Loanwords in Selice Romani, an Indo-Aryan language of Slovakia 1 ...

loanwords have been lost in Selice Romani but are continued in other Romani dialects
(‘donkey’, ‘tree’, and perhaps also ‘well, source’). Of a different origin – perhaps
Burushaski, perhaps Semitic, perhaps Anatolian (cf. Mayrhofer 1986–2001: I, 499,
Witzel 1999a: 29, 55) – might be the Proto-Indo-Iranian etymon for ‘wheat’, whose Old
Indo-Aryan reflex godhū́ma- has developed into Early Romani *giv (e.g. Turner 1962–
1966: 230). The Selice Romani equivalent šužo jiv ‘wheat’, which can be literally
translated as ‘clean snow’, must have developed through confusion of an older *ďiv
‘wheat’ (still attested in closely related Rumungro dialects, cf. Vekerdi 2000: 56) and
the near-homonymous noun jiv ‘snow’ (which reflects Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰim-
‘cold etc.’, e.g. Mayrhofer 1986–2001: II, 815).
Finally, Proto-Indo-European *medʰu- ‘sweet drink, honey’ is, according to
Witzel (1999a: 55–56), a loanword from an unknown paleo-Eurasian language of
eastern Europe or northern Central Asia. If Boretzky & Igla (1994: 183) are correct in
deriving Romani mol ‘wine’ from Old Indo-Aryan mádhu- ‘honey, mead’, then this
etymon may be the oldest quotable loanword in Selice Romani. However, a much later
borrowing into Romani of Persian mol ‘wine’ (e.g. Turner 1962–1966: 562; Mānušs et
al. 1997: 87), itself of the same origin, appears to be a more convincing hypothesis on
both formal and semantic grounds.
3.2. Contact with non-Indo-Aryan Indian languages
As an Indo-Aryan language, Selice Romani inherits traces of linguistic contacts of its
Old and Middle Indo-Aryan ancestor varieties with non-Indo-Aryan languages of India.
Kuiper (1991) has shown that already Rgveda, the pre-iron age Old Indo-Aryan text of
the Greater Panjab, contains several hundreds of clearly non-Indo-Aryan words. While
the presence of Dravidian loanwords in Old Indo-Aryan has long been recognized (e.g.
Burrow 1945, 1946, 1947–8; Burrow & Emeneau 1960, 1984; Southworth 2005a,
2005b), Witzel (1999a, 1999b) argues that they started to enter the language only in the
middle and late Rgvedic periods. The earliest Rgvedic period, on the other hand, is
characterized by loanwords from undocumented Greater Panjab substrates. Following
Kuiper’s (e.g. 1948, 1991) work on Proto-Munda loanwords in Old Indo-Aryan, Witzel
(1999a) refers to the major Rgvedic substrate as Para-Mundic and considers it to be a
western variety of Austroasiatic. The number of both Dravidian and (Para/Proto-)Munda
loanwords in Indo-Aryan increases in post-Vedic times (Burrow 1973: 386, Witzel
1999a: 34). In addition, a number of unidentified substrate languages, such as Masica’s
Elšík Loanwords in Selice Romani 6 of 65