Romani Loanwords in English
Romani has lent several words to English such as lollipop, gibberish, pal (ultimately from Sanskrit bhrātar "brother") or nark "informant" (from Romani nāk "nose"). Other Romani words in general slang are gadgie (man), shiv or chiv (knife). Some are regional, such as radge (adj. bad or angry, noun a state of irritation) in southeast Scotland and northeast England; jougal (dog) in southeast Scotland; as well as paani (water) in Yorkshire in England. Urban British slang shows an increasing level of Romani influence, with some words becoming accepted into the lexicon of standard English (for example, chav from an assumed Anglo-Romani word, meaning "small boy", in the majority of dialects).
Occasionally loanwords from other Indo-Iranian languages such as Hindi are mistakenly labelled as Romani due to surface similarities (due to a shared root), such as cushy, which is from Hindi (itself a loan from Persian kuš) meaning "excellent, healthy, happy".
Read more about this topic: Romani Language
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