Molise Croats
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Neutrality Molise Croats (moliški Hrvati in scientific literature) live in the Molise region of Italy in the villages Acquaviva Collecroce (in Croatian: Kruč), San Felice del Molise (in Croatian: Štifilić) and Montemitro (in Croatian: Mundimitar) and elsewhere. In these three villages they are a majority. There are about 1.700 speakers of the Molise Croatian dialect. Additionally, there are about 1.000 people in other parts of Italy and emigrants in other countries originating from these villages.
Molise Croats identify themselves as Italians and speak the Italian language. Milena Lalli, a poet born to local parents in Rome, studied Slavic languages in the 1970s and evaded the curse of the midget language by acquiring a sizeable literary Croatian vocabulary to replace the numerous Italian borrowings in her dialect. Sometimes, in publications, these Croatian words and even whole expressions are translated in parenthesis or to the side into proper Italian; so also in translations from Croatian.
The Molise Croats are all Catholic. Tradition holds that the nation settled "z one bane mora" (from the other side of the sea) in the fifteenth century, and was once much more widespread. The legend says that they came to new country on one friday in May carrying only the statue of Saint Lucy. Because the exact year and date of their arrival is unknown they held processions dedicated to Saint Lucy (Sveta Luca) on every Friday in May.
See also
External links
- Nogometna momcad Mundimitra Mundimitar football team
- Mundimitar, stari hrvatski grad u Italiji Mundimitar, old Croat town in Italy
- Porijeklo prezimena o Moliski hrvati u Mundimitru Origins of surnames of Croats in Mundimitar
- Euromosaic - Le croate en Italie The Croatian minority in Italy, from Universitat Oberta in Catalunya (page in French)
- Mundimitar/Montemitro municipality
- UNESCO Red Book on endangered languages and dialects: Europe
- Schede sulle minoranze tutelate dalla legge 482/1999 Minority languages in Italy (site of University in Udine, in Italian)hr:Moliški Hrvati