There is no historical proof to clarify who the ancestors of the Romani were or what motivated them to emigrate from the Indian subcontinent, but there are various theories. The influence of Greek, and to a lesser extent of Armenian and the Iranian languages (like Persian and Kurdish) points to a prolonged stay in Anatolia, Armenian highlands/Caucasus after the departure from South Asia. The latest territory where Romani is thought to have been spoken as a mostly unitary linguistic variety is the Byzantine Empire, between the 10th and the 13th centuries. The language of this period, which can be reconstructed on the basis of modern-day dialects, is referred to as Early Romani or Late Proto-Romani.
There is no historical proof to clarify who the ancestors of the Romani were or what motivated them to emigrate from the Indian subcontinent, but there are various theories. The influence of Greek, and to a lesser extent of Armenian and the Iranian languages (like Persian and Kurdish) points to a prolonged stay in Anatolia, Armenian highlands/Caucasus after the departure from South Asia. The latest territory where Romani is thought to have been spoken as a mostly unitary linguistic variety is the Byzantine Empire, between the 10th and the 13th centuries The language of this period, which can be reconstructed on the basis of modern-day dialects, is referred to as Early Romani or Late Proto-Romani.