re in reality good
Anglo-Romany. And whatever may have been Lavengro's vaunted acquaintance
with Armenian, it was apparently insufficient to enable him to identify
any of the Armenian elements in the gypsy language.

Touching Borrow's knowledge of Romani, it must be confessed that while he
has been the means of attracting others to the study of that interesting
tongue, his own command of it was of the slightest. He never mastered
'deep' (or inflected) Romani, and even his broken gypsy is a curious
Borrovian variety, distinct from the idiom of the tents. No gypsy ever
uses _chal _or _engro _as a separate word, or talks of the _dukkering
dook _or _of penning a dukkerin_. His genders are perversely incorrect,
as in the title of the present book; and his 'Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book
of the Romany or English Gypsy Language' probably contains more 'howlers'
than any other vocabulary in the world. He is responsible for the
creation of such ghost-words as _asarlas_, 'at all, in no manner'
(mistaking _helpasar les _for _help asarlas_, pp 18, 110); _cappi_,
'booty, gain' (_to lel cappi_, pp 28, 176 = 'to get blankets'); _ebyok_,
'sea' (? the gypsy questioned, mishearing 'ebb-eye' for 'ebb-tide');
_is_, 'if,' p. 51; _kokkodus_, 'uncle' (perhaps mistaking some such
phrase as 'like my _koko _does' for 'like my _kokkodus_'); _lutherum_,
'sleep'; _medisin_, 'measure' (perhaps because medicine is measured out);
_moskey_, 'a spy' (? mistaking _dikamaski _for _dik_! _a moskey)_; _o_,
'he' (mistaking _kai jivela _for _kai jivvel o_, p. 53); _pahamengro_,
'turnip' (probably mistaking _pusamengro_, 'pitchfork,' for the turnip it
was used to uproot); _pazorrhus_, 'indebted' = 'trust us'); _pios_,
'drunken as a health' (_aukko tu_ [_to_] _pios_, p. 78 = 'here's fun');
_sar_, 'with'; _sherrafo_, 'religious, converted,' pp. 89, 194 (really
'chief, principal,' from _shero_, 'head'); _sicovar_, 'eternally' (_si
covar ajaw_, p. 90 = 'so the thing is'); _sos_, 'who' (= 'what's');
_talleno_, 'woollen, flannel' (mistaking _talleno chofa_, p. 93,
'under-skirt' for 'flannel petticoat'), etc. Perhaps the most amusing
instance of all is the word _hinjiri _in 'Lavengro.' When Mrs. Herne
hanged herself, Petulengro says that she 'had been her own _hinjiri_,'
{0z3} and the word is explained by Professor Knapp as the feminine of
_hinjiro_, 'executioner,' from _djandjir_, 'a chain.' {0z4} But there
_is _no such word as _hinjero_, and _hinjiri _is merely