A Vlax Romani variety with a long history in Romania and the Balkans. Traditionally associated with coppersmith trades.
Lovari
A Vlax Romani variety with strong Hungarian and Slavic influence. Spoken across Central Europe.
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Frequently asked questions
What language is Lovari?
Lovari is a dialect of the Romani language.
Where is Lovari spoken?
Lovari is primarily spoken in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria.
Which region is Lovari associated with?
Lovari is part of the Europe region on DialectAtlas.
What are the other dialects of Romani?
Romani also includes Kalderash, Arli, Gurbeti, Sinte Manouche, Baltic Romani, Central European Romani, Zargari, Romanichal, Welsh Romani, Finnish Kalo, Scandoromani, Caló, Ruska Roma, Ursari, Crimean Romani. Each variety has its own vocabulary, pronunciation, and cultural context.
Other Romani dialects
See on the atlas →A Balkan Romani variety spoken widely across North Macedonia, Kosovo, southern Serbia, and Bulgaria.
A Balkan Romani variety with communities across Bosnia, Serbia, and surrounding countries.
Sinti · Manush · Sinté
A northwestern Romanes variety spoken by Sinti and Manouche communities across Germany, France, the Benelux, and northern Italy. Shaped by long contact with Germanic and Romance languages.
Polska Roma · Xaladitka Roma
A northern Romani variety historically rooted in Poland and the Baltic region, shaped by long contact with Slavic and Baltic languages.
Central Slovak Romani · Servika Roma
A Central European Romanes variety spoken by Romanes communities in Slovakia, with strong contact-influenced vocabulary from Slovak, Hungarian, and neighbouring languages.
Zargari Romani · Zargari Romanes · Zargar Romani
A highly endangered Romani variety spoken in and around the village of Zargar in Qazvin province of north-western Iran, west of Tehran. The community is traditionally said to have been settled in the Safavid period and is one of the easternmost Romani-speaking populations on record; the dialect retains a Romani lexical core but shows heavy contact influence from Persian and Azerbaijani Turkish in phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Speaker numbers are small and intergenerational transmission has weakened sharply.
Angloromani · British Romani · Pogadi Chib
The Romani variety of the Romanichal Travellers of England and the wider British Isles. The older inflected dialect is no longer spoken; it survives as Angloromani, a para-Romani register in which a substantial Romani-derived lexicon is embedded in an English grammatical frame. Diaspora communities exist in North America and Australia.
Kååle · Welsh Kale
The inflected Northern Romani variety historically spoken by the Kååle of Wales. It was extensively documented by John Sampson in the early twentieth century and is now extinct as a first language, the last fluent speakers having died in the mid-twentieth century. It is notable as the last conservatively inflected Romani dialect attested in Britain.
Kaale · Finnish Kaale · Fíntiko Rómma
A Northern Romani variety spoken by the Finnish Kale in Finland and, through twentieth-century migration, in Sweden. It shows heavy structural and phonological influence from Finnish, including consonant gradation, and is one of the most distinctive Northern Romani dialects. Intergenerational transmission has weakened markedly.
Tavringer Romani · Traveller Romani · Rommani
A para-Romani variety spoken by Traveller communities in Sweden and Norway, combining a Romani-derived lexicon with a Scandinavian grammatical frame. It descends from the speech of Romani groups present in the region since the sixteenth century and survives today largely as an in-group vocabulary register.
Iberian Romani · Zincaló · Caló Romani
The Iberian para-Romani variety spoken by the Calé (Gitanos) of Spain and, in related forms, Portugal and southern France. A Romani-derived lexicon is embedded in a Castilian (or Catalan/Portuguese) grammatical frame; the older inflected Iberian Romani is no longer spoken. Caló vocabulary has left a marked imprint on Andalusian Spanish and flamenco.
Russian Romani · North Russian Romani · Xaladitka Roma
A Northern Romani variety spoken by the Ruska Roma across Russia and Ukraine, shaped by long and intensive contact with Russian. It was the basis of a short-lived literary standard developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s and remains one of the more vital Northern Romani dialects.
Ursaritska · Rićhinari
A Balkan Romani variety spoken in Romania and Moldova, traditionally associated with the Ursari, the Roma groups historically known as bear-leaders. It is grouped with the Balkan dialects rather than the surrounding Vlax varieties and shows substantial Romanian contact influence.
Krymitika Roma · Crimean Roma
A Balkan Romani variety spoken by Roma communities of the Crimean peninsula and the northern Black Sea coast, marked by heavy contact influence from Crimean Tatar and other Turkic languages in both lexicon and phonology.
Nearby dialects
See on the atlas →0 km away
A Ugric Uralic language, the largest of the Uralic family by speakers and the official language of Hungary. Reached its current location through the Magyar migrations of the 9th century.
138 km away
A Central European Romanes variety spoken by Romanes communities in Slovakia, with strong contact-influenced vocabulary from Slovak, Hungarian, and neighbouring languages.
193 km away
A Croatian minority language of Burgenland in eastern Austria, descended from Croatian-speaking refugees and settlers who arrived in the Habsburg borderlands from the sixteenth century onward. It has its own literary tradition and is used in bilingual education, church life, and minority media.
214 km away
The urban Bavarian dialect of Vienna, layered with Yiddish, Czech, and Italian loanwords from the city's long Habsburg history.
236 km away
The Slovenian variety of the Prekmurje region between the Mura and the Hungarian border. Carries a separate literary tradition that developed independently from the central standard until the 20th century.
261 km away
The Czech varieties of Moravia. Internally diverse; eastern Moravian dialects sit close to Slovak in several features.
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Sources & corpora
Data on Lovari from open scholarly databases. Each link opens the source in a new tab.