Vlaški/Žejanski/Istro-Romanian – Croatian Dictionary

This is a handy guide for nonspecifics in the graphical system used to write the Vlach or Žejanski (ie, Istrian) language in this dictionary. We provide approximate Croatian and English voice equivalents for the letters most often used in the dictionary.

Diacritics combining with letters for different vowels:
́́´ Marks the placement of the word stress.
˜ Marks a nasalized vowel.

We refer linguists and other specialists to pp. 9-15 and pp. 246-255 of the original print dictionary—Istrorumunjski-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima) [insert hyperlink to Bibliography] by August Kovačec—for a detailed and technical introduction to the transcription system used in the dictionary. In the main,Kovačec’s spelling system follows the long, while rather inconsistent, tradition of spelling used by Romanian dialectologists to represent the language, while adding some special symbols to it. There is no standardized and/or agreed upon version of the spelling for the language. Kovčec’s transcription is largely phonological (i.e., it represents only distinctive sounds), but also often indicates characteristic phonetic variations.