Hollanda Araştırma Enstitüsü  -  Nederlands Instituut in Turkije

Romeyka, an endangered minority language of the Black Sea region

Laurentia Schreiber (2014)

I had just finished my Erasmus stay at Istanbul University in Winter 2013/14 when I received a partial fellowship of the NIT in order to carry out linguistic fieldwork on Romeyka. Romeyka is a variety of Greek and still spoken in the Black Sea region around Trabzon by approximately 4.500 speakers. As the minority language is definitely endangered, my research aims at contributing to language documentation with a measurement of the sociolinguistic vitality of Romeyka.

The data I could collect during my stay at the NIT resulted in my Master's Thesis which is going to be expanded by a dissertation project at the University of Cambridge.

To this day, the NIT is a contact point at each of my travels to Turkey be it for (non)-material support, research, or just a quiet work place at the library in the Center of Istanbul.