Particularităţi ale structurii fonologice şi morfologice în graiurile băieşilor din Croaţia
Phonological and Morphological Characteristics of the Boyash Dialects in Croatia

Summary/Abstract: It is still an insufficiently known fact that the mother tongue of the Boyash Roma, who in the Republic of Croatia represents at least half of the Roma minority, is Romanian, or more precisely, varieties of Daco-Romanian. As the number of members of this group in Croatia exceeds a few thousand, they represent a considerable linguistic community whose existence, at least for now, is not compromised as the existence of the Istro-Romanian dialect. In the course of our own field-work we have obtained a linguistic corpus for a valid analysis and description of the language spoken by the Boyash Roma in Croatia. The research revealed that there are three relatively distinct and compact groups of Boyash which, besides having different geographic distribution (most Boyash live in north western, central and eastern Croatian), speak three different varieties of Daco-Romanian. The mentioned language varieties are Baranya-Muntenian, Ludar-Muntenian and Transylvanian. The first two mentioned dialects are linguistically similar to each other, while the Transylvanian dialect differs considerably from the other two, both on phonological and morphological level. The paper will present the most important phonological and morphological characteristics of these three dialects, and the main features that distinguish them from one another. In addition, when it is relevant, we give a comparison to standard Romanian or other related Daco-Romanian subdialects. Although the paper primarily gives a concise linguistic description of the three dialects, in view of the specific topic we will also give relevant social, historical, demographic and sociolinguistic facts concerning Boyash Roma in Croatia.

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