Istriot

Classification

Istriot is a Romance language currently only found in Istria. Its classification has remained mostly unclear; it has been variously regarded:

• as being related to the Ladin populations of the Alps. According to the Italian linguist Matteo Bartoli, the Ladin area used to extend – until the year 1000 AD – from southern Istria to Friuli and eastern Switzerland. A similar hypothesis was also proposed by the Istriot linguist Antonio Ive.
• as an independent Northern Italian language, belonging neither to the Venetian language nor to the Gallo-Italic group (opinion shared by linguists Tullio De Mauro and Maurizio Dardano);
• as an independent language of the Italo-Dalmatian group
• as an autochthonous Romance language heavily influenced by Venetian, Friulian and Slavic superstrates by Mirko Deanović
• In 2017 it was classified by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History with the Dalmatian language in the Dalmatian Romance subgroup,

When Istria was a region of the Kingdom of Italy, Istriot was considered by the authorities as a subdialect of Venetian.

Historically, its speakers never referred to it as "Istriot"; it had six names, after the six towns where it was spoken. In Vodnjan it was named "Bumbaro", in Bale "Valìʃe", in Rovinj "Ruvignìʃ", in Šišan "Siʃanìʃ", in Fažana "Faʃanìʃ" and in Galižana "Galiʃaneʃ". The term Istriot was coined by the 19th-century Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli.

This language is still spoken by some people in the Istriot communities in Fertilia and Maristella, in Sardinia.

There are about 400 speakers left, making it a severely endangered language.