Introduction :
It is in the villages of San Felice , Acquaviva and Montemitro , that starting from xv-xvi centuries of the "Slavic" emigrants come from Balkans to settle there. Even if this time seems remote, tangible traces exist. It is initially about one of the languages spoken in these villages. One speaks there Italian, an Italian patois as well as a Slavic patois. It is only in these three Italian villages of the region of the Molise that one can still find nowadays people speaking a language close to the Croatian dialect of "Dalmatia" of today.
Linguists (M.Resetar, T.Badurina, M.Hraste and I.Popovic) studied this language. The conclusions are that this language belonged to the Stokavo-Ikavo dialect in "relative" agreement with the area of the supposed origin of the population.
Let us give initially some complementary informations on this language. According to the way in which the interrogative form is pronounced "What?", three principal dialects are distinguished. If "Sto" is used, it is said that the language belonged to the Stokavian dialect. At the time this dialect was spoken by the population around the area of the Neretva. If "Ca" is used, one deals with the Cakavien dialect which was attached to the littoral adratic (area of Dalmatia). Finally the last pronunciation is "Kaj" and concerned the populations of the interior.
Did all the linguistic studies (M.Resetar) show that the language spoken by the three villages are attached to the Stokavian dialect (Ikavien is an additional under-nuance) except that the word "What?" does not decide "Sto" but "Ca"! And yes nothing is simple especially in the Balkans! The linguists explain this particular point by the fact that this language has some influence of the Cakavien dialect during the mixing of the populations.
Currently :
In Molise, this language is still alive only in the villages of Acquaviva and Montemitro. One finds the names of the town hall thus there, of the school... translated into Italian and in the Molisan-Croatian patois on the official street signs. In Slavic patois, Acquaviva Collecroce becomes Zivavoda-Kruc and Montemitro Mundimitar (please excuse for the absence of accents) . Unfortunately this language is close to extinction particularly in the village of San Felice (in Slavic Stifilic ). Indeed, only the old people of this last village still usually speak this old slav. Some people fight not to forget these roots, to keep traces of them and even try to cultivate this "difference". But they encounter many difficulties unfortunately. It is however possible to make things move, or in any case of promoting new projects to support this cultural identity.
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Etiolation of the language :
It is necessary to be conscious that this language is in the process of extinction. It was thus referred by UNESCO as belonging to the languages likely to disappear (reference Red Book ). The transmission was done primarily orally, the writings being rare (see continuation). The children heard their parents or grandparents speak the old Slav one and thus learned it naturally as of their youth. This language has thus been transmitted for several centuries from word
of mouth. This transmission was supported by the strong enclavement of the villages and an self sufficient economy. But this local tradition almost disappeared in the last 50 years following a massive emigration in the years after the second war. Young people left to find work in Italy or abroad. Currently these villages are especially inhabited by pensioners. Finally many Italian from surrounding areas came to settle little by little in the villages, not having any link with this secular tradition. The population evolved and thus contributed to the disappearance of this inheritance.
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Writings in the old Slav language :
This language being especially used orally, the writings are in a limited number:
Me to contact, here my electronic address :
manso@clermont.in2p3.fr