Original scientific paper

THE WEATHER EXPERIENCE OF KOMIŽA’S FISHERMEN

Joško Božanić ; Faculty of philosophy in Split

Abstract

In the framework of researches into the oral tradition of the organic community in the fishery settlement Komiza on the central-Dalmatian island of Vis all through 1989 the author was recording the weather forecasts which a Komiza fisherman, born in 1917, used to inform him about. This record is the very document not only of an exceptionally rich experience acquired in observing and explaining the meteorological weather but also of an abundant idiom this experience
has preserved until today. This record fixes the knowledge and skill in observing and explaining the weather these distant central-Dalmatian island have been exposed to for eons, and it also fixes the oral tradition acquired at high seas at the peril of the fishermen's lives . For the first time in history, by the end of this millenium, the thread of oral tradition has ben cut and suppressed by modern techniques and thus abandoned to oblivion.

At the same time this document records an exceptionally rich lexicon and poetic expression when describing the natural phenomena predetermining the fishermen's lives at the high seas. Along with the original text on the weather forecasts, distributed according to the dates of the received information, the author also gives a very detailed glossary with grammatical elaboration of the entries, phraseology, and a series of examples used in the oral text that nuance both the discursive and figurative meanings of the words.

Keywords

weather forcasts; fisherman; boat; sea; sky; wind

Hrčak ID:

111115

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/111115

Publication date:

3.2.1997.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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