Boyash

From Freepedia

Boyash (also known as Bayash; Hungarian: Beás) are a Roma (Gypsy) ethnic group living mainly in Hungary.

Their origins are unclear, but it is believed they were slaves in the Banat, where they were forced to abandon their language and to adopt Romanian language. They are currently speaking a distinct archaic dialect of Romanian, but heavily influenced by Hungarian and Roma borrowings.

What's notable about their language is that it was not touched by any of the 19th century language reforms and contains none of the neologism now common in standard Romanian, preserving now-lost features of the speech of Banat.

In 1993, about 14,000 of the 280,000 Hungarian Roma were Boyash.

In Croatia, the Bayash are settled in several small communities along the Hungarian border in the regions of Međemurije, the Podravina, Slavonja and The Baranja. In 2005, the Croatian Bayash language was published with its own alphabet for the first time in the Catholic Catechism published by the HBK Glas Konica in Zagreb.

References

• Kemény, István: The Structure of Hungarian Roma Groups in Light of Linguistic Changes