history](https://www.kratylos.org/~raphael/romani/whatis/linguistics/history.html) identifies Andrew Borde’s c. 1542 text as the earliest documentation: thirteen sentences with English translations headed “Egipt Speche”. The earliest language record in that overview bears an Egyptian label while documenting Indo-Aryan speech.

Attestation marks a record, not necessarily arrival or language formation. Institutional encounters and legal changes can make an existing community visible.

## 10 Government, law, and regional institutions

The institutional branch asks both which terms entered Romani and which institutions governed its speakers. A borrowed word need not carry the donor’s whole legal system; imposed obligations need not produce a conspicuous vocabulary layer.

Romani *kris*, a tribunal or adjudicatory gathering in communities using it, is commonly connected with Greek *krisi*. Claude Cahn’s [court discussion](https://www.errc.org/roma-rights-journal/nexus-domestic-violence-romani-courts-and-recognition) gives that connection while stressing that such courts are not universal. It concerns a lexical relationship and particular institutions, not a uniform Roma legal order.

The Council of Europe’s [Ottoman factsheet](https://rm.coe.int/ottoman-empire-factsheets-on-romani-history/16808b193d) discusses the 1530 law taxing Christian and Muslim Roma in Rumelia. Its category crossed a religious division but need not match communities’ own identities.

The [Wallachia and Moldavia factsheet](https://rm.coe.int/wallachia-and-moldavia-factsheets-on-romani-history/16808b19be) describes a 1385 confirmation of Tismana monastery’s property, including forty *salashe* of *Atigani*. It documents enslavement, not its first occurrence. Roma were owned by the state, monasteries and private owners; final emancipation legislation freed privately owned slaves in Moldavia in 1855 and Wallachia in 1856. This severe regional history must not be universalised across Europe.

The [Habsburg factsheet](https://rm.coe.int/austro-hungarian-empire-factsheets-on-romani-history/16808b19ed) describes Joseph II’s 1783 forced-assimilation regulations, including punishment for speaking Romani. Later use of a majority language therefore does not establish that ancestors never spoke Romani.

| Institutional evidence | Geographical setting | Appropriate inference |
|---|---|---|
| *Kris* and its Greek lexical connection | Particular Romani communities | A borrowed term and a community institution, with variation in use |
| Ottoman taxation law of 1530 | Rumelia | An imperial administrative classification |
| Monastic and other ownership records | Wallachia and Moldavia | A documented regional system of slavery |
| Restrictions on speaking Romani | The eighteenth-century Habsburg setting | Political pressure on linguistic transmission |

Documents reveal relations of power that loans alone cannot: neighbourhood, trade and marriage can produce contact, but so can coercion. Determining which relationship operated requires evidence from the particular setting.

## 11 Regional dialects, later movements, and language shift

Manchester’s [dialect classification](https://www.kratylos.org/~raphael/romani/whatis/classification/dialect_intro.html) treats migration, diffusion, contact and internal change as interacting explanations. A boundary between linguistic patterns is not automatically a border crossed by a self-contained population.

Romanian influence is especially important in Vlax dialects. The Council of Europe’s [“Second Migration” factsheet](https://rm.coe.int/second-migration-factsheets-on-romani-history/16808b1a86) discusses nineteenth-century movements of groups with strong Romanian linguistic layers. These are later dispersals, not one uninterrupted journey from India.

A Romanian loan in western Europe can reflect contact before a recent westward movement rather than contact at the present location. It also does not put every Romani community on that route. Danubian emancipation belongs to the nineteenth-century setting without explaining every