Hrvatski
"Zejane language" is one of
the languages that was put on the list of UNESCO project of preservation
of the dying languages in the World
The People of Zejane in a World
Auditorium Last fall the
Discovery Channel team from London made a promotional film in Zejane
about the Istria-Romanian language
[see note]
© Novi list
21 March 2004
Some sources claim that in the World today people speak about six
thousand languages. However, world linguistic diversity is becoming more
endangered each day where every two week one of these languages or
dialects disappears from the face of the earth. The preservation of
these endangered languages is the goal of the world organization UNESCO,
and therefore they try to document the most endangered languages of the
World by making of short documentary films, which will be presented on
the world famous Discovery Channel through out the year. The material
that is presented on this channel reaches millions of audience, which is
very important especially when some of these global organizations are
focused on preserving the heritage, in this case languages of small
relatively unknown hidden places and their population. One of these
places is Zejane who's inhabitants, which is known to the inhabitants of
these territories, are speaking a special language or dialect which they
call simply "zejanski", however, "officially" we are talking about
Istro-Romanian language. This language was the reason that the Discovery
Channel team came here through their Zejane connection – Igor Doricic, a
member of the folklore society "Zejanski zvoncary" (The bell ringers of
Zejane) and the leaders of the singing group "Zejanski Kantaduri"
(Zejane's singers) with whom we talked about this "working visit".
The American connection
What are we talking about and how did this
cooperation started?
The whole story started at the end of August last
year with a call by Denis Sankovic [see note], who lives in
the USA, but he is a native of Zejane and somebody who loves Istria and this
territory, its people and their customs. He was contacted by Siobhan Lowrey, a
producer at Discovery Channel Europe regarding the project they were working on.
The word is about the UNESCO project dealing with preservation of dying
languages in the World in which framework the Discovery Channel team for several
years now documents three such languages. This year among one hundred candidate
languages the Zejane language entered the top three which will be documented and
aired by the Discovery Channel this year.
The Zejane connection with the London team, in
America is the "American Zejane man" Denis Sankovic and here?
The producer had simply entered the internet search
machine looking for Zejane discovering a few files from Denis enabling he to
contact him. We had decided to form a six-member team of journalists, cameramen
and reporters, which came to Zejane last September.
Besides "Discovery people" did the Zejane heritage
became interesting to some other paper publishers?
Besides the Discovery team after two days came around seven-eight
reporters and cameramen among them well noted journalistic teams from
Romanian and Polish magazines. Being with them I found a very important
fact that the kids in Rumania are learning in school that "over there"
in Central Europe exist pople who speak Rumanian, similarly to the
Croatian people in Gradisce who also today speak Croatian language. It
was interesting that this Rumanian guest, even though the Zejane
language is over 500 years old and had absorbed chakavian, Italian and
Croatian expressions, was able to almost completely understand our Mauro
who spoke to him in Zejane language.
– Everything in two minutes Result of the four
days of filming?
In the few days of filming it was filmed about four
hours of total material, which also surprised the people of the Discovery
Channel. There was surprisingly a lot of material to film, as they said, because
beside documenting the language they also recorded and filmed the local singing
group, bugarenje, cindra, therefore much more than what they intended, which
will based on their enthusiasm hopefully leave room for a project on this theme.
The result of their visit is very short it lasts only a bit more than two
minutes and it is a promotional film which shows: Mauro Doricic, president of
the folklore group "Zejanski zvoncari" who speaks in Zejane language about the
folklore, customs and life in general of the people in Zejane and local
villages. Everything what followed by the beautifully dreased Zejanes, bell
ringers … they even filmed the way people plowed their fields, tilling with plow
which was pulled by horses. All together, as far as I could see, everything came
out very well , very Worldly. This short film has already been shown on the
Discovery Channel program and that four, five, six and even seven and more times
a day.
(Translated by Pino Golja)
© Copyright istrianet.org 2004
Editor's Note:
The "whole story started" not as described above by
the interviewee but with an email on May 22, 2003 from Clare Burns of DISCOVERY
channel to the webmaster@istrianet.org. Marisa Ciceran replied with initial
suggestions and names of people to contact in different countries. There were
twelve exchanges between the two parties, and in the midst of this came another
team-mate of
Istrianet.org, Denis Sankovic, whose father is originally from Zejane and
who was the catalyst for the stated video results.
Ms. Burns promised both Ms. Ciceran and Mr. Sankovic
a copy of the 2-minute film, but we never received it. Instead, it was later
sent to a person who is not connected to our project and who had no input toward
the making of the taped program.
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