Domari Language

Domari (dōmari) is the language of the Dom (dōm), communities of Indian origin who live scattered across the Middle East, from Iran and Iraq to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Jerusalem and southeastern Türkiye. Like Hindi or Punjabi it belongs to the Indo-Aryan family, so its oldest words are Indian, but its speakers left India many centuries ago and have lived among Arabic, Persian, Kurdish and Turkish speakers ever since.

The Dom were long known as travelling smiths, tinsmiths, musicians and entertainers; most are settled today. Their neighbours have many names for them, some of them insulting, such as Nawar in Arabic, but the community's own name is Dom. Domari is above all a spoken language, passed on at home, and in many places children now grow up speaking only the language of the majority.

Centuries of everyday bilingualism have left a deep Arabic layer in the Domari of the Arab world. It is not only words: Arabic conjunctions, modal words and the comparative forms of adjectives are used inside Domari sentences, which has made Domari a textbook case in the study of how languages borrow grammar.

The Domari alphabet: Arabic letters and Latin transcription

There is no official Domari alphabet and no standard spelling. When speakers write Domari, in messages, song lyrics or community material, they use the script they went to school in. In Arab countries that is the Arabic alphabet, the 28 letters from ا to ي with their hamza forms أ إ ؤ ئ ء. Arabic letters have no p, no ch and, in standard use, no hard g, all of which Domari has, so writers borrow the Persian letters پ (p), چ (ch) and گ (g), and ژ for the zh sound. In Iran, where people learn the Persian alphabet, Domari is written with Persian spelling, which uses ک and ی instead of the Arabic ك and ي.

Arabic script leaves short vowels unwritten, which works for Arabic words a reader already knows but not for unfamiliar Domari ones. The optional vowel marks fatha َ (a), damma ُ (u) and kasra ِ (i), sukun ْ (no vowel) and shadda ّ (a doubled consonant) can clarify pronunciation; Domari also has short e and o vowels.

Linguists who record Domari write it in Latin transcription instead. Long vowels get a macron (ā ē ī ō ū); the háček letters č, ǰ, š and ž stand for ch, j, sh and zh; x is the kh sound of Arabic خ and ġ its partner غ; ḥ and ʕ write the Arabic throat sounds ح and ع, which Domari uses in its many Arabic words. These transcription letters belong in this collection because they are the letters in which Domari grammars, word lists and research articles are printed.

How to type Domari letters

For the Arabic-script letters, a Persian keyboard is the easiest choice: it is built into Windows, macOS, Android and iOS and has پ چ ژ گ on their own keys, along with the shared Arabic letters. An Arabic keyboard has the 28 Arabic letters and the vowel marks but not the four added ones, so copy those from this page. In Microsoft Word you can type a code and press Alt+X: 067E gives پ, 0686 چ, 0698 ژ and 06AF گ.

For the Latin transcription, the same Alt+X trick works in Word: 010D č, 01F0 ǰ, 0161 š, 017E ž, 0121 ġ, 1E25 ḥ, 0295 ʕ, 0101 ā, 0113 ē, 012B ī, 014D ō, 016B ū. On a Mac, the ABC – Extended input source gives the macron with Option+A and the háček with Option+V, followed by the letter. On phones, long-press c, s or z for č š ž and a vowel for ā ē ī ō ū. Few keyboards have a key for ǰ or ʕ (ǰ comes from a háček dead key, ʕ from a specialist layout such as SIL's IPA keyboard), so tap them on this page to copy them; in HTML they are ǰ and ʕ.

Where the Domari language is spoken

Domari communities live in many countries but nowhere form a large region of their own, so speaker numbers are very uncertain. CLDR estimates about 1.7 million speakers and lists them all under Iran 🇮🇷; other counts are far smaller, because many Dom families have shifted to Arabic, Persian, Kurdish or Turkish and censuses do not ask about Domari.

The best-documented variety is the Domari of Jerusalem, spoken by a small community in the Old City near the Lions' Gate. It is critically endangered: fluent speakers are mostly older people, and younger Dom speak Arabic. Other dialects have been recorded in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and southeastern Türkiye; Iraq has older records, but whether Domari is still spoken there today is uncertain. The languages Domari speakers live with have their own collections: Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Persian and Kurdish, and the Iran collection has the country's flag, food and emoji.

Domari and Romani

Domari is often called a sister of Romani, the language of the Roma of Europe, and the two do share a history: both peoples came from India, and their names Dom and Rom, like that of the Lom of Armenia, go back to the Indian word ḍom, a name for groups of travelling musicians and craftspeople. Both languages also have their own word for an outsider: Domari kaǰǰa, Romani gadžo.

They are nevertheless separate languages whose speakers cannot understand each other, and linguists think their ancestors left India separately or parted long ago. Romani took in Greek, then Slavic and other European words, while Domari took in Arabic, Persian, Kurdish and Turkish, so a Rom and a Dom speaking their own languages would recognise only a few shared old words.