Romanian as a Heritage Language in Italy: Linguistic Interference in Italian-Romanian Bilingual Children Aged 5–10

RomanianisthemostwidelyspokenfirstlanguageamongforeignresidentsinItaly,fol- lowing Italian. Migration from Romania began after the fall of the communist regime and intensified with EU accession in 2007, leading to the formation of a sizeable second-generation Romanian population. Despite their relevance for heritage lan- guage research, the linguistic practices of these speakers remain largely understudied. Drawing on a microcorpus of narratives based on the picture story Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer, this paper investigates the linguistic features of Romanian spo- ken as a heritage language by second-generation Romanian children aged 5–10 in Italy, focusing on the influence of Italian. The findings highlight significant language mix- ing with Italian and frequent transfer phenomena from it, such as lexical borrowings as well as semantic and morphosyntactic calques, interpreted within the framework of the Integrated Multilingual Model. The paper also explores the sociolinguistic con- text of Romanian as a heritage language in Italy, emphasizing the roles of commu- nity, family, and education in language maintenance. This research contributes to the understanding of bilingual language development in contexts involving closely related languages, offering insights into the dynamics of language shift and preservation in post-immigration communities.