Istro-Venetian Dialect of Tar and its Lexical Repertoire in the Semantic Field of Clothing

Abstract

Throughout history, Istria has been in close contact with the Italian, German and Slavic populations and, due to this fact, it has been under the influence of different cultures and idioms. For the most part, it has been under the influence of the Venetian language and culture. The Venetian dominance spread through language changes in three different phases throughout the linguistic venetization of Istria. The reality of this phenomenon is present in Tar, a town on the west coast of Istria, which belongs to the municipality of Tar - Vabriga – Torre – Abrega. This area is bilingual and the people there speak an Istro-Venetian dialect. The aim of this study was to collect and analyse material related to the semantic field of clothing based on the corpus of the Italian Linguistic Atlas and the Istrian Linguistic Atlas. Using two different types of methodologies in collecting materials: a semi-structured interview and a direct interview, we determined the effectiveness of the differences in the process of gathering materials as well as the differences in the responses of the interviewees and the differences that are based on their ages. The interview was conducted with two respondents: The first respondent is seventy-nine years old and belongs to the older generation of Tar’s population while the second respondent is twenty-nine years old belonging to the younger generation. Both respondents communicate in Istro-Venetian on a daily basis.