Scandoromani also known as Tavringer Romani and the Tattare language, is a North Germanic

North Germanic languages

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...

 based Para-Romani

Para-Romani

Para-Romani is a term used in Romani linguistics to refer non-Romani languages adopted by Romani communities but with considerable admixture from Romani. Some Para-Romani have no structural features at all, taking only the vocabulary from Romani. The technical term in linguistics for such a...

. It is currently spoken by the Norwegian and Swedish Travellers, a Romani minority community, in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 (ca. 25,000 speakers) and Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 (ca. 6,000 speakers).

"Scandoromani" is a term coined by academics. In Sweden, Scandoromani is referred to as resande rommani (Traveller Romani) or svensk rommani (Swedish Romani), while in Norway the same language is known as norsk romani (Norwegian Romani).

Like Angloromani in Britain and Caló (Spanish Romani)

Caló (Spanish Romani)

Caló is a language spoken by the Spanish and Portuguese Romani. It is a mixed language based on Romance grammar, with an adstratum of Romani lexical items through language shift by the Romani community. It is often used as an argot, a secret language for discreet communication amongst Iberian...

 in Spain, Scandoromani draws upon a (now extinct) vocabulary of inflected Romani. Much of the original Romani grammar, however, has been lost to the users, and they now communicate in Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 or Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

 grammar. Scandoromani must not be confused with the Rodi language

Rodi language

Rodi, also known by the ambiguous term Traveller Norwegian, is a language spoken by the indigenous Norwegian Travellers in Norway. It is an offshoot of Norwegian with significant influence of Sinti, Rotwelsch and, especially in recent decades, Scandoromani...

.

There is no standarised form of Scandoromani, so variations exist in vocabulary, pronunciation, and usage, depending on the speaker. In print, Scanodromani words are often written with Swedish (S) or Norwegian (N) letters (ä, æ, ø, å) and letter combinations to represent Romani sounds, e.g., tj- (ɕ) or kj- (ç alt. tʃ) to represent the Romani č tʃ and čh tʃʰ. Some examples of Scandoromani variant spellings are: tjuro (S) / kjuro (N) 'knife'; gräj (S) / grei (N) 'horse'.

Suggested further reading

(A lexicon and grammatical overview of Swedish Scandoromani; includes several Traveller song texts in extenso)

External links

• Scandoromani-Norwegian word list
• Examples of Scandoromani text from the websites of the Swedish Parliament and the Swedish Language Council