VARIABILITY OF SPELLING SYSTEMS IN ROMANI DICTIONARIES PUBLISHED IN HUNGARY BETWEEN 1797 AND 1935

The study argues that based on the analysis of 48 Hungarian Romani dictionaries, the works can be chronologically dated, and the first phase (1797–1935) is also important from an orthographic point of view since in this period we find spontaneous writing systems that were no longer used for scientific or educational purposes. The analysis has revealed that the choice of letters was not only motivated by individual intuition and mutual copying but also by an intended adaptation to Hungarian orthography and the written representation of special sounds in the Romani language. This resulted in a high degree of variability. In addition, sounds were marked inconsistently, with special regard to vowel length, aspirated sounds, and the velar fricative. This general inconsistency means that the sources do not come from a single informant even if the author said so and that a thorough examination of the dictionaries requires knowledge based on fieldwork so that a distinction can be made between error and dialectal variation.