Molise Slavic dialect is a descendant dialect of the Slavic language spoken on the Dalmatian coast in the fifteenth century and now spoken in three villages in Campobasso province in Molise Region in Italy. Fifteenth-century Dalmatia, and indeed Dalmatia all the way through the early twentieth century, did not live under the Croat ethnic umbrella; but it is well established that Dalmatians were originally and to a significant extent Roman Catholics. Not until the nineteenth century, in the course of the Romantic revivals, did the Slavs once again establish contact with Yugoslavia. Over the course of the twentieth century, perhaps as a consequence of their final assimilation into Italian society, the Slavs temperately began to use the ethnonym Moližanski Hrvati (Molisian Croats) in their scientific literature, alongside the popular, traditional Zlavi. Since then, in the publications (which are yet scarce), it is easy to find borrowings from modern Croatian to compensate the (understandably) provincial vocabulary. Thus, as much in affiliation as in language, the Molise Slavs are closer to the Croats than to the Serbs - regardless of their ancestry. Slav, Slavic or Slavonic can refer to: Slavic peoples Slavic languages Slavic mythology Church Slavonic language Old Church Slavonic language Slav, a former Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. ... Campobasso is the capital city of the Molise region in Italy. ... Molise is a region of central Italy, the second smallest of the regions. ... Dalmatia (Croatian Dalmacija, Italian Dalmazia) is a region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, (mostly) in modern Croatia, spreading between the island of Rab in the northwest and the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. ... Croats (Croatian: Hrvati) are a south Slavic people mostly living in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (where theyre one of the constitutive nations). ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Kinship and descent is one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology. ...

Three villages in the Campobasso province — Montemitro (Mundimitar), Aquaviva Collercroce (Živavoda Kruč) and San Felice del Molise (Filić) — have approximately 3,000 speakers of Molise Slavic. The people call themselves Zlavi (Slavs) and call their language simply na-našo or "our language". A village is a human settlement commonly found in rural areas. ... Campobasso is the capital city of the Molise region in Italy. ... The Slavic peoples are the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe. ...

The Slavs would say that their ancestors came Z onu banu mora/From other side of the sea, and inhabited villages in Molise and Abruzzo, abandoned because of the plague. Originally the area inhabited by Slavs was much wider than today. Because these people have migrated away from the rest of their kinsmen so long ago, their diaspora language is rather distinct from the standard languages at the other side of the Adriatic. An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor. ... Abruzzo, (also known as Abruzzi, an older obsolete plural denomination) is a region of central Italy, formerly a part of the Abruzzi e Molise region (with Molise). ... A diaspora language is an evolution of the language originally used by a diaspora of a group of people or peoples. ...

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 Slavic colony was unknown outside Italy until 1855 when Medo Pucić, a linguist 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. Croatian linguist Milan Rešetar published a comprehensive monography about Molise Slavic under title "Serbo-croatian Colony in Southern Italy" ("Die Serbokroatischen Kolonien Süditaliens") Vienna 1911, Italian translation: "Le colonie serbocroate nell'Italia Meridionale", Campobasso 1997. The Slavic peoples are defined by their linguistic attainment of the Slavic languages. ... Kinship and descent is one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology. ... In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distant state (or city, in ancient times). ... 1855 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... A view of Dubrovnik from the south Dubrovnik (Latin Ragusa) is an old city on the Adriatic Sea coast in the extreme south of Croatia, positioned at 42°39′N 18°04′E at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. ... Naples (Italian Napoli, Neapolitan Napule, from Greek Νέα Πόλις - Néa Pólis - meaning New City; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is the largest city in southern Italy and capital of Campania Region and the Province of Naples. ... The Two Sicilies The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was the new name that the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV of Naples gave to his domain (including Southern Italy and Sicily) after the end of the Napoleonic Era and the full restoration of his power in 1816. ... The Croatian literary language is based on the Latin alphabet. ... Milan ReÅ¡etar (February 1, 1860, Dubrovnik – January 14, 1942, Florence) was Croatian and Serbian slavist, linguist and historian. ...

The language is highly Italianized. As has been mentioned above, the literati generally borrow forgotten words from modern (ijekavian - the dialect is ikavian) Croatian, but the obligatory Italian translations are seen to follow these words in print. It also retains many archaic features. As the colony was established before the discovery of America, all the names of animals and plants introduced from the Americas are borrowed from Italian or created from whole cloth. An intellectual is a person who uses his or her intellect to study, reflect, and speculate on a variety of different ideas. ... Adjective archaic (more archaic, most archaic) From an earlier period and no longer in common use; of or characterized by antiquity or archaism, antiquated. ... World map showing America CIA map of the Americas (as it is now known in English) The Americas commonly refers to the landmass in the Western Hemisphere consisting of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands. ...

The language is taught in primary schools and the signs in villages are bilingual. Primary or elementary education is the first years of formal, structured education that occurs during childhood. ... The term bilingualism (from bi meaning two and lingua meaning language) can refer to rather different phenomena. ...

An outline of features

• The analytic do + genitive replaces the synthetic independent genitive.
• do superceded od.
• Slavic verb aspect is preserved, except in the past tense imperfective verbs are attested only in the Slavic imperfect tense (bihu, they were), and perfective verbs only in the perfect tense (je izaša, he came out). There is no colloquial imperfect in the modern West South Slavic languages.
• Slavic conjunctions superceded by Italian or local ones: ke (Cr. što, what, also ke - Cr. da, that); e, oš (Cr i, and); ma (Cr. ali, no, but); si (Cr. ako, if).
• An indefinite article is in regular use: na, often written 'na.
• Structural changes in genders. Notably, njevog does not agree with the possessor's gender (Cr. njegov or njen, his or her).
• The perfective enclitic is tightly bound to the verb and always stands before it: je izaša (Cr. facul. je izašao or izašao je).

In linguistics, grammatical aspect is a property of a verb that defines the nature of temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ... The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with imperfective aspect. ... The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ...

Sample

A sentence from Matteo Ferrante's "Dva Kumovlja": "'Na dan je se usta e, umjesto za se nabučit' kako druge istre e poći van za kopat' trsje, je se vrga 'nu bilu košulju,..."

• Croatian umjesto, instead of;
• Literary Croatian bijel, white.

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.

Links

Molisian Slavic at the University of Konstanz (Germany) [1]

Molisian Slavic in the German Wikipedia [2]

Download of the Italian Version (1997 © Walter Breu) of Milan Rešetar's Book (1911) [3]

Molisian Slavic in the Italian Wikipedia [4]

Site of Acquaviva Collecroce [5]