Slavomolisano dialect

Molise Slavic
Molise Croatian
Slavomolisano
Native to Italy
Region Molise
Ethnicity Italian (Molise Croats)
Native speakers
 < 1,000 (2012)[1]
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-3 svm
Glottolog slav1254[2]

Slavomolisano, also known as Molise Slavic or Molise Croatian, is a variety of Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian spoken by Italian Croats in the province of Campobasso, in the Molise Region of southern Italy, in the villages of Montemitro (Mundimitar), Acquaviva Collecroce (Živavoda Kruč) and San Felice del Molise (Štifilić). There are fewer than 1,000 active speakers, and fewer than 2,000 passive speakers.[1]

It has been preserved since a group of Croats emigrated from Dalmatia due to the advancing Ottoman Turks. The residents of these villages speak a Shtokavian dialect with an Ikavian accent, and a strong Southern Chakavian adstratum. The Molise Croats consider themselves to be Italians of South Slavic heritage who speak a Slavic language, rather than simply ethnic Slavs or Croats.[1] Some speakers call themselves Zlavi or Harvati and call their language simply na našo ("our language").

History

The inhabitants of these villages would say that their ancestors came Z onu banu mora ("From the other side of the sea"), and inhabited villages in Molise and Abruzzo, abandoned because of the plague. They arrived in the 15th century, probably coming from the Neretva valley in what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina.[3] Originally the area inhabited by Slavs was much larger than today. Because these people have migrated away from the rest of their kinsmen so long ago, their diaspora language is somewhat distinct from the Ikavian-Shtokavian idioms spoken on the other side of the Adriatic.

The language was preserved until today only in the aforementioned three villages, although several villages in Molise and Abruzzo region are aware of their Slavic ancestry. The existence of this colony was unknown outside Italy until 1855 when Medo Pucić, a Serbian writer, linguist and politician from Dubrovnik, during one of his journeys in Italy overheard a tailor in Naples speaking with his wife in a language very similar to Pucić's own. The tailor then told him that he came from the village of Kruč, then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Subsequently the Gajica, the modern Croatian alphabet, was adopted to the language.

The language is highly Italianized. As has been mentioned above, the literati generally borrow words from modern (Ijekavian – their dialect is Ikavian) Serbocroatian, but the obligatory Italian translations are seen to follow these words in print. It also retains many archaic features. Because the colony was established before the discovery of the Americas, all the names of animals and plants introduced from the Americas are borrowed from Italian or created from whole cloth.

The language is taught in primary schools and the signs in villages are bilingual. However, the sociolinguistic status of the language differs among the three villages where it is spoken: in San Felice del Molise, it is spoken only by old people, whereas in Acquaviva Collecroce it is also spoken by young adults and adolescents, and in Montemitre it is even spoken by children, generally alongside Italian.[3]

Features

Samples

An anonymous poem (reprinted in Hrvatske Novine: Tajednik Gradišćanskih Hrvatov, winner of a competition in Molise):

SIN MOJ

    Mo prosič solite saki dan
    ma što činiš, ne govoreš maj
    je funia dan, je počela noča,
    maneštra se mrzli za te čeka.
    Letu vlase e tvoja mat
    gleda vane za te vit.
    Boli život za sta zgoro,
    ma samo mat te hoče dobro.
    Sin moj!
    Nimam već suze za još plaka
    nimam već riče za govorat.
    Srce se guli za te misli
    što ti prodava, oni ke sve te išće!
    Palako govoru, čelkadi saki dan,
    ke je dola droga na vi grad.
    Sin moj!
    Tvoje oč, bihu toko lipe,
    sada jesu mrtve,
    Boga ja molim, da ti živiš
    droga ja hočem da ti zabiš,
    doma te čekam, ke se vrniš,
    Solite ke mi prosiš,
    kupiš paradis, ma smrtu platiš.

A section of The Little Prince, as translated by Walter Breu and Nicola Gliosca:

A! Mali kraljič, ja sa razumija, na mala na votu, naka, tvoj mali život malingonik. Ti s'bi jima sa čuda vrima kana dištracijunu sama ono slako do sutanji. Ja sa znaja ovu malu aš novu stvaru, dòp četar dana jistru, kada ti s'mi reka: Su mi čuda drage sutanja.

Dictionaries

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Breu, Walter (2012-03-06). "Request for New Language Code Element in ISO 639-3" (PDF). ISO 639-3 Registration Authority. Retrieved 2013-06-30.
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Slavomolisano". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Marra, Antonietta. Contact Phenomena in the Slavic of Molise: some remarks about nouns and prepositional phrases in Morphologies in Contact (2012), p.265 et seq.

Sources

See also

External links

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