Nais tuke for the question! "I know that there are many different 'groups' of gypsies throughout the world. Do they all, in fact, speak a common language." Such a simple question and the answer is so complex. Here we get into some difficulties. First, not all "Gypsies" are Rromani. There are MANY who are lumped under that umbrella term, from the Rromani, to Gitanos, to Irish Travelers, to Sinti, to black Dutch, to... to... to... Many of these groups are related to the Rrom or are we related to them? Others, like the Irish Travelers, have NO genetic relation to the Rrom. Ok, just picking the Rromani. We originally had the same language... we came from the same place. However, over some thousand years ago our travels took us all over the world. The result is an amazing array of dialect. The closer each group of Rrom are to each other geographically, the easier it is for each group to understand the other. The farther away you go, the more difficulty is had and, eventually, the dialects are related but individuals from these differing regions cannot converse. There is now a movement to standardize the language. I have given you a taste as to how hard that is. In the mid 70's it was decided to write the language down for the first time... ever. The language has never been written down before. Period. The base standardizing dialect is Kalderash. There are dozens and dozens of dialects, however. And, since the language was just recently written down in any form, there are a kazillion spellings for everything. Also, the letters in the English alphabet (the standard alphabet used... Rromanes is also being translated into a cyrillic alphabet, I think it is called) does not have the appropriate letters to correspond with the sounds of the language itself. "Is it Romanian or of Romanian origin, or just a completely separate language" The language bears NO resemblance to Romanian. The reason we have this confusion is the similarities in name. Romania is a country, Rromami is an ethnicity. "Rom" means "man", nothing more. Our language can be traced back to, I believe it was, Sanskrit although, of course, someone speaking Sanskrit is not going to understand any Rromanes.

Well, no. There are some groups of gypsies from Hungary that originate from Mongolia and have a language that is derived from Mongolian.