Domari populations

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Domari populations

dusseaux.antoine_289191, Sun, 2022-05-29 06:29
Regarding: 
Population
State
Closed
ISO 639-3: 
rmt

Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Sudan should probably be mentioned:

"Very little is known about the history of the Dōm and much of what is stated about them relies on linguistic evidence. The language is known to be spoken in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and probably also Iraq and Iran, although there is no direct evidence that Domari is still spoken in these last two countries (see below). The so-called Gypsies of Egypt (ġaǧar in Modern Standard Arabic) and the Ḥalab of Sudan both speak Arabic but kept a secret lexicon, partly based on Domari (Matras 2006). There are very few reliable figures about the number of Dōm, let alone the number of speakers. According to Matras (Matras 1999:4), the Jerusalem community does not exceed 600-700. Other figures are given by Meyer for Damascus about which he says that “In Sayyida Zaineb, the largest Dōm settlement, their number lies between 4000 and 10000” (Meyer 2004:76). The other Dōm population for which I was given estimations is that of the Diyarbakir province in eastern Turkey where their number is believed to be 14000, of which 3000 are in the city of Diyarbakir itself (Adrian Marsh, p.c.). The Dōm community of Aleppo is probably one of the biggest in Syria and it is very plausible that their number exceeds a couple of thousand. In Syria, apart from Damascus and Aleppo, other groups are reported mainly in Ḥomṣ and Latakieh."

Source: Herin, B. (2012). "The Domari language of Aleppo (Syria)" Linguistic Discovery 10 (2), 1-52.

Editorial Action

We will update the ethnic populations for Domari [rmt] in various countries (Palestine, Syria, and Turkey), for inclusion in the next edition of the Ethnologue.

Comments

Chuck Fennig, Fri, 2022-06-03 15:34

Dear Antoine,

Thank you for this information on Domari [rmt] speakers from Bruno Herin. We have been in communication with him and others over the years. In older editions of the Ethnologue, we had Domari spoken in 13 different countries by almost 4 million speakers. What we have now is quite a bit closer to reality!

I will look at this more closely to consider what changes we need to make for this language.

Best regards,

Chuck Fennig
Managing Editor, Ethnologue

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