About this project
The Preservation of the Vlaški and Žejanski Language project was started in 2005 and was first presented to the community at a meeting held in the Istria Sports Club in Astoria, New York, attended by more than one hundred Istrians, speakers of Vlaški and Žejanski and their family members. The project was conceived with the objective of documenting, describing and analyzing an endangered language for scientific purposes, and at the same time attending to the interests and goals of the community itself. In 2007, the project was extended to include Croatia, as well as New York, through the cooperation of the Traces Association and Ethnographic Museum of Istria. The extended project goals include:
-
Establishment of heritage museums/cultural centers in the villages of Šušnjevica and Žejane.
-
Involvement of community members in the preservation of their language and culture.
-
Creation of an annotated language corpus and a regional digital archive of the language and culture to serve the needs of the community, as well as researchers.
-
Collection, digitization and unification of all types of materials relevant to the language and the community into digital and physical archives.
-
Promotion of appreciation and use of the language.
-
Promotion of the study of the language and culture.
The various sections of the project designed to address these goals are currently underway.
In view of our goals, we are also looking to establish contact and collaborate with researchers and other parties with an interest in this language and community.
