Caló (; ; ; ; ; ) is a mixed language spoken by the gitanos of Spain and the ciganos of Portugal. In Romani linguistics, it is considered a Para-Romani language based on Romance grammar, with an adstratum of Romani lexical items, through language shift by the Romani community. Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish are closely related varieties that share a common root.
Spanish caló, or Spanish Romani, was originally known as . Portuguese , or Portuguese Romani, also goes by the term ; it used to be referred to as , but this word has since acquired the general sense of jargon or slang, often with a negative undertone (cf. , 'obscene language', lit. low-level ).
The language is also spoken in Brazil, France, Venezuela, Portugal and Colombia.
Some Caló expressions have been borrowed into modern Spanish jerga (slang), such as ' (to seduce), ' (to work) and dar lache (to cringe in shame or embarrassment).
is the endonym of the Romani people in Iberia, and means 'the language spoken by the '. However, the are commonly known in Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries by the exonyms and .
In and other varieties of Romani, means 'black' or 'absorbing all light', hence closely resembling words for 'black' and/or 'dark' in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g. Sanskrit 'black', 'of a dark colour'). Hence and may have originated as ancient exonyms.
Caló has six vowels:
It has the following consonant inventory:
Notable phonological features of Iberian Caló are:
Spanish Romani:
Compare with a Spanish version:
The Lord's Prayer has often been used as a parallel text:
Spanish Caló:
Lovara Balkans Romani:
Spanish:
Many Caló terms have been borrowed in Spanish (especially as slangisms and colloquialisms), often through flamenco lyrics and criminal jargon ().
Examples are ("man/woman", from gadjo/gadji), ("boy", originally "son", also present in English as chav), ("money"), or ("to work"), ("excellent"), ("feet"), ("cold"), ("boy"), ("silly, stupid"), ("outstanding, genuine"), or ("god/goddess"), ("demon"), or in Spain ("to steal", also present in English slang as to chaw), ("to be appealing to someone"), ("bed"), ("eyes"), ("head"), ("face"), ("nose"), ("mouth"), ("shame"), ("vain"), ("bad, nasty, dodgy"), ("cheeky, soldier"), ("fake"), ("pretence, white lie"), ("slender, graceful"), or ("old"), ("to sleep"), or ("house"), ("house, gambling den"), ("to eat with great apetite"), ("hit"), ("to defecate, to fear"), ("to give, to die"), ("to die"), ("to get upset"), ("lame"), or ("crazy"), ("to leave", "to make oneself scarce"), ("to break"), ("to denounce sb, to squeal"), ("informer"), ("to pretend to be absent-minded"), pringar ("to get sb mixed up, to overdo"), ("to have sexual relations, to bother"), ("little"), ("to flee"), ("drink, to drink"), ("to steal"), ("no way, there isn't"), ("thief"), ("to intimidate"), ("to nick"), ("to nick"), ("shut your mouth"), or ("fear"), ("Romani person"), ("Romani person"), ("language of the Iberian Kale"), ("money"), ("drunkenness"), ("myself"), and ("heart"), payo ("non-Romani person, fool, easy to cheat").
Some words underwent a shift in meaning in the process: (etymologically related to Sanskrit kÃÂma, "love, desire") in colloquial Spanish has the meaning of "to woo, to seduce, to deceive by adulation" (but also "to love", "to want"; although this sense has fallen into disuse), but in Caló it more closely matches the Spanish meanings of ("to want" and "to love"). In addition and the noun can also mean either "lie" or "con".
Caló also appears to have influenced Madrid slang and quinqui, the language of another Iberian group of travellers who are not ethnically Romani. , a cant spoken by makers of agricultural equipment in a village of Segovia, also derives some words from Caló.
To a lesser extent than in Spanish, Caló terms have also been adapted into Catalan as slangisms and colloquialisms, most of which were taken adopted from Spanish slang.
Examples are ( or ; "to eat"), ("boy"), ("to die"), ("to die"), ("fear"), ("non-Romani person"), ("money"), ("language of the Iberian Kale"), ("prison"), ("to nick"), ("to nick"), ("to steal"), ("to steal"), ("to like"), ("to get sb mixed up, to overdo"), ("to leave, to make oneself scarce"), ("to sleep"), ("drink, to drink"), ("pleb"), ("shame"), ("stink"), ("outstanding, genuine"), ("to denounce sb, to squeal"), ("informer"), ("to get upset"), (lit. "Do a long one" fig. "to pretend to be thick/slow") and ("luck").
There are a small number of words of Caló (Calão) origin and many of those are indirect loans, borrowed via Spanish.
The examples generally understood by most or all speakers of Portuguese include (, "man, dude", primarily in Portugal), ("lad, young boy"), chunga ("bad, nasty, dodgy"), chibar-se ("to denounce sb, to squeal"), chibo ("informer"), (, , generally "impact", but in this sense "sudden happiness"), (, , "drunkenness"), ("bad smell of feet"), ("to leave"), and ("crazy").
There is a growing awareness and appreciation for Caló: "...until the recent work by Luisa Rojo, in the Autonomous University of Madrid, not even the linguistics community recognized the significance and problems of Caló and its world." Its world includes songs, poetry and flamenco.
As Iberian Romani proper is extinct and as Caló is endangered, some people are trying to revitalise the language. The Spanish politician Juan de Dios RamÃÂrez Heredia promotes Romanò-Kalò, a variant of International Romani, enriched by Caló words. His goal is to reunify the Caló and Romani roots.
In 1838, the first edition of Embéo E Majaró Lucas translated by George Borrow was published and began to be distributed in Madrid. This was Borrow's translation of the Gospel of Luke into Caló. A revision of this was printed in 1872.