The Istriot language ( Lèngua Eîstriota ) is a Romance language of the Italo-Dalmatian branch spoken by about 400 people in the southwestern part of the Istrian peninsula in Croatia , particularly in Rovinj and Vodnjan . It should not be confused with the Istrian dialect of the Venetian language or the more distantly related Istro-Romanian , a variety of Eastern Romance .
120-511: Istrian Italians ( Italian : istriani italiani ; Slovene : Italijanski Istrani ; Croatian : Talijanski Istrani ) are an ethnic group from the Adriatic region of Istria in modern northwestern Croatia and southwestern Slovenia . Istrian Italians descend from the original Latinized population of Roman Histria , from the Venetian -speaking settlers who colonized the region during
240-689: A local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it
360-646: A national revival , demanding linguistic and national rights that challenged the supremacy of the Italian language and culture in Istria. The Croatian-Slovene national movement gained force only in the second part of the 19th century, causing a clash with a parallel nationalist movement of the Istrian Italians. Many Istrian Italians looked with sympathy towards the Risorgimento movement that fought for
480-460: A "huge" emigration of Italians from Istria before World War I , reducing their percentage inside the peninsula inhabitants (there are some claims Italians made more than 50% of the total population for centuries, but at the end of the 19th century they were reduced to only two fifths according to some estimates). A limited tension with the Austrian state did not in fact stop the rise of the use of
600-942: A battlefield between the Nazi German army and the partisan (mostly Yugoslav) insurgency. Already in September 1943, several hundreds Istrian Italians were killed by the Yugoslav partisans because of their allegiance to the Italian State. This was the first wave of the Foibe massacres , which continued after the Yugoslav takeover of the region in May 1945. From 1943 until 1953, according to various data, between 200,000 and 330,000 Italians emigrated from these regions. This emigration of Italians (called Istrian–Dalmatian exodus ) reduced
720-796: A feudal culture. By the late 18th century, the vast majority of Austrian Istria were Slavic (Slovene and Croat) speakers. In 1797, during the Napoleonic wars , the Republic of Venice was dissolved. After the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797) Austria occupied the Venetian part of the peninsula. Istria was included in the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy from 1805 to 1809, and successively in the Illyrian Provinces from 1809. After
840-455: A huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages— ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton , etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when
960-471: A little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home. Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country. In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016. Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of
1080-658: A poetic and literary origin in the works of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, although the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century, the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as
1200-417: A renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i.e., the problem of the language ), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving
1320-522: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of
SECTION 10
#17327649394961440-490: A seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/ , as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin . Some examples: Istriot language Istriot is a Romance language currently only found in Istria . Its classification has remained mostly unclear, various proposals for its affinity exist: When Istria
1560-469: A short French interim, Austria reconquered the whole peninsula in 1813, and unified it into a single province. As a result, Istrian Italians became a minority in the new administrative unit, although they maintained their social and part of their political power. From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, Italian and Slavic communities in Istria had lived peacefully side by side because they did not know
1680-479: A single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible ; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as educated native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so; however, the level of intelligibility
1800-513: A united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects. Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to
1920-1030: A whole (between Croatia, Slovenia and Italy), more than half of them living in Italy: Source: Croatian Census - 2021. Slovenian Census - 2002. Italian Census - 1970/2001 Besides Croat language schools, in the Croatian County of Istria there are also kindergartens in Buje /Buie, Brtonigla /Verteneglio, Novigrad /Cittanova, Umag /Umago, Poreč /Parenzo, Vrsar /Orsera, Rovinj /Rovigno, Bale /Valle, Vodnjan /Dignano, Pula /Pola and Labin /Albona, as well as primary schools in Buje/Buie, Brtonigla/Verteneglio, Novigrad/Cittanova, Umag/Umago, Poreč/Parenzo, Vodnjan/Dignano, Rovinj/Rovigno, Bale/Valle and Pula/Pola, as well as lower secondary schools and upper secondary schools in Buje/Buie, Rovinj/Rovigno and Pula/Pola, all with Italian as
2040-427: Is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan , 85% with Sardinian , 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese , 78% with Ladin , 77% with Romanian . Estimates may differ according to sources. One study, analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology , inflection , discourse , syntax , vocabulary , and intonation ), estimated that distance between Italian and Latin
2160-707: Is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin , a development that triggered the " Niçard exodus ", or the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy, and the Niçard Vespers . Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about
2280-534: Is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin. In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian . As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive. Italian is the official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French; see Swiss Italian ), although its use there has moderately declined since
2400-460: Is markedly lower between Italian-Spanish, and considerably higher between the Iberian sister languages of Portuguese-Spanish. Speakers of this latter pair can communicate with one another with remarkable ease, each speaking to the other in his own native language without slang/jargon. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it
2520-462: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around
SECTION 20
#17327649394962640-554: Is now the territory of Slovenia and Croatia: 137,131 in Istria and 28,911 in Fiume/ Rijeka (1918). Meanwhile, the Italian 1936 census indicated approximately 230,000 people who listed Italian as their language of communication (in what is now the territory of Slovenia and Croatia, then part of the Italian state): nearly 194,000 in today's Croatia and 36,000 in today's Slovenia. After the Italian armistice of 1943, Istria became
2760-594: Is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as
2880-522: Is the Venetian architecture of Poreč . Italian cultural influence has resulted in the resemblance of many Istrian dances to those of Northern Italy. This applies to dances done by the modern-day Croatian population and by the Italian national minority found today in the larger towns and some villages in the western part of Istria. Dances done by both the Croatian and the Italian communities include Molferina or Mafrina and Kvadrilja . Dances specific to
3000-495: Is the following: This is a poem called "Grièbani" by Ligio Zanini in the dialect of Rovinj-Rovigno . La nostra zì oûna longa cal da griebani: i spironi da Monto inda uò salvà, e 'l brasso da Vistro uò rastà scuio pei grutoni pioûn alti del mar, ca ruzaghia sta tiera viecia-stara. Da senpro i signemo pissi sensa nom, ca da sui sa prucoûra 'l bucon par guodi la veîta leîbara del cucal, pastadi dala piova da Punente
3120-546: Is the only language of instruction (although the official name of the university includes the Italian version, too). As per the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947 , those people who lived in the territories of the Kingdom of Italy ceded to Yugoslavia between 1940 and 1947 would lose their Italian citizenship , but could keep it should they decide to move to Italy in a ten-year-period following the treaty. As such,
3240-549: Is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the 19th century. Other examples are Cocoliche , an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires , and Lunfardo . The Rioplatense Spanish dialect of Argentina and Uruguay today has thus been heavily influenced by both standard Italian and Italian regional languages as
3360-509: The Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa). Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example,
3480-991: The La Voce del Popolo ( Croatia ), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola ( Luxembourg ), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo ( Argentina ), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia ( Uruguay ), the La Voce d'Italia ( Venezuela ),
3600-642: The Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy , the Italo-Dalmatian , Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco- Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy , Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in
3720-620: The Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese ). Italian is widely spoken in Malta , where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently (see Maltese Italian ). Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition. Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in
Istrian Italians - Misplaced Pages Continue
3840-773: The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia ), although the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states . Those dialects now have considerable variety . As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian . The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and
3960-1033: The Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has
4080-554: The Placiti Cassinesi from the province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle , probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after
4200-691: The Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are the most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and the Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and
4320-528: The Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century. The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri , written in his native Florentine . Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia , to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed
4440-532: The 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture. As of 2022, Australia had the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. This occurred because of support by the Italian community in Australia and the Italian Government and also because of successful educational reform efforts led by local governments in Australia. From
4560-450: The 11th century, most of the interior mountainous areas of northern and eastern Istria ( Liburnia ) were inhabited by South Slavs , while the Romance population continued to prevail in the south and west of the peninsula. Linguistically, the Romance inhabitants of Istria were most probably divided into two main linguistic groups: in the north-west, the speakers of a Rhaeto-Romance language similar to Ladin and Friulian prevailed, while in
4680-510: The 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry. Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had probably diverged long before the first written records appeared since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and
4800-562: The 1970s. It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons : Ticino and Grisons . In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons . Ticino, which includes Lugano , the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant. Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City . Italian
4920-425: The 19th century, the use of the Venetian language even extended to some areas of former Austrian Istria, like the town of Pazin / Pisino. The Austrian censuses detected a gradual but constant rise of Italian speakers both in numerical and proportional terms: in 1848, around a third of Istrians were Italian (Venetian or Istriot) speakers. From the early 19th century onward, the local Croats and Slovenes engaged in
Istrian Italians - Misplaced Pages Continue
5040-557: The 5th century AD. Between 500 and 700 AD, Slavs settled in Southeastern Europe (Eastern Adriatic), and their number ever increased, and with the Ottoman invasion Slavs were pushed from the south and east. This led to Italic people becoming ever more confined to urban areas, while some areas of the countryside were populated by Slavs, with exceptions in western and southern Istria which remained fully Romance-speaking. By
5160-407: The Austrian surveys of the language of use (in the Austrian censuses, the ethnic composition of the population wasn't surveyed, only the "Umgangsprache") "overestimated the diffusion of the socially dominant languages of the empire... The capacity of assimilation of the Italian language suggests that amongst those who declared themselves Italian speakers in Istria, there were people whose mother tongue
5280-537: The Istrian Italians include La Veneziana , Bersagliera , Denci , Sette Passi and the very similar dances Vilota and Furlana . Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of
5400-521: The Istrian Italians leaving the zone B for elsewhere (mainly to Italy) because intimidated or preferring not to live in communist Yugoslavia. Yugoslav Istria was divided between Croatia and Slovenia , so that the Istrian Italians became subject to two different administrations. In 1961 25,651 Italians remained in Yugoslavia (this number included some small minorities in Dalmatia), around 10-12% of
5520-493: The Istrian population. Today, as a result of the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus (1943–1960), the majority of Istrian Italians live outside of the Istrian peninsula; however, a significant Italian minority still lives in the Croatian County of Istria (5.01%) and in Slovenian Istria (3.3%), where they are granted minority rights . According to the official Slovenian and Croatian censuses conducted in 2001 and 2002 respectively, they number around 22,000. The Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, on
5640-399: The Italian Renaissance . Other historians have attributed the ancient language of romanized Istrians as being the Istro-Romanian . In the 14th century, epidemics such as the Black Death decimated in those years the Istrian population, which was still mostly of Romance ethnicity. As a consequence of depopulation, Venice started settling Slavic communities to repopulate the interior areas of
5760-417: The Italian dialects has declined in the modern era , as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media from newspapers to radio to television, diglossia is still frequently encountered in Italy and triglossia is not uncommon in emigrant communities among older speakers. Both situations normally involve some degree of code-switching and code-mixing . Notes: Italian has
5880-439: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,
6000-470: The Italian language, in the second part of the 19th century, when the population of predominantly Italian-speaking towns in Istria rose dramatically: in the part of Istria that eventually became part of Croatia, the first Austrian census from 1846 found 34 thousand Italian speakers, alongside 120 thousand Croatian speakers. Until 1910, the proportion changed: there were 108 thousand Italian speakers and 134 thousand Croatian speakers. Vanni D'Alessio notes (2008),
6120-589: The Italian population before World War II. Italians continued to emigrate in later decades (most of them to Australia, Canada, South America or the USA). Therefore, their population declined in each subsequent census to 15,132 inhabitants in 1981. It has to be emphasized that the data of the Yugoslav censuses are unreliable in relation to the real number of Italians, since many members of the Italian minority, for various reasons, chose to be nationally undeclared or preferred to use their regional identity and declared themselves as Istrians. Not surprisingly in 2001 (i.e. after
SECTION 50
#17327649394966240-446: The Italian side against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Among them, the most famous was the Nazario Sauro from Koper (Capodistria). After the end of the war, the whole peninsula was occupied by the Kingdom of Italy , and officially annexed to Italy with the Treaty of Rapallo of 1920. Istria was included in the administrative region known as the Julian March /Venezia Giulia. After the Fascist takeover of Italy in 1922, Italian became
6360-486: The Julian March. Indeed, before the Treaty of Rapallo, the Italians in Istria accounted for nearly half of the local inhabitants and were mostly an indigenous population, but after the treaty they were bolstered by some new arrivals of the so-called regnicoli (from the Kingdom of Italy), which were never well liked by the indigenous Istrians Italians. The Austrian 1910 census indicated approximately 182,500 people who listed Italian as their language of communication in what
6480-497: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from
6600-413: The almost exclusively Croatian-speaking areas that were annexed to Yugoslavia after WWI ( Kastav and the island of Krk), Istria had 39% of Italian speakers, 37% of Croatian, and 14.7% Slovene speakers. Until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the bourgeois Italian national liberal elites retained much of the political control in Istria. During World War One, many Istrians fought as volunteers on
6720-444: The case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time ( Late Middle Ages ) gave its language weight, although Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside
6840-444: The census 1857, and 73,000 in total population of 273.000 in the census 1869 (26,67 percent). In census 1880, when the language of everyday communication ("Umgangssprache") was recorded, there was 112,000 people of Italian langugage in the total population of 274,000 (40,87 percent). In the time of census 1910., Italian was the primary language of 36.5% (38,14% in the parts of Istria which would be annexed to Italy between WWI and WWII) of
6960-455: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian
7080-405: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of
7200-408: The country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language. The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools. The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania, due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to
7320-446: The country. A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation . Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara , still has several Italian schools, established during
SECTION 60
#17327649394967440-415: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in
7560-464: The design and fashion industries, in some sports such as football and especially in culinary terms. In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular —other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often called " Italian dialects ", a label that can be very misleading if it is understood to mean "dialects of Italian". The Romance dialects of Italy are local evolutions of spoken Latin that pre-date
7680-420: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of
7800-515: The dissolution of Yugoslavia), the Croatian and Slovenian censuses reported a total Italian population of 21,894 (with the figure in Croatia nearly doubling). In its 1996 report on 'Local self-government, territorial integrity and protection of minorities' the Council of Europe 's European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission ) put it that "a great majority of the local Italians, some thousands of Slovenes and of nationally undefined bilingual 'Istrians', used their legal right from
7920-420: The educated gentlemen was to make the Grand Tour , visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It was expected that the visitor would learn at least some Italian, understood as language based on Florentine. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until
8040-409: The establishment of Italian, and as such are sister languages to the Tuscan that was the historical source of Italian. They can be quite different from Italian and from each other, with some belonging to different linguistic branches of Romance. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered " historical language minorities ", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by
8160-433: The fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects. Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (such as Spain in the Kingdom of Naples , or Austria in
8280-433: The following documents are required: Istrian culture has been deeply influenced by Venetian culture, especially from an architectural point of view. Istrian cities are characterized by architectural forms with a Venetian imprint, an influence that extends to urban planning, particularly in the grid formed by streets and squares. This influence is still visible today, both in cities and in smaller population centres. Noteworthy
8400-410: The free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language. According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs , every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in
8520-479: The interior towns of Albona / Labin and Pinguente / Buzet . This created a dichotomy that characterized Istria until the late 18th century. The Venetian culture and language left a profound impact on Venetian Istria. By the Baroque and Enlightenment periods, Istrian Italians were completely integrated into the wider Italian culture via their belonging to the Republic of Venice. The towns of Venetian Istria became almost exclusively Venetian-speaking, and Venetian Italian
8640-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as
8760-520: The language of instruction. Besides Slovene language schools, in Slovenian Istria there are also kindergartens, primary schools, lower secondary schools and upper secondary schools with Italian as the language of instruction in Koper /Capodistria, Izola /Isola and Piran /Pirano. At the state-owned University of Primorska , however, which is also established in the bilingual area, Slovene
8880-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of
9000-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in
9120-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian
9240-567: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of
9360-477: The local Italian residents who opted to remain in Istria , Rijeka , Lastovo and other territories lost their Italian citizenship. On 8 March 2006, the Italian government approved law n. 124, which would provide a possibility to regain Italian citizenship to "those Italians and their descendants residing in Istria , Fiume , and Dalmatia between 1940 and 1947, when they relinquished it upon these territories being ceded to Yugoslavia . To access this initiative,
9480-588: The meeting of the Council of Ministers of 12 November 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at the Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the empire with an Italian presence: His Majesty expressed the precise order that action be taken decisively against the influence of the Italian elements still present in some regions of the Crown and, appropriately occupying
9600-820: The municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and
9720-412: The nation was unified in 1861. Italian is a Romance language , a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan , especially its Florentine dialect , and is, therefore, an Italo-Dalmatian language , a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian . According to Ethnologue , lexical similarity
9840-463: The national identification, given that they generically defined themselves as "Istrians", of "Romance" or "Slavic" culture. Although the incorporation into the Austrian Empire caused deep changes in the political assets of the region, it did not alter the social balance. Venetian-speaking Istrian Italians continued to dominate the region both culturally and economically. In the first half of
9960-408: The number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and Italian, as the dominant language, spread. Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula , as well as the prestige variety used on
10080-664: The official census only 36,000 Italians lived in Yugoslavia , 16% of the Italian population before World War II, and another 35,000 lived in the zone B of the Free Territory of Trieste (FTT). After the dissolution of the FTT in 1954, and the definitive handover of zone B to Yugoslavia, almost the totality of Istria became officially part of Yugoslavia. This triggered the last wave of the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , with most of
10200-590: The official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and the language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During
10320-416: The old Romance (either Rhaeto-Romance or Italo-Dalmatian ) languages with the Venetian language . Only in the extreme south of the peninsula did the original Istrian Romance language survive: under strong Venetian influences it transformed itself into the modern Istriot language . Until the early 19th century, Dalmatian continued to be spoken on the island of Veglia / Krk , and a dialect of Friulian in
10440-630: The openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà , annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go"). There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of
10560-584: The original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most probably simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either. Throughout Italy, regional varieties of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian , are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors:
10680-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it
10800-679: The other hand, numbers between 230,000 and 350,000 people from Istria, mainly ethnic Italians. Throughout history, Istrian Italians exerted a vast and significant influence on Istria, especially cultural and architectural. The number of people resident in the Croatian part of Istria declaring themselves to be Italian nearly doubled between 1981 and 1991 (i.e. before and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia). Social standing of Italian language and Italian culture in Istria tended, historically, to be good, or even dominant: Italian language in Slovenia and Italian language in Croatia are spoken even today as
10920-527: The peace treaty to 'opt out' of the Yugoslav controlled part of Istria". In several waves, they moved to Italy and elsewhere (also overseas, mainly in the Americas ) and claimed Italian or other citizenship. Today Istrian Italians are mostly a national minority in Croatia. Croatian municipalities with a significant Italian population include Grisignana / Grožnjan (36%), Verteneglio / Brtonigla (32%), and Buie / Buje (24%). The last census (2001) showed that there are nearly 50,000 Istrian Italians in Istria as
11040-459: The peninsula. These were mostly Čakavian and partially Štokavian speaking South Slavs from Dalmatia and present-day Montenegro (differently from Kajkavian and proto- Slovene speakers that lived in the northern areas of the peninsula). At the same time, settlers from the Veneto region were used to resettle the towns. This caused a language shift of the local Romance population who replaced
11160-406: The population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II , contributed to
11280-541: The posts of public, judicial, masters employees as well as with the influence of the press, work in South Tyrol , Dalmatia and Littoral for the Germanization and Slavization of these territories according to the circumstances, with energy and without any regard. His Majesty calls the central offices to the strong duty to proceed in this way to what has been established. This tension created - by some claims -
11400-517: The primary language of communication in many ethnically mixed and prevalently non-Italian local communities and within many ethnically non-Italian families. Native Italian speakers are largely concentrated along the western coast of the Istrian peninsula. Historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that Istria (included in the Regio X Venetia et Histria of Roman Italy since Augustus ) was fully romanized in
11520-469: The proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left. Although use of
11640-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to
11760-415: The publication of Agnolo Monosini 's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed
11880-487: The referendum that allowed France to annex Savoy and Nice, and a group of his followers (among the Italian Savoyards ) took refuge in Italy in the following years. Corsica passed from the Republic of Genoa to France in 1769 after the Treaty of Versailles . Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the " Corsican Italians " within Italy when Rome
12000-474: The same period, the Istrian Slovenes and Croats, who represented around three-fifths of the Istrian population, increased their demands for national and linguistic emancipation. The result was the intensification of the ethnic strife between the two groups, although it was limited to institutional battles and it rarely manifested in violent forms. Indeed, in 1910, the ethnic and linguistic composition
12120-414: The sole language of administration and education. A fierce policy of Italianization was followed which prohibited all use of any language but Italian. Many Slovenes and Croats left the region, which strengthened the Italian positions. However, ethnic tensions grew, and a Slovenian and Croatian anti-Fascist insurgency started to appear in the late 1920s, although it was much less strong than in other parts of
12240-576: The south, the natives most probably spoke a variant of the Dalmatian language . One modern claim suggests the original language of the romanized Istrians survived the invasions, this being the Istriot language which was spoken by some near Pula . Republic of Venice influenced the neolatins of Istria for many centuries from the Middle Ages until 1797, until conquered by Napoleon : Capodistria and Pola were important centres of art and culture during
12360-473: The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists —individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves. The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the 15th century,
12480-401: The time of the Republic of Venice , and from the local Croatian people who culturally assimilated. According to some estimates, Italians made more than 50% of the total population of Istria for centuries. In the Austrian census 1846 there was 59,000 people with Italian as the family language ("Muttersprache") in the total Istrian population of 215,000; 62,000 in total population of 220,000 in
12600-469: The title Divina , were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and
12720-542: The total population of the country. In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language. The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano ( Vatican City ), the L'Informazione di San Marino ( San Marino ), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino ( Switzerland ),
12840-705: The total population of the region and altered its ethnic structure. After the Yugoslav Communist troops occupied Istria in May 1945, many Italians started leaving Istria under the pressure of the new authorities who demanded the annexation of Istria to Yugoslavia. With an agreement between the Allied forces and Tito 's Yugoslav government, a line of demarcation known as the Morgan Line was set in June 1945: most of Istria remained under Yugoslav occupation, while
12960-506: The town of Muggia : both became extinct in the mid 19th century, replaced by Venetian. In 1374 Because of the implementation of a treaty of inheritance, central and eastern Istria fell to the House of Habsburg , while Venice continued to control the northern, western and south-eastern portion of the peninsula, including the major coastal towns of Capodistria / Koper , Parenzo / Poreč , Rovigno / Rovinj , Pola / Pula , Fianona / Plomin , and
13080-450: The towns of Pula and Muggia were transferred to Allied administration. With the peace treaty of 1947, most of Istria (including Pula) was assigned to Yugoslavia. This triggered the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , the departure of the large majority of Istrian Italians. Only the north-western portion was assigned to zone B of the short-lived Free Territory of Trieste , but de facto remained under Yugoslav administration. In 1953 according to
13200-477: The unification of Italy. However, after 1866, when the Veneto and Friuli regions were ceded by the Austrians to the newly formed Kingdom Italy , Istria remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , together with other Italian-speaking areas on the eastern Adriatic ( Trieste , Gorizia and Gradisca , Fiume ). This triggered the gradual rise of Italian irredentism among many Italians in Istria, who demanded
13320-728: The unification of the Austrian Littoral , Fiume and Dalmatia with Italy. Under Austrian rule in the 19th century, it included a large population of Italians , Croats , Slovenes , some Vlachs / Istro-Romanians and even a few Montenegrins . The Italians in Istria supported the Italian Risorgimento : as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favoured the Slav communities of Istria During
13440-606: Was a region of the Kingdom of Italy , Istriot was considered by the authorities as a subdialect of Venetian. Historically, its speakers never referred to it as "Istriot"; it had six names after the six towns where it was spoken. In Vodnjan it was named "Bumbaro", in Bale "Valìʃe", in Rovinj "Ruvignìʃ", in Šišan "Siʃanìʃ", in Fažana "Faʃanìʃ" and in Galižana "Galiʃaneʃ". The term Istriot
13560-561: Was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War . Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent , only
13680-525: Was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy , but King Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it. Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican , which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan. Francization occurred in Nice case, and caused a near-disappearance of the Italian language as many of the Italian speakers in these areas migrated to Italy. In Corsica, on
13800-591: Was coined by the 19th-century Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli . This language is still spoken by some people in the Istriot communities in Fertilia and Maristella, in Sardinia . There are about 400 speakers left, making it an endangered language . Below is a comparison of Istriot with several closely related Romance languages and Latin : The phonology of the Istriot language: The Istriot alphabet
13920-499: Was completely mixed and the Italians were reduced to a minority, although still significant. According to the Austrian census results, out of 404,309 inhabitants in the " Margravate of Istria ", 168,116 (41.6%) spoke Croatian , 147,416 (36.5%) spoke Italian , 55,365 (13.7%) spoke Slovene , 13,279 (3.3%) spoke German , 882 (0.2%) spoke Romanian , 2,116 (0.5%) spoke other languages and 17,135 (4.2%) were non-citizens, which had not been asked for their language of communication. Excluding
14040-527: Was different." D'Alessio notes even the people who immigrated from non-Croatian and non-Italian parts of the Habsburg Empire tended to use Italian, after living in Istrian towns long enough. Contrasting the claims of a "huge emigration" of Italians from Istria, D'Allesio writes about an important influx of immigrants from the Kingdom of Italy to Istria, during the last decades of the Austrian rule. In
14160-443: Was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro , an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of
14280-658: Was replaced by the French. This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860) . It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania ), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia ), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by
14400-487: Was the language of commerce, culture and administration. Nevertheless, significant numbers of South Slavic speakers (mostly Slovene and Čakavian Croatian ) continued to dwell in the rural areas of Venetian Istria, especially in the north of the province and on the border with Austrian Istria. On the other hand, interior and eastern Istria were included in the Central European cultural sphere and were dominated by
#495504