Can you guys post some history and legends about Gypsies/Romany?
I'm taking a class about their language and culture in Spring and would like to find out more about them.
>>70718
https://www.youtube.com/v/watch?v=iiTE3tfe7qM
>gyppo """"""""culture""""'""
Don't do it to yourself
>>70718
Their culture, like everything else they have, has been stolen from someone.
Fucking gypsies, man
Excuse my ignorance but what's the deal with gypsies? There are none in my country so I'm not really aware of why people hate them and how their culture works and stuff like that
>>70718
>tfw no gypsy gf
Why even live?
>>74565
Their culture is extremely insular and focuses on not cooperating with outsiders. An individual gypsy just can't have what most people would consider a normal and productive life because of it. If they try then their family and community disowns them, harasses them, and attacks them outright. So all they generally end up being from an outsider's point of view is leeches and criminals. There are a few pragmatic exceptions that they make, like having the smartest kid in a given community become a lawyer so he can protect the others, but those are rare.
>>74772
This.
Gypsies are extremely isolated and xenophobic. They live in communities of gypsies only and they don't give a shit if it hurts other non-gypsies. I would like to call them Jews: 2015 edition, but I really don't want to shitpost on this newly created board.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romany_crucifixion_legend
The condemnative story is that as he made the nails to crucify Jesus Christ, the blacksmiths were condemned to wander the earth and never settle.
Another version does not condemn blacksmiths. It says that the blacksmith was addressed by God in a dream, where he was told to make four nails, but only hand over three, as the fourth was intended to pierce the heart of Jesus. In return God gave his descendants the right to wander the earth (rather than cursing them to it) and also the right to steal from non-Romanies, without breaking the commandment Thou shalt not steal.
>>75620
>developed ex nihilo or was it a reaction to how other cultures treated them?
The latter. Either way, their culture still lingers around and is still fucking toxic, no matter how bad other people treated them before.
>>75620
Why would it matter either way?
Legends say that they developed their practices back when they were exiled from india or something like that.
>>75620
Give me an example of a cultural trend that developed ex nihilo.
Not a single person in this thread (me included) answered the question. Is it really that hard to not be /pol/?
>>75953
Have you ever met a gypsy irl?
>>75953
I don't have anything to contribute, sorry. Give the board a little longer, gradually the idiots will disappear so long as everyone else can stop being paranoid as well. Maybe try /x/. It's shit and full of children now, but you might have some luck finding legends and folklore. You'd have had better luck in '07, but I'm sure there are still some people there who'll have stories to tell or info to give.
>>75953
>Is it really that hard to not be /pol/?
Well apparently it is, since you just called yourself /pol/ by your own definition. Go back to /pol/.
>>70718
They were originally from northern India but were expelled and began to migrate west. Unable or unwilling to settle anywhere permanemtly, they eventually found their way to Europe, where people believed them to be from Egypt, hence the name "Gypsy". They faced enormous oppression and discrimination and never legitimately had a chance to settle anywhere permanently. Some eventually came over to the United States.
In my city, Cincinnati, Ohio, Spring Grove Cemetary allowed some Scottish traveller families to bury their dead after others rejected them. Now they return every year on Memorial day to decorate their graves. Scottish travellers are unrelated to the Romani, but are another group of nomads people called gypsies.
>>70718
I admit I don't know anything about gypsies, but I only know two legends from them.
This one is from the origin of gypsies:
>According to a legend reported in Shahnameh and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, men and women, lute playing experts. When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox and a donkey and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music gratuitously for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags on their asses and go wandering around the world.
And this one is about the reason of why they justify their behaviours
>Jesus was dying on the cross, and a young gypsy who was walking there, risked his life to steal one of the nails from the cross in front of the Roman soldiers, just so that he could ease Jesus' suffering. Jesus in turn blessed all of the gypsies and allowed them to steal from the non-gypsies.
>>76516
Interesting. Why were other communities so resistant to the idea of allowing Gypsies to bury their dead in local cemeteries?
>>77031
http://cincymagazine.com/Main/Articles/Beyond_the_Graves_2941.aspx
Apparently they let them bury a king on credit, so they were "resistant" in that they didn't trust them to pay.
>>75953
It isn't just /pol/ shit, if you start learning anything about gypsies in Europe, you realize that it's one of the most depressing examples of cultural contact in the modern world, certainly the worst in the European world.
For various reasons, gypsies were never allowed to integrate, nor really desired to integrate, and in Eastern Europe communism only made things worse, because the governments made attempts at settling down and incorporating the gypsies - but only half-assedly.
So once communism fell and people just stopped giving any shits at all about doing something about the gypsies, they were left with an especially cancerous product - the gypsies had lost a lot of their old lifestyle, but remained completely isolated from society, with an us-vs-them mentality understandably heightened by the holocaust and commie years, and by the continual shitty treatment they receive.
Mainstream Eastern European society doesn't let gypsies integrate, and gypsies don't want to, generally. You get exceptions, but generally speaking you just have two mutually hostile cultures shitting on each other.
I remember two stories I heard a while back from a Slovak. He was in a bar during a divegrass match involving Slovakia, and when they played the national anthem, the only guy to stand up and sing along was this obviously gypsy guy. Everyone in the bar was stunned, because gypsies just didn't do that. The poor guy was one of the few gypsies who tried to break away, and was desperate to try and fit into mainstream Slovak society.
The other was of a well-known and respected doctor, of gypsy background. You'd think he would be the paragon of the community that would help the gypsies reform, but he just vehemently denied being a part of the group whenever the subject came up. He obviously didn't fit into gypsy culture or society, and he just wanted to escape it all and fit into Slovak society.
more following
>>79974
Anyway, gypsies are quite an interesting subject, especially linguistically speaking. We can actually date their departure from India based on the sound changes in their variety of Indo-Aryan, the cut-off point for departure being around 1000CE I think.
On their way to Europe, they left remnant groups in the Middle East, variably called the Lom and Dom, or something similar - names related to the Eurogypsy autonym, Roma.
In Europe, the weird social position of their communities means that they developed a lot of creoles and pidgins, intermediary between Roma languages and the local European variety, as well as local Euro languages simply with a lot of Roma words.
Unfortunately, even though it would be a great way to study the formation of creole languages, it's hard to work with gypsies, for the aforementioned reasons.
Whenever a gypsy caravan shows up you're faced with a dilemma: bolt everything down to prevent it from being stolen or don't bolt anything down to prevent having your bolts stolen as well.
>>79974
I'm originally from Slovakia myself and that story is a joke. Like literal joke, comedians have been repeating this anecdote at variety show for decades.
That said, it really highlights the general hostility they and white people have against each other.
As for specifics:
>extremely inbred
The gypsies were found to have some of the highest inbreeding rates in Europe, like around 50% of them enter consanguineous relationships (first cousins mostly, but even sick shit like fucking your own sibling or a child isn't unheard of).
>toxic culture
This is true especially for Vlachika Gypsies that originally arrived from Romania. Being employed is shunned upon as being a slave to the gadžos (non-gypsies), while thievery, parasitism and generally vagabond criminal behavior is valued. Look it up if you don't believe me, their unemployment rates reach 80 to 90% in some municipalities.
Rumungri Gypsies sometimes do work, but it's usually the lowest possible jobs you could think of.
