---
title: "Digital Preservation of Aromanian Through Knowledge"
description: "They propose a three-module framework built on the Knowledge Management Cycle model: localizing existing resources… 32 references."
authors: ["Marija Pendevska", "Hristina Nastevska"]
year: 2026
venue: "Proceedings of the First Workshop on Dialects in NLP –- A Resource Perspective"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/2026.dialres-1.32/"
doi: "10.63317/34e4awcc69g4"
licence: "CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/pendevska-2026-digital-preservation-aromanian-through-knowledge/"
---
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# Digital Preservation of Aromanian Through Knowledge Management and Automatic Speech Recognition Evaluation

**Authors:** Marija Pendevska and Hristina Nastevska · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the First Workshop on Dialects in NLP –- A Resource Perspective](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/dialres/) ([Workshop on Dialects in NLP –- A Resource Perspective 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/dialres/2026/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computational-linguistics/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2026.dialres-1.32/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2026.dialres-1.32.pdf) · [DOI 10.63317/34e4awcc69g4](https://doi.org/10.63317/34e4awcc69g4) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7166570277)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary

Aromanian is an endangered Eastern Romance language with only a few thousand mostly adult speakers in fragmented Balkan communities. It has incomplete standardization and is absent from speech technology. The authors treat its preservation as a knowledge management (KM) problem. They propose a three-module framework built on the Knowledge Management Cycle model: localizing existing resources, distributing them through digital platforms, and creating new content with technology. A survey of 176 respondents on knowledge-sharing habits supports the framework's design.

Within this framework they run what they describe as the first ASR benchmark for Aromanian. They test zero-shot OpenAI Whisper models (medium, large-v2, large-v3) under several language settings on two North Macedonian varieties, Gramosteanj (southern group) and Crushova (northern group). Every configuration fails at the word level, although character-level scores show the models partly capture the sound patterns. Romanizing output in non-Latin scripts lowers errors noticeably, which points to script mismatch as a key error source. The work gives a baseline for Aromanian speech technology and shows that endangered varieties need dedicated data and model adaptation.

## Key points

- **Survey results (176 respondents):** Information quality (28.3%) and personal utility (24.1%) were the most valued criteria for sharing knowledge. Digital information seeking (27.1%) was the most common behaviour.
- **Whisper error rates:** WER stayed above 88% in all configurations. CER fell as low as about 34% in the best setup.
- **Best configuration:** Whisper large-v3 with the Latin language setting performed best throughout.
- **Romanization:** Converting non-Latin script output to Latin, with tools such as Uroman, substantially reduced CER.
- **Resources and context:** Other language resources listed include Praat, CTC Forced Aligner and Mozilla Common Voice. The orthographic context is the 35-character Bitola standard from 1997. The paper frames Aromanian as an extreme out-of-distribution case compared with Greek dialect ASR benchmarks.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/ss-cyril-and-methodius-university-in-skopje/) — University, Skopje, North Macedonia · 6 works · 147 citations

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## Cite

Cite as: Marija Pendevska and Hristina Nastevska. 2026. Digital Preservation of Aromanian Through Knowledge Management and Automatic Speech Recognition Evaluation. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Dialects in NLP –- A Resource Perspective.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{pendevska2026digital,
  title = {{Digital Preservation of Aromanian Through Knowledge Management and Automatic Speech Recognition Evaluation}},
  author = {Marija Pendevska and Hristina Nastevska},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the First Workshop on Dialects in NLP –- A Resource Perspective},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.63317/34e4awcc69g4},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/34e4awcc69g4}
}
```

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## References

32 references, 5 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 2 November 2026*