Speech of Arbanasi from Zadar and their mastering in the Croatian language
Speech of Arbanasi from Zadar and their mastering in the Croatian language

Summary/Abstract: The speech of Arbanasi from Zadar and its influence on their language competency in their Croatian language mastering is analyzed. In order to understand the situation with three languages in contact (speech of Arbanasi, Croatian and Italian) the historical background of Arbanasi and their attitude to language is presented. Method of talk and recording with the oldest fellow-townsmen (between 55-85), middle-aged (30-55), and the youngest (to the age of 30), along with making comparisons with their present way of speaking with the one of 50 years ago, were used. Mastering in the Croatian language competency was researched according to age, sex, environment, profession and degree of education. Results have shown that only a small number of people speak Albanian, mainly older. People who worked, people with secondary school education, and a small number of those with academic degree, managed in mastering in the Croatian language competency at a larger scale, but even today the influence of the speech of Arbanasi is present. The survey of interlanguage features of the Croatian speech and that of Arbanasi is presented through research conducted at three levels: morphological, lexical, and phonological.At morphological level, mistakes in using the case endings, prepositions, verb forms and possessivness, are presented. At lexical level, examples with dialect features, mainly Italian or Croatian borrowings, were given. At phonological level, some most outstanding examples of the speech of Arbanasi were compared with the Croatian phonological system.

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