Istro-Romanian Language - Origin

Origin

Some linguists believe that the Istro-Romanians migrated to their present region of Istria and all the way up to the city of Trieste about 1,000 years ago from Transylvania. The first possible historical record of Romanians in the Istria region, however, dates back to 940 when Constantine VII recorded the Romance-language speakers in this area in De Administrando Imperio, saying that they called themselves Romans, but this could also refer to speakers of Istriot or one of the Dalmatian dialects. In 1329, when Serbian chronicles mention that a Vlach population was living in Istria, although there was an earlier mention from the 12th century of a leader in Istria called Radul (likely a Romanian name). There have been recent findings to suggest that the Istro-Romanian people (more probably Vlachs in general) were already present in certain regions of nearby Friuli going back to the 13th century. Pavle Ivić, a Serbian linguist, cited the hypothesis that a sizeable Roman population inhabited the Balkans from west to east across the former Yugoslavia before the 10th century. The hypothesis is that these populations, reduced by epidemics of the plague and wars, mixed with the first Istro-Romanians who moved into Istria, but there are no known historical records to support this theory.

Some loanwords suggest that before coming to Istria, Istro-Romanians lived for a period of time on the Dalmatian coast at the Cetina river, where names ending in "-ul" are observed from medieval times. In any case, it is linguistically evident that Istro-Romanian split from the widely spoken (Daco-)Romanian later than did the other Romanian (=Eastern Romance) languages, Aromanian language and Megleno-Romanian.

The Italian writer and historian Giuseppe Lazzarini believes that there are more than 5,000 Istro-Romanian descendants in Istria today, but most of them identify themselves (census 1991: only 811 Istro-Romanians) with other ethnic groups in the revolving door of foreign rulers of this region. He believes that the Istro-Romanians are the descendants of the "melting pot" of the Roman legionnaires (moved by Augustus to eastern Istria to colonize the borders of Italy) and the Aromanian shepherds who escaped from the Ottoman invasions to settle in a plague-depopulated Istria in the 14th century. However, he does not relate to the fact that Istro-Romanian is linguistically closer to Daco-Romanian than to Aromanian (also called Macedo-Romanian).

A. Kovačec (1998) hypothesizes that the Istro-Romanians migrated to their present region about 600 years ago from Romania, after the Bubonic plague depopulated Istria. This hypothesis is based on chronicles of the Frangipani princes that state that in the 15th century they accepted the migrating Vlachs from the nearby mainland and from the northern part of Krk (Veglia) island, and settled them in isolated villages at Poljica and Dubašnica and at the port Malinska. 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 toponymns remain in Malinska. (Tekavčić 1959, Kovačec 1998)

The Transylvanian connection is emphasized by most linguists and is alive in the hand-down memories and folk songs of some of the Rumeni (Rumêri) themselves. They put themselves into either of two groups — the northern upland cici (It. cicci; S-C. ćići), and vlahi of the Arsa Valley (historical name is also Arsia; today called Raša) region. Interestingly enough, Iosif Popovici entitled his book Dialectele române din Istria (Halle, 1909) — that is, "The Dialects..." not "The Dialect..." — so indirectly he suggested that there were (and still are) several Istro-Romanian dialects in Istria. The linguistic differences, however, can be easily explained: a language evolves separately when there is a geographical border between the individual groups — in this case, the Ciceria mountain range. Indeed, there are even variations that are distinct from town to town.

Insofar as Romanian linguists are concerned, the opinions are divided: Prof. Dr. Iosif Popovici (1876–1928), who had traveled extensively in Istria, promoted the hypothesis that the Istro-Romanians were natives of Ţara Moților (Western Transylvania) who emigrated to Istria in the Middle Ages. ("Dialectele române din Istria", I, Halle a.d.S., 1914, p. 122 and following). This opinion was shared by Ovid Densusianu (1873–1938), a Romanian folklorist, philologist, and poet who introduced trends of European modernism into Romanian literature. He did not hold the belief that Istro-Romanians were native to Istria where found today (or where found in the 1930s when he did the research for his book Histoire de la langue roumaine, I, p. 337): "Un premier fait que nous devons mettre en evidence, c'est que l'istro-roumain n'a pu se développer à l'origine là où nous le trouvons aujourd'hui" (The primary issue is that Istro-Romanian, because of its close similarity to other dialects spoken in isolated areas of present-day Romania, as well as its close resemblance to Daco-Romanian, simply could not have originated in isolation where it is found today).

Presumed to be the Istro-Romanians' relatives, the Morlachs in what is now in the Croatian region of Morlachia inhabited a wide range of Dalmatia in the past, but are now a small ethnic group whose numbers are likewise decreasing. The common error that has been made is in confusing the "ćići" and "vlahi" with the "morlacchi" (Slavic: Murlaki; English: Morlachs) who are an entirely different ethnic and linguistic group on the Dalmatian mainland and Herzegovina. The Morlachian language, which became extinct in the early 20th century, belongs to an entirely different sub-group of the Eastern Romance languages, distinct from the Romanian and Italian languages.