The Fiuman dialect (, Fiuman: ') is the

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

of the

Venetian language Venetian, also known as wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ), is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in Veneto, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is som ...

spoken in the

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

n city of

Rijeka Rijeka (; Fiume ( �fjuːme in Italian and in Fiuman dialect, Fiuman Venetian) is the principal seaport and the List of cities and towns in Croatia, third-largest city in Croatia. It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Ba ...

(Fiume). It is strongly influenced by

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, Hungarian, German substrates, mainly due to the closeness between two different cultures (the Romanic and Hungarian/German ones) and Austro-Hungarian rule. Thus, because Rijeka was under the

Habsburg monarchy The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities (composite monarchy) that were ruled by the House of Habsburg. From the 18th century it is ...

for over five centuries (1466–1918) and part of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...

for nine centuries, many of the words are of German and Hungarian origin. Due to extensive emigration to the growing port city during the late 18th and 19th centuries, many words also came from other languages, such as Slovenian. Significant is the amount of literary production carried out in this small dialect, with some of the main local authors using it in their works being Mario Schittar, Gino Antoni, Oscarre Russi, Egidio Milinovich.

Origin and use

Experts say about this dialect: "(...) the Croatian language and a variant of the Venetian language certainly coexisted in the city as early as the fifteenth century (...), but taking into account all the historical facts, i.e. that in the ninth and tenth century Venetian merchants, sailors and statesmen on the eastern Adriatic coast already spoke Venetian, the latter was probably spoken even earlier." "Whether the Fiuman dialect is fundamentally a continuation of the language of the autochthonous Romance population with a subsequent stratification of Venetisms or whether its basis is a specific mix of the various Italian dialects of the Italian settlers from the thirteenth century onwards with a later gradual Venetian stratification, it coexisted in Rijeka with the Croats' Chakavian dialect for centuries." The Fiuman pedagogist Gemma Harasim wrote in 1909: "the Italian language (i.e. Fiuman) is equally understood by almost all of the inhabitants: especially by the Croats, many of whom, in fact, speak it at home and in social life, despite being politically opposed to Italians; Italian is also spoken, although somewhat less well and with a thick exotic accent, by almost all of the Hungarians who come to live here. Therefore the Italian language certainly remains the common language of all nationalities: in peaceful business relations, in conversations and in families, it is almost a general rule that when Hungarians, Croats and Italians meet, the language of exchange remains Italian."Gemma Harasim, „Riječka pisma“, Fluminensia, year V (1993), number 1-2, pg. 8-9. Because the great majority of Italians left the city after the Second World War ( Istrian–Dalmatian exodus), Fiuman is now reduced to a minority language, spoken by 2-5% of Rijeka's population.

Examples

References

External links

Books on the subject published by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology
Culture in Rijeka Venetian language Languages attested from the 15th century City colloquials {{Croatia-stub