Romani is a language of Indo-Aryan origin which is spoken in Europe by the people known as 'Gypsies' (who usually refer to themselves as Rom). There are upwards of 3.5 million speakers, and their language has attracted increasing interest both from scholars and from policy makers in governments and other organisations during the past ten years. This book is the first comprehensive overview in English of Romani. It provides a historical linguistic introduction to the structures of Romani and its dialects, as well as surveying the phonology, morphology, syntactic typology, and patterns of grammatical borrowing in the language. This book provides an essential reference for anyone interested in this fascinating language. - Offers a new model of dialect classification - Describes the sociolinguistic situation of the language - Examines its contribution to other languages and slangs - Discusses recent and current codification attempts and changes in function and status