Do the Romani have a specific language?
Romani language
Romani (/ˈrɒməni, ˈroʊ-/;[9][10][11][12] also Romany; Romani: romani čhib) is any of several languages of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family.[13] According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own. The largest of these are Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers),[14] Balkan Romani (600,000),[15] and Sinte Romani (300,000).[16] Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.[17]
Rhaeto-Romance languages
Rhaeto-Romance, or Rhaetian, is a traditional subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in north and north-eastern Italy and in Switzerland. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of Rhaetia. The linguistic basis of the subfamily is discussed in the so-called Questione Ladina. The Rhaeto-Romance languages form a group of Romance languages in the Alps region of northern Italy and Switzerland. Initially studied by Italian Linguist Graziadio Ascoli in 1873, Ascoli found these languages to share a number of intricacies and believed they belonged to a specific linguistic group. What distinguishes Rhaeto-Romance languages from Italian and other Western languages are its phonemic vowel length (long stressed vowels), consonant formation, and a central rounded vowel series. A few notable examples of these languages are Romansh, Friulian and Ladin, which are officially recognized alongside German, French and Italian, by the Swiss and Italian governments respectively. In total there are about 660,000 speakers of the Rhaeto-Romance languages combined.