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| Istro-Romanian | |
|---|---|
| rumârește,vlășește | |
| Native to | Croatia |
| Region | Istria |
| Ethnicity | Istro-Romanians |
Native speakers | 300 (2007)[1] L2 speakers: 1,100 (2007)[1] |
Indo-European
| |
Early forms | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ruo |
| Glottolog | istr1245 |
| ELP | Istro Romanian |
| Linguasphere | (varieties: 51-AAD-aa to -ab) 51-AAD-a (varieties: 51-AAD-aa to -ab) |
 Istro-Romanian is classified as Severely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger. | |
| Eastern Romance languages |
|---|
| Vulgar Latin language Substratum Thraco-Roman culture |
| Romanian |
|
| Aromanian |
| Megleno-Romanian |
| Istro-Romanian |
TheIstro-Romanian language (rumârește, vlășește) is anEastern Romance language, spoken in a few villages and hamlets in the peninsula ofIstria inCroatia, as well as in the diaspora of this people. It is sometimes abbreviated to IR.
While its speakers call themselvesRumeri,Rumeni, they are also known asVlachs,Rumunski,Ćići andĆiribiri. The last one, used by ethnic Croats, originated as a disparaging nickname for the language, rather than its speakers.[citation needed]
Due to the fact that its speakers are estimated to be fewer than 500, it is listed among languages that are "severely endangered" in theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.[4]
It is also considered by some Romanian scholars to be an idiosyncratic offshoot dialect ofRomanian.[5]
The Istro-Romanians have faced many significant challenges in preserving their language, culture and ethnic identity, including emigration from communism and migration to nearby cities and towns afterWorld War II, when a peace treaty of February 10, 1947, transferred Istria from Italy (which had held it since World War I) and awarded it toYugoslavia, the parent country of present-day Croatia and Slovenia, which divided Istria between themselves, while Italy still retained a small portion near Trieste.
Before the 20th century, Istro-Romanian was spoken in a substantially broader part of northeastern Istria surrounding theĆićarija mountain range (ancientMons Carusadius). The Istro-Romanians now comprise two groups: theĆići aroundŽejane (denoting the people on the north side of Mt. Učka) and theVlahi aroundŠušnjevica (denoting the people on the south side of Mt. Učka (Monte Maggiore). However, apart from borrowings from other languages which vary from village to village, their language is linguistically identical.
Several hundred native speakers live in the United States—not only in Queens, New York (as has been mistakenly believed by some),[6] but throughout the five boroughs of New York City, as well as in upstate New York and the neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut. Native speakers also still live in California. Further groups of native speakers reside in Italy, Canada, Sweden and Australia.[citation needed]
The number of Istro-Romanian speakers has been reduced by their assimilation into other linguistic groups that were either already present or introduced by their respective new rulers of Istria: in the 1921Italian census, there were 1,644 declared Istro-Romanian speakers in the area, while in 1926,Romanian scholarSextil Pușcariu estimated their number to be closer to 3,000. Studies conducted in Istria in 1998 (?) by the Croatian linguistAugust Kovačec revealed only 170 active speakers (but those counted presumably are only those still in villages where the language is actively spoken, thereby excluding those who moved to larger towns in Istria), most of them being bilingual (or trilingual), except for 27 children.[citation needed]
On the other hand, the major northern village Žejane and nearby hamlets at the Slovenian border are less Italianized and more Slavicized. Many villages in the area have names that are of Romanian origin, such asJeian,Buzet ("lips"),Katun ("hamlet"),Letaj,Sucodru ("under a forest"),Costirceanu (aRomanian name). Some of these names are official (recognized by Croatia as their only names), while others are used only by Istro-Romanian speakers (ex. Nova Vas|Noselo).[citation needed]
Some loanwords suggest that before coming to Istria, Istro-Romanians lived for a period of time on the Dalmatian coast near theDinara andVelebit mountains.[7]
August Kovačec (1998)[citation needed] hypothesizes that the Istro-Romanians migrated to their present region about 600 years ago from the territory of present-day Romania, after thebubonic plague depopulatedIstria. This hypothesis is based on chronicles of theFrankopan princes that state that in the 15th century they accepted the migrating Vlachs from the nearby mainland and from the northern part ofKrk (Veglia) island, and settled them in isolated villages inPoljica andDubašnica, between the castles ofDobrinj andOmišalj, and in the port ofMalinska. The term "Vlach", however, refers to all Eastern-Romance-language speakers and cannot be associated exclusively with Istro-Romanians. In fact, pockets of Romanian-language speakers persisted in Malinska up to the mid-19th century, they gradually assimilated and their language disappeared with the last speaker, Mate Bajčić Gašparović. Today, few Romance-language toponyms remain in Malinska.[8][9]
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | |||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | c | k | |
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʃ | |||
| voiced | (d͡ʒ) | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | x | (h) |
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | (ɣ) | ||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Approximant | lateral | l | ʎ | |||
| central | j | |||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | ə | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Although it is a Romance language, Istro-Romanian has received a great amount of influence from other languages. According to a 2005 analysis, 50% of the words in Istro-Romanian come fromSerbo-Croatian, 16% come from either Serbo-Croatian orSlovene, 3% come from Slovene, 4.7% come fromItalian/Venetian, 3.5% come fromOld Church Slavonic and only 25% come fromLatin.[12]
Another study made in 2009 found that 647 words are inherited from Latin (compared to about 2,000 words inherited from Latin in most Romance languages), and 25 words are from the substrate, a much smaller number compared to Daco-Romanian which preserved 89 words from thesubstrate. The situation is typical for isolated languages/dialects with lower number of speakers.[13] Even so, Istro-Romanian has managed to preserve a few words from Latin that are not found in otherEastern Romance languages:gåbu "yellow" (<GALBUS; also present in Romanian asgalben),ånča "here" (<HAC+ce),oča (<HAC/HOCCE+a),iențå (<*hic‑ce+a),iuva "where".[14]
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