Molise Croatian Dialect - History

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. 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 somewhat distinct from the Croatian Štokavian & Cakavian Ikavian idioms spoken at 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 and Croat ancestry. The existence of this Croat 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.

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 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.