romany, ramana, rammany

[Gipsy Roma man, a husband; connected by Paspati with the name of the Indian god Rama, while Miklosich identifies it with Sansc. dom a, domba =a low caste musician.] 1. A gipsy. 2. The language spoken by gipsies. (It is nowhere to be found pure now, being in every case much corrupted by intermixture with the languages of the nations among whom the gipsies have lived.) "Whether Romani is derived from Indi, Marathi, ., can only be determined by minute investigations, which, long neglected, are now being carried on by various Orientalists. They have at least established that Romani stands in the relation of a sister, not a daughter, to the seven principal Indian dialects." -Encyc. Brit . (ed. 9th), x. 614.