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Istro-Romanian language

(Redirected fromIstro-Rumanian language)
Not to be confused withIstriot language.

TheIstro-Romanian language(Istro Romanian:rumârește, vlășește) is anEastern Romance language,spoken in a few villages and hamlets in the peninsula ofIstriainCroatia,as well as in the diaspora of this people. It is sometimes abbreviated to IR.

Istro-Romanian
rumârește,vlășește
Native toCroatia
RegionIstria
EthnicityIstro-Romanians
Native speakers
300 (2007)[1]
L2 speakers:1,100 (2007)[1]
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-3ruo
Glottologistr1245
ELPIstro 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

While its speakers call themselvesRumeri,Rumeni,they are also known asVlachs,Rumunski,ĆićiandĆiribiri.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]

Recent history

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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 theĆićarijamountain range (ancientMons Carusadius). The Istro-Romanians now comprise two groups: theĆićiaroundŽejane(denoting the people on the north side of Mt. Učka) and theVlahiaroundŠušnjevica(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 1921Italiancensus, there were 1,644 declared Istro-Romanian speakers in the area, while in 1926,RomanianscholarSextil Pușcariuestimated their number to be closer to 3,000. Studies conducted in Istria in 1998 (?) by the Croatian linguistAugust Kovačecrevealed 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(aRomanianname). 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]

Origin

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Some loanwords suggest that before coming to Istria, Istro-Romanians lived for a period of time on the Dalmatian coast near theDinaraandVelebitmountains.[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 plaguedepopulatedIstria.This hypothesis is based on chronicles of theFrankopanprinces 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 inPoljicaandDubašnica,between the castles ofDobrinjandOmišalj,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]

Phonology

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Consonants

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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
  • Sounds/ɡ,x/can also be realized as[ɣ,h]in some dialects or positions.
  • /d͡ʒ/only occurs marginally, or from loanwords.[10]

Vowels

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Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e ə o
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a
  • Sounds/ɛ,ɔ/can also be heard as lower[æ,ɒ]in other dialects.[11]

Lexis

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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 Slavonicand 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]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^The internal classification of the Eastern Romance languages presented in Petrucci (1999) proposes a bipartite split into Northern and Southern branches, with the Northern branch splitting into Istro-Romanian and Daco-Romanian.[2]By contrast, the classification presented withinGlottologv4.8 proposes a bipartite split between Aromanian and Northern Romanian, the latter of which is further split into Istro-Romanian and Eastern Romanian, from which Daco-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian are hypothesized to have split from.[3]

References

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  1. ^abIstro-RomanianatEthnologue(23rd ed., 2020)
  2. ^Petrucci 1999,p. 4.
  3. ^Hammarström, Harald;Forkel, Robert;Haspelmath, Martin;Bank, Sebastian (2023-07-10)."Glottolog 4.8 - Eastern Romance".Glottolog.Leipzig:Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962.Retrieved2023-11-20.
  4. ^Salminen, Tapani (1999)."Endangered Languages in Europe: Indexes".www.helsinki.fi.Retrieved2018-11-24.
  5. ^"Romanian Language".Encyclopedia Britannica.Retrieved2018-11-24.
  6. ^Roberts, Sam (29 April 2010)."The Lost Languages, Found in New York".The New York Times.Retrieved2018-11-24.
  7. ^Filipi, Goran (2002).Istrorumunjski lingvistički atlas/Atlasul lingvistic istroromân/Atlante linguistico istroromeno.Pula: Znanstvena zadruga Mediteran. p. 52.
  8. ^Tekavčić (1959)
  9. ^Kovačec (1998)
  10. ^Frățilă, Vasile (2012).Dialectul istroromân.Berciu-Drăghicescu, Adina (coord.), Aromâni, meglenoromâni, istroromâni: aspecte identitare și culturale: Editura Universității din București, Colecția. pp. 633–694.
  11. ^Narumov, B. P. (2001).Istrorumynskij Jazyk/Dialekt.In I. I. Čelyševa and B. P. Narumov and O. I. Romanova (eds.), Jazyki Mira: Romanskie jazyki: Moskva: Academia. pp. 655–671.
  12. ^Cantemir, Maria (2020).Phonological Analysis of the Southern Dialect of Istro-Romanian/Vlashki as Compared to Daco-Romanian(Thesis).Ohio State University.pp. 1–64.hdl:1811/92144.
  13. ^Berciu-Drăghicescu, Adina (coord.), Frățilă, Vasile (2012).Aromâni, Meglenoromâni și Istroromâni: Aspecte identitare și culturale,capitolulDialectul istroromân.Privire generală[Aromanian, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians: Aspects of Identity and Culture,chapterIstro-Romanian dialect. General View]. Editura Universității din București. pp. 672 to 679.ISBN978-606-16-0148-6.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ^Berciu-Drăghicescu, Adina (coord.), Frățilă, Vasile (2012).Aromâni, Meglenoromâni și Istroromâni: Aspecte identitare și culturale,capitolulDialectul istroromân.Privire generală[Aromanian, Megleno-Romanians, and Istro-Romanians: Aspects of Identity and Culture,chapterIstro-Romanian dialect. General View]. Editura Universității din București. p. 674.ISBN978-606-16-0148-6.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Bibliography

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  • Dahmen, Wolfgang (1989). "Istrorumänisch".Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik(in German). Vol. 3. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. pp. 448–460.
  • Feresini, Nerina (1996).Il Comune istro-romeno di Valdarsa(in Italian). Trieste: Edizioni Italo Svevo.
  • Frățilă, Vasile (2003). "La terminologia del corpo nel dialetto istroromen". In Sánchez Miret, Fernando (ed.).Actas del XXIII Congreso internacional de lingüística y filología románica, vol. 3, Sección 4: Semántica léxica, lexicología y onomásticao.Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. pp. 169–180.doi:10.1515/9783110929317-018.ISBN9783484503977.
  • Kovačec, August (1998).Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik s gramatikom i tekstovima (Glosar istroroman-croat cu gramatica si texte).Verba moritura vol. I (in Croatian). Pula: Mediteran. p. 378.ISBN953-96986-1-8.
  • Popovici, Josif (1909).Dialectele romîne din Istria(in Romanian). Halle.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Tekavčić, Pavao (1959). "Due voci romene in un dialetto serbo-croato dell'Isola di Veglia (Krk)".Studia Romanica(in Italian).7:35–38.
  • Vrzić, Zvjezdana; Doričić, Robert (2014)."Language Contact and Stability of Basic Vocabulary: Croatian Loanwords for Body Parts in Vlashki/Zheyanski (Istro-Romanian)".Fluminensia.26(2): 105–122.
  • Vrzić, Zvjezdana; Singler, John Victor (2016). "Identity and Language Shift Among Vlashki/Zheyanski Speakers in Croatia". In Ferreira, Vera; Bouda, Peter (eds.).Language Documentation and Conservation in Europe.Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 9. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 51–68.hdl:10125/24659.ISBN978-0-9856211-5-5.
  • Petrucci, Peter R. (1999).Slavic Features in the History of Rumanian.München: LINCOM Europa.ISBN38-9586-599-0.
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