Strategies for creating an explanatory Bayash dictionary in Serbia

Abstract

The Bayash are Roma ethnic groups speaking different dialects of the Romanian language and living on the territory of many European states. The Bayash dialects cannot be considered a language of its own, since they preserved the crucial features of the Romanian language, the most important changes occurring in the lexicon. The article takes into discussion the possible elaboration of an explanatory Bayash dictionary in Serbia and tries to offer some analytical perspectives. The author suggests that such a dictionary cannot be a general normative document, but, inevitably, a dialectal dictionary, being based upon one of the varieties. She also proposes the use of a Romanian-based phonetic transcription, which would enable the comparison between her results and those of other Romanian linguists who have studied these Romanian dialects.