Here the term Gypsy and the feature of a scarved prosperity-teller probably comes into your mind. Or you can think of a cord of travelling musicians and dancers in brilliant decorated wagons. The reality concerning gypsies is actually more complicated than a few old-fashioned stereotypes. Since Gypsies, which is also termed as Roma, have been oppressed in the entire world as much as they exist, they do not usually trust outsiders and also they have not shared much of their history. But nowadays, more Gypsies are talking so the entire world can understand and accept their culture. TV shows such as “My Big Gypsy Wedding” as well aim at making us aware of their contemporary lives.

Many persons trust gypsies initially came from Romania, of may be from Hungary. Not so. Research indicates that ethnic gypsies originate from a group of various military people who assembled centuries ago in the region of Punjab of Northern India to fight those invaded Muslim. With time, the aimed northwest to Persia and Armenia, then they also drifted to Balkan Peninsula, where they adopted Serbian and Romanian terminologies and phrases into their language.

At last, they branched into smaller groups and dispersed throughout Europe and Northern Africa, where many sub-groups developed. This subsets included the Romnichals in England, the Ludar in Romania, and the Rom in Eastern Europe and the black Dutch in German. Other groups also existed in former Soviet Union as well as Hungary. In present time, there are Gypsies exists throughout the world.

When the Gypsies started to migrate, other people from other continents did not welcome them because they had different speech and looks compared to other people and they were always mistreated or even physically harassed. The contributed to them moving from one place to another.

Over many years, Gypsies had a tendency to at jobs which they could perform without support, the occupations which needed little overhead, that which addressed to people everywhere and the ones which were not negatively impaired by repeated travel. Some of this occupations included woodworking, metalworking, horse trading and carpentry.

Frequently, occupations were linked to a sect. Many of the Ludar people were animal trainers as well as show people, while majority of Rom participated in fortune telling, Gypsies worldwide are recognized for their singing, dancing, and musical skills, they were certified with making flamenco in Spain while several Gypsies from Hungarian are musicians.

The gypsies traditional occupations changed as time changed. Horse traders changed to car dealers as well as repairmen. Metal workers started dealing with watches and jewelry. The Kalderash clan members who served as coppersmiths now deal with scrap metal business.

Ethnic qypsies have a very powerful taboo systems. They basically considered the upper part of the body as pure and the lower part consisting of feet and genitalia as contaminated. If one polluted himself or herself was to be banished for a year of even be excommunicated from the community.

Practically, it meant that, if a gypsy touches the lower half of his body, he had to clean his hands. And everything which touched by the feet was considered perpetually unclean or contaminated. Therefore, there was nothing like three second rule if one drops food on the floor. And so one could not even bother about washing his underclothes.

When it comes to taboo situations, young children and elderly people where allowed some leniency but they were strictly applied on adults especially the married ones. Just like in other traditional customs, gypsy women after giving birth were seen as totally unclean and also the child born and therefore both are temporally isolated from the entire family.

Gypsies have a powerful family as well as community focus. The never allow their children to learn foreign ways of life, that is non-gypsy ways or become contaminated from associating with non-gypsies. In history, the Gypsies were only watched by friends or relatives either through babysitting of day care. The kids were only allowed to attend public schools up to the age of 10 or 11 years. Most of their educations then mostly came from home or the community.

Gypsy women are not different from other women in traditional cultures, they serve their men obey the in general but they have some authority and social trading. They were accredited for their ability to make money for one thing. The main source of income was fortune tellers and is made of women, therefore the husbands performs as support staff. And women can contaminate a man through many actions which can result to him from being expelled from the community.

Family is very superior to Gypsies. Those who still have a nomadic life tend to travel as an extended family alongside other similar groups. Although their family many times have their own homes, they are still in frequent contact with other people, generally because then extended family serves together as economic unit.

Marriages usually arranged by the parents. Many couples marry in the teen age and then join the family business. New couples only live with the family of the husband for the first one to two years or to when the first child is born. Most of the families have three to four kids. The kids are part of family conversations and pans as they are expected to learn and emulate their elders.

During major events such as weddings or funeral all family members gather in large numbers, sometimes hundreds or thousands.

Will we ever actually understand the Gypsies? They have evidenced their flexibility through years of persecution and several are proud because they never lost their strong cultural identity by absorbing into any of the countries they reside in now. Maybe, the response lies within a crystal ball believed by Gypsy of course.

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