintxela is not derived from Caló, the mixed Spanish-Romani language spoken throughout Spain, but is instead based on Kalderash Romani and the Basque language. The vocabulary appears to be almost exclusively Romani in origin; the grammar however, both morphology and syntax, derives from various Basque dialects. Few traces appear to remain of Romani grammatical structures. The language is incomprehensible to speakers of both Basque and of Caló.
Typologically, Erromintxela displays the same features as the Basque dialects it derives its grammatical structures from. Its case marking follows the ergative–absolutive pattern where the subject of an intransitive verb is in the absolutive case (which is unmarked), the same case being used for the direct object of a transitive verb. The subject of a transitive verb is marked with the ergative case. Similarly, auxiliary verbs agree with the subject and any direct object and indirect object present and verb forms are marked for allocutive (i.e. a marker is used to indicate the gender of the addressee).
Since both Erromintxela and Caló derive from Romani, many Erromintxela words are similar to Spanish Caló and Catalan Caló.
| Erromintxela | Caló | Root | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| baro | varó/baró | baró | large, big |
| dui(l) | dui | dúj | two |
| guruni | guruñí | gurumni | cow |
| kani(a) | casní, caní | khajní | hen, chicken |
| latxo, latxu | lachó (fem. lachí) | lačhó | good |
| mandro(a) | manró, marró | manró | bread |
| nazaro, lazaro | nasaló (fem. nasalí) | nasvalí | bread |
| panin(a) | pañí | paní | water |
| pinro(a), pindru(a) | pinrró | punró | foot |
| trin, tril | trin | trin | three |
| zitzai(a) | chichai | čičaj | large, big |
Read more about this topic: Erromintxela Language
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