The aim of this paper is to give an outline of the wide variety of different lexemes and loanwords used in the novel Bastadur: the man who loves-believes, written by the Montenegrin writer Janenka Lalović. She covers an important period in the lives of the main characters in her novel, linking two cultural and geographic regions: the towns in the Bay of Kotor on the Adriatic coast, and Lake Skadar, whose dialects are both abundant with specific lexemes and loanwords. The area of the Bay of Kotor is a specific cultural region marked by a combination of historical and cultural features reflected in the local language as an important part of the cultural heritage. Analyzing the novel Bastadur, we came across a wide variety of interesting Montenegrin, Croatian, and Serbian lexemes and loanwords characteristic of the Bay of Kotor, including loanwords from
Romance languages (Dalmatian-Romance, Venetian, and Tuscan Italian), Latinisms, Turkish loanwords, and archaic lexemes. We embarked on a great linguistic and cultural journey in order to classify the excerpted corpus of loanwords and lexemes and present their meaning in context. The variety of lexemes and loanwords, as well as their originality, in the Montenegrin language of the Bay of Kotor region, is immense and it is an integral part of the cultural heritage.
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