Post by Peter Ellis on May 23, 2010 18:11:20 GMT 1
From an interesting article www.deccanherald.com/content/70927/endangered-tongues.html
Over the decades in the secluded northeastern Istrian Peninsula along the Adriatic Sea, Croatian began to replace Vlashki, spoken by the Istrians, what is described as Europe’s smallest surviving ethnic group. But after Istrians began immigrating to Queens, many to escape grinding poverty, they largely abandoned Croatian and returned to speaking Vlashki. “Whole villages were emptied,” said Valnea Smilovic, 59, who came to the United States in the 1960s with her parents and her brother and sister. Smilovic still speaks in Vlashki with her mother, 92, who knows little English, as well as her siblings. “Not too much, though,” Smilovic said
Several years ago, one of her cousins, Zvjezdana Vrzic, an Istrian-born adjunct professor of linguistics at New York University, organised a meeting in about preserving Vlashki. She was stunned by the turnout of about 100 people. “A language reflects a singular nature of a people speaking it,” said Vrzic, who recently published an audio Vlashki phrasebook and is working on an online Vlashki-Croatian-English dictionary. Istro-Romanian is classified by Unesco as severely endangered, and Vrzic said she believed that the several hundred native speakers who live in Queens outnumbered those in Istria.
Over the decades in the secluded northeastern Istrian Peninsula along the Adriatic Sea, Croatian began to replace Vlashki, spoken by the Istrians, what is described as Europe’s smallest surviving ethnic group. But after Istrians began immigrating to Queens, many to escape grinding poverty, they largely abandoned Croatian and returned to speaking Vlashki. “Whole villages were emptied,” said Valnea Smilovic, 59, who came to the United States in the 1960s with her parents and her brother and sister. Smilovic still speaks in Vlashki with her mother, 92, who knows little English, as well as her siblings. “Not too much, though,” Smilovic said
Several years ago, one of her cousins, Zvjezdana Vrzic, an Istrian-born adjunct professor of linguistics at New York University, organised a meeting in about preserving Vlashki. She was stunned by the turnout of about 100 people. “A language reflects a singular nature of a people speaking it,” said Vrzic, who recently published an audio Vlashki phrasebook and is working on an online Vlashki-Croatian-English dictionary. Istro-Romanian is classified by Unesco as severely endangered, and Vrzic said she believed that the several hundred native speakers who live in Queens outnumbered those in Istria.