Roman; this is how the Roma living in the southern part of Burgenland (Austria precisely since 1921, formerly Western Hungary) call their nonvlah variety of Romani. The BurgenlandRoma migrated form Eastern Hungary and Croatia in the 15th century. The close relationship of Roman to two other non vlah groups in Slovenia (PrekmurskiRoma) and in Western Hungary is manifest from identical personal names as well as from various parallel linguistic structures. At present Roman is in danger of extinction since it is used almost exclusively in intimate communicative situations among the minority whose number does not exceed 2000 people. The sketch will present a description of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and the lexicon including text samples. In addition we shall present research material concerning language use and attitude towards the dialect. The data were collected and interpreted with the assistance of native speakers.
