What is it about?
We studied how a Romani dialect used by musicians in the town of Ipolyság in 19th-century Hungary began to lose its masculine–feminine gender system. The speakers were bilingual in Hungarian, a language without gender, and this contact likely triggered the change. Our findings suggest that the urban environment may also have played a role in accelerating this grammatical simplification.
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Why is it important?
Our study is the first to document the gradual loss of grammatical gender in a historical Romani variety using original 19th-century texts written by Romani speakers themselves. This provides rare evidence of such structural language change within Romani. It also shows how bilingualism and urban life can shape grammatical systems, a topic that remains highly relevant for understanding language contact and change today.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a real pleasure for us because it brought together several of our interests—language contact, historical sources, and sociolinguistic change. Working with texts written by Romani speakers themselves was fascinating and sometimes moving, as these voices are rarely visible in linguistic research. We hope the study helps readers better understand how gender systems in languages can change and adapt in bilingual and urban contexts.
Márton A. Baló
Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Gender reduction in contact, Diachronica, December 2023, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/dia.22011.bal.
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