The Rom are known to western culture as nomads and travellers (peripatetics, in anthropological terminology), while to southeastern European society they are familiar as the lowest and most stigmatised social stratum. Stereotypes also surround the image of Romani, which is often thought to be synonymous with argot, jargon, or a set of distinct and historically unrelated speech varieties, referred to as ‘Gypsy languages’. While there is interface and even some overlap between Romani and argots, just as there is between the Rom and peripatetics, Romani is at its core a language like many others. The agenda of Romani linguistics is consequently similar to that of other fields of investigation in descriptive linguistics: it pursues questions relating to historical reconstruction and structural change, dialect diversification, discourse structure, language maintenance and loss, and more. This book sets out to introduce the structures of Romani and the current agenda of Romani linguistics; parts of it are also an attempt to introduce new ideas into the study of Romani.

Romani is the adjective (feminine singular) derived from řom, the historical self-designation of speakers of the language. As a language name, the adjective modifies čhib ‘language’, and so řomani čhib means ‘language of the řom’. It is by far the most widespread term for the language in modern linguistics, and so the most practical cover-term for its various dialects.