Diasporic Istro-Romanians online

Co-applicant: Adina Bradeanu, Research Associate, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics

Project Summary

'Istro-Romanian' is a severely endangered language spoken by under 200 people in Istria (Croatia), and by perhaps a couple of hundred others in émigré communities especially the USA and Australia. Oxford has a research interest in the language dating back to the 1960s and we have a large body of sound recordings from that time, mostly unpublished or unanalysed, which has been uploaded on to the Zooniverse platform (www.istrox.uk) to elicit community-sourced linguistic information. Building on this, we have become deeply interested in the history of the language, especially in the past 50 years and as it has developed in the diaspora. We seek to expand our pool of contacts among the diaspora and to involve them as peer contributors to our project as a bridge towards a future phase of the project which is currently in development. This will allow us to gain a sense of proficiency in the language outside Croatia and will give them the opportunity to become co-creators of a new body of knowledge about the history of the language and the community that speaks it.

Project Updates

We will be posting updates as the project gets started.

Project Links

Can you help us translate the Hurren audio-recordings of the Istro-Romanian language (Zooniverse)?