> And I do not understand how can you tell so surely that this dialect
> in
> which he *did not* speak is not in fact Istro-Romanian?
I wrote he "pretended that he was able to speak a li'l bit of the
dialect of
his ancestors. But he couldn't in front of the camera." So, I don't know
whether he and his clan are... <Rumãri> or whether they are... <Armâni>
(to
use the genuine ethnonyms used in both dialects, Istroromanian and
Aromanian respectively). Since the mere ethnonym <Morlak> doesn't make
clear to which group a Morlak belongs. (Morlak is the mere contracted
form of Mavrovlachos "Black Vlach". BTW: South Romania, with its capital
Bucharest, was also called "Black Walachia"... by the Turks: Kara
Iflak.)
By their tongue ye shall know 'em: if Croatia's Vlachs speak
Istrorumanian,
then they are Rumãri (Istrorumanians), if they speak Aromanian, then
they are Armâni (aka Tzintzari, aka Cutzovlachs, aka Macedonian
Romanians), and if they speak Romanian, then they are Rumâni/Români.
And basta (whatesover the rest of taxonomies by outsiders might be).
> Or that these information are not just bogus?
Thank you for this bona fide you offer me ahead of Xmas. :o)
> Mate
George
PS: Throughout former YU, there is a further population speaking
some kind of Romanian, namely a weird subdialect of North-Romanian
(ie, neither Aromanian, nor Meglenite, nor Istroromanian). These are
genuine Roma. Many of them are in good command of 3 languages
at the same time: that Romanian subdialect (with poor vocabulary and
full of Slavisms), Serbocroatian and one Roma dialect (presumably close
to those Roma dialects spoken in Eastern Europe and Turkey). It is
assumed that their ancestors migrated thither coming from Oltenia
and Muntenia (ie, Walachia = south Romania) very recently (19th c.?)
I talked to some of them here in Germany (where they are very numerous,
among the Yugoslav "guestworker" contingents) and seemingly they
have quite close contacts with their kinship across the Romanian
border, esp. in the province of Banat (which anyway has the closest
ties to Yugoslavia, perhaps also due to its Serbian and Croatian
minorities).