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.
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. Some speakers call themselves Zlavi or Harvati and call their language simply na našo ("our language").
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. 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 Montemitro it is even spoken by children, generally alongside Italian.
The analytic do + genitive replaces the synthetic independent genitive. In Italian it is del- + noun, since Italian has lost all its cases.
do replaced by od.
Disappearance of the neuter gender for nouns. Most neuter nouns have become masculine instead under the influence of Italian, and their unstressed final vowels have almost universally lowered to /a/. In the Montemitro dialect, however, all neuter nouns have become masculine, and vowel lowering has not occurred.
Some feminine -i- stem nouns have become masculine. Those that have not have instead gained a final -a and joined the -a- stem inflectional paradigm. Thus feminine kost, "bone", has become masculine but retained its form, while feminine stvar, "thing", has become stvarḁ but retained its gender.
Simplification of declination classes. All feminine nouns have the same case inflection paradigm, and all masculine nouns have one of two case inflection paradigms (animate or inanimate).
Only the nominative, dative, and accusative cases can be used in their bare forms (without prepositions), and even then only when expressing the syntactic roles of subject, direct object, or recipient.
Loss of the locative case.
Slavic verb aspect is preserved, except in the past tense imperfective verbs are attested only in the Slavic imperfect (bihu, they were), and perfective verbs only in the perfect (je izaša, he has come out). There is no colloquial imperfect in the modern West South Slavic languages. Italian has aspect in the past tense that works in a similar fashion (impf. portava, "he was carrying", versus perf. ha portato, "he has carried").
Slavic conjunctions replaced by Italian or local ones: ke, "what" (Cr. što, also ke - Cr. da, "that", It. che); e, oš, "and" (Cr i, It. e); ma, "but" (Cr. ali, no, It. ma); se, "if" (Cr. ako, It. se).
An indefinite article is in regular use: na, often written 'na, possibly derived from earlier jedna, "one", via Italian una.
Structural changes in genders. Notably, njevog does not agree with the possessor's gender (Cr. njegov or njezin, his or her). Italian suo and its forms likewise does not, but with the object's gender instead.
As in Italian, the perfective enclitic is tightly bound to the verb and always stands before it: je izaša, "is let loose" (Cr. facul. je izašao or izašao je), Italian è rilasciato.
Devoicing or loss of final short vowels, thus e.g. mlěko > mblikḁ, "milk", more > mor, "sea", nebo > nebḁ, "sky".
The consonant system of Molise Slavic is as follows, with parenthesized consonants indicating sounds that appear only as allophones:
Unlike the standard Serbo-Croatian lects, there are no alveolo-palatal phonemes /t͡ɕ/ and /d͡ʑ/ (ć and đ), as they have largely merged with the palato-alveolar /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ (č and dž). However, in cases where standard Serbo-Croatian /t͡ɕ/ reflects Proto-Slavic *jt, the corresponding phoneme in Molise Slavic is instead /c/. In some cases standard /d͡ʑ/ corresponds to Molise /ʝ/, as in Chakavian.
/f/, /d͡z/, /d͡ʒ/, /c/, /ɟ/, and /ç/ appear mostly in loanwords.
The velar fricative [ɣ] is inserted by some speakers between vowels to eliminate hiatus; some speakers use [v] in this role instead. Rarely, [ɣ] can appear as an intervocalic allophone of /x/.
/n/ is realized as [ŋ] before velar plosives.
A prothetic [j] is regularly inserted before initial /i/.
A /u̥/ adjacent to a vowel is realized as a [w]. Etymologically, it derives from a /v/ next to an unvoiced plosive; thus standard Serbo-Croatian [stvâːr] (‘thing’) corresponds to Molise Slavic [ˈstwaːrḁ].
Some speakers realize /ʎ/ as [j], /gʎ/ as [ɟ], and /kʎ/ as [c].
After a short vowel, the following consonant may optionally be geminated.
The vocalic system of Molise Slavic has seven distinct vowel qualities, as follows:
Besides these vowels, there is also a syllabic /r̩/ that functions as a vowel. Some speakers insert an epenthetic [ɛ] before the /r/ instead of pronouncing the /r/ as syllabic.
There are two tones, rising and falling. A falling tone can be found only on single stressed initial syllables. A rising tone spreads over two equally-stressed syllables (or one stressed followed by one more stressed), except in cases where the second syllable has been lost. If the second syllable is long, some speakers only stress the second syllable.
An opposition exists between long and short vowels, but only in stressed position. Vowels with a falling tone are sometimes long, and the second vowel with a rising tone is always long unless it is word-final, in which case the first vowel with a rising tone is long instead if the second vowel is voiceless or lost. Vowel length is only distinctive with falling tone; with rising tone, it is entirely predictable.
/ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are found almost exclusively in loanwords.
[ɪ] appears as an allophone of unstressed /i/, especially next to nasal consonants.
In posttonic position, there is a tendency to lower vowels, so that both /o/ and /e/ merge with /a/ (though some conservative speakers do not have this merger). /i/ and /u/ are also often lowered to [ɪ] and [ʊ], but remain distinct.
Etymologically short vowels become voiceless in final position. Among younger speakers they are often dropped altogether. /i̥/ is almost universally dropped, /ḁ/ (and /e̥/ and /o̥/, which have largely merged with /ḁ/) less commonly, and /u̥/ is retained by almost everyone in all positions.
A text collected by Milan Rešetar in 1911 (here superscripts indicate voiceless vowels):
An anonymous poem (reprinted in Hrvatske Novine: Tajednik Gradišćanskih Hrvatov, winner of a competition in Molise):
SIN MOJ
A section of The Little Prince, as translated into Molise Slavic by Walter Breu and Nicola Gliosca:
From: Josip Lisac: Dva moliškohrvatska rječnika, Mogućnosti 10/12, 2000.
Walter Breu-Giovanni Piccoli (con aiuto di Snježana Marčec), Dizionario croatomolisano di Acquaviva-Collecroce, 2000, Campobasso 2000
Ag. Piccoli-Antonio Samartino, Dizionario dell' idioma croato-molisano di Montemitro/Rječnik moliškohrvatskih govora Mundimitra, Matica Hrvatska Mundimitar - Zagreb, 2000.
Giovanni Piccoli: Lessico del dialetto di Acquaviva-Collecroce, Rome, 1967
Božidar Vidov: Rječnik ikavsko-štokavskih govora molizanskih Hrvata u srednjoj Italiji, Mundimitar, Štifilić, Kruč, Toronto, 1972.
Tatjana Crisman: Dall' altra parte del mare. Le colonie croate del Molise, Rome, 1980
Angelo Genova: Ko jesmo bolje: Ko bihmo, Vasto, 1990.
