Istro-Romanian is an Eastern Romance language that is still spoken today in a few villages and hamlets in the peninsula of Istria, on the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, in what is now Croatia as well as in other countries around the world where the Istro-Romanian people settled. The number of Istro-Romanian speakers is very loosely estimated to be less than 500, the "smallest ethnic group in Europe" and listed among languages that are "seriously endangered" in the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages.