Croatian Towns in Italy – Molise Croats
Posted May 4th by Braddock Family in Adriatic Sea, Bosnia Hercegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia, History, Italy
The Italian influence on Croatia over thousands of years has been great. The Romans, Venetians and Italian Empires have for at different times taken parts of the country. Even today, in Istria all the street signs are bilingual and in Dalmatia there are many Italian surnames.
But it hasn’t been all one way traffic. The citizens of three small, hilltop towns in Italy’s Molise region (above) – Acquaviva Collecroce (Kruč), San Felice del Molise (Štifilić) and Montemitro (Montemitro) – speak an archaic Štokavian dialect. Štokavian is one of the three main Croatian dialects.
As the Islamic Ottoman Empire advance through Hercegovina during the 15th Century, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Albanians fled before them, and crossed the Adriatic Sea. Finding several villages abandoned because of the plague, they settled down and have been there ever since.
The Molise Croats are considered to be Italy’s smallest ethnic group – about 5,000 still speak their language.
In the town of Montemitro (above) – the local soccer team wears Croatian colours.
(Another historical note – at the end of WW2, Yugoslavia retook parts of Dalmatia that had been part of the Kingdom of Italy between the wars. More than 20,000 ethnic Italian Dalmatians fled from the region and thousands of them still live in a suburb of Rome, called the Quartiere Dalmato.)
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Miquel
May 6th, 2009
There is a similar town up in Burgenland, Austria Kroatisch Minihof (sorry, only in German) or Mjenovo in Croatian. Small enclave in the middle of wine country and part of the whole Burgenland Croatian language group. Wild to be driving along, seeing words like ‘kirchenplatz’ and then see ‘kod crikve’ (I believe that’s a dialectal shift from crkva). I see I never got around to writing an article on that, which was quite silly of me.
One minor thing and I could easily be wrong as I’ve only learned it on the book side of things, but Štokavian is one of the three main *Croatian* dialects. In Serbo-Croatian, there were the main ikavian and ijekavian separations (basically Serbian and Croatian). Montenegro uses Štokavian as well, but with an ijekavian spelling which makes it different from Serbian. Anways, that was the differences as far as I learned them in class, along with the fact I simply can’t understand Kajkavski to save my life because no matter what anyone says, it’s damned near being Slovenian and yes, I know thems fightin’ words these days with the water border dispute and all.
Sea Kayak Croatia
May 6th, 2009
Thanks for this – I checked with my cousin and she confirmed what you said about the dialects. You definitely know your stuff!
Miquel
May 6th, 2009
Yeah, it was drilled in to me in my classes since we were all learning a variant of BCS and we needed to know when to say things just a little different for Croatian or Bosnian or Serbian. The unfortunate part is that I may know this stuff, ali moj hrvatski nije tako dobri
Alan
May 10th, 2009
Talking about Croats in Austria makes no sense without mentioning Gradišće and the whole region is ethnic Croatian for the same reason as the rest of the enclaves.
The biggest migrations happened, of course, within Croatia itself and it has been documented that the eastern coast of Istria was inhabited by the people from Murter. Later on, that area, Murter island and vicinity, has been populated by the Turkish “left overs” or the Catholics who adopted Turkish last names so now you have surnames like Turčinov, Juraga, Bašić … all representing Turkish words in their last names. Many other last names in Zadar area indicate the same: Eškinja, Maksan, Brtan, Štampalija… So, while you have our ethnic Croatians moving to Italy, you have a rather mixed nation now living on the coast.
Alan
May 10th, 2009
@ Miguel – go to Kali on Ugljan Island and then kajkavski will seem like your mother’s tongue
))))