He received a degree in Romance and Russian philology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1960, and a PhD in 1965.
In 1962 he started working at the Department of Romance Languages at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, becoming professor in 1983.
From 1966 to 1967 he went to Paris to further study under André Martinet and Émile Benveniste.
[1] Since 1997, he has been a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and since 2011 a secretary of its Department of Philology.
[1] His work is focused on the Istro-Romanian language (Opis današnjeg istrorumunjskog – Descrierea istroromânei actuale, 1971; Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik: (s gramatikom i tekstovima), 1998) as well as Jewish-Spanish spoken in Dubrovnik and Sarajevo and their contacts with Croatian.