LEXEMES OF ROMANCE ORIGIN IN THE LANGUAGE OF SLOVENES FROM THE AREAS SURROUNDING TRIESTE (Leksemy pochodzenia romanskiego w jezyku Slowenców z okolic Triestu)

The language of the Slovenes who live in the vicinity of Trieste (Italy) contains many Romance (Friulian, Venetian, literary Italian, and perhaps Istro-Romanian) loanwords. Stories told by grandfathers and grandmothers of school pupils and published in Slovene school newspapers in the province of Trieste between 1980 and 2005 have been examined for words of Romance origin which do not exist in the Slovene literary language. Ninety-two such lexemes were found and described. They constitute the majority (61%) of registered non-literary words. On the basis of this etymological research, the author estimates that 12% of Romance loanwords in this variety of Slovene were taken from Friulian, 71% from the Venetian dialect and 17% from the literary Italian language. It is not excluded that one lexeme (forte) is of Istro-Romanian origin.