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260-471: Umberto II ( Italian : Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia ; 15 September 1904 – 18 March 1983) was the last King of Italy . Umberto's reign lasted for 34 days, from 9 May 1946 until his formal deposition on 12 June 1946, although he had been the de facto head of state since 1944. Due to his short reign, he was nicknamed the May King ( Italian : Re di maggio ). Umberto

520-598: A "kingmaker" and to have the Serbian Army be a "state within the state" existing outside of civilian control as a major threat. Additionally, Alexander saw Dimitrijević as an irresponsible intriguer who having betrayed one king might always betray another. In January 1914, the Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić sent a letter to the Russian Emperor Nicholas II in which King Peter expressed

780-625: A Togliatti-Badoglio duumvirate might emerge, forming an alliance between what rapidly was becoming Italy's largest mass party and the military. The power and influence of Badoglio's government, based in Salerno , was very limited, but the entry of the Communists, followed by representatives of the other anti-Fascist parties, into the Cabinet of that government in April 1944 marked the moment when, as

1040-405: A campaign to pressure Alexander to prosecute Šufflay's killers. The Great Depression was especially severe in predominantly rural Yugoslavia as it caused deflation leading to a collapse in price of agricultural products. The Croat politician Ante Trumbić summed up the feelings of many when he gave a speech in early 1931 stating: "We are in a crisis, an economic, financial and moral crisis. There

1300-582: A defensive alliance that was later joined by Greece in May 1912. In March 1912, Alexander had a meeting with ten senior military commanders. They all agreed to end all internal conflicts in the Royal Serbian Army and fully commit to realizing national goals, which allowed space for consolidation before the two successive Balkan Wars . In the First Balkan War in 1912, as commander of

1560-611: A desire for his son to marry one of the daughters of Nicholas II. Nicholas II in his reply stated that his daughters would not be forced into arranged marriages, but noted Alexander on his most recent trips to Petrograd had during dinners at the Winter Palace kept giving loving looks at the Grand Duchess Tatiana , leading him to guess that it was her whom Alexander wanted to marry. On 24 June 1914, Alexander became regent of Serbia. On 24 July 1914, Alexander

1820-663: A distance. In 1926, Mussolini passed a law allowing the Fascist Grand Council to decide the succession, though in practice he admitted the prince would succeed his father. An attempted assassination took place in Brussels on 24 October 1929, the day of the announcement of his betrothal to Princess Marie José. Umberto was about to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Belgian Unknown Soldier at the foot of

2080-843: A full Allied power, expressing his wish that the Regia Marina would fight in the Pacific against the Japanese Empire and the Regio Esercito would march alongside the other Allied armies in invading Germany. In the same interview, Umberto stated that he wanted post-war Italy to have a government "patterned on the British monarchy, and at the same time incorporating as much of America's political framework as possible". Umberto admitted that, in retrospect, his father had made grave mistakes as King and criticised Victor Emmanuel for

2340-514: A godfather to a Bosnian Muslim child. Alexander had once fraternised frequently with ordinary people, being known for his habit of making unannounced visits to various villages all over Yugoslavia to chat with ordinary people but after the proclamation of the royal dictatorship, his social circle consisted of a few generals and courtiers, causing the King to lose touch with his subjects. Within Serbia,

2600-709: A great army or a great armada when he was a man. In 1903, while young George and Alexander were in school, a slew of conspirators pulled off a bloody coup d'état in the Kingdom of Serbia, known as the May Overthrow , in which King Alexander and Queen Draga were murdered and dismembered. The House of Karađorđević thus retook the Serbian throne after forty-five years and Alexander's 58-year-old father became King of Serbia , prompting George's and Alexander's return to Serbia to continue their studies. After Alexander's 15th birthday, King Peter had Alexander enlisted into

2860-565: 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

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3120-451: A liberal democracy in Italy after the war was a republic. By this point, the government of Pietro Badoglio was so unpopular with the Italian people that Umberto was willing to accept the support of any party with a mass following, even the Communists. The fact that contrary to expectations, Togliatti and Badoglio got along very well, led to widespread fears amongst liberal-minded Italians that

3380-471: 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

3640-657: 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

3900-522: A long exile in the Soviet Union , he did not press for an immediate proclamation of a republic. Togliatti wanted the monarchy to continue as the best way of winning the Communists' support after the war. For the same reason, Count Sforza wanted a republic as soon as possible, arguing the House of Savoy was far too closely associated with Fascism to enjoy moral legitimacy, and the only hope of establishing

4160-506: A man of strong physique or robust health. He had a strong fixity of purpose, great devotion to duty, powers of sustained work. He had great charm and simplicity of manner. He was accessible and very open to opinions-though he rarely acted on them, and though occasionally he reacted with positive violence, as in the case of the Slovene Zerjav who fainted in his presence." One of the things that historians can be certain about Alexander

4420-420: A more favourable view of their monarchy, while the republicans wanted a referendum as soon as possible, hoping that wartime radicalisation would work in their favour. Umberto earned widespread praise for his role in the following three years, with the Italian historian Giuseppe Mammarella calling Umberto a man "whose Fascist past was less compromising" than that of Victor Emmanuel and who, as Lieutenant General of

4680-408: A new constitution which allowed the skupština to meet again. In 1931, Alexander decreed a new Constitution which transferred executive power to the King. Elections were to be by universal male suffrage. The provision for a secret ballot was dropped and pressure on public employees to vote for the governing party was to be a feature of all elections held under Alexander's constitution. Furthermore,

4940-562: A new leader. Umberto was seen as supportive of these efforts to depose Mussolini, but as Ciano (who had turned against Mussolini by this point) complained in his diary, the prince was far too passive, refusing to make a move or even state his views unless his father expressed his approval first. On 10 July 1943, in Operation Husky , the Allies invaded Sicily . Just before the invasion of Sicily, Umberto had gone on an inspection tour of

5200-665: A number of strikes in Milan starting on 5 March 1943, with the workers openly criticising both the war and the Fascist regime which had led Italy into the war, leading to fears in Rome that Italy was on the brink of revolution. The strike wave in Milan quickly spread to the industrial city of Turin , where the working class likewise denounced the war and Fascism. The fact that during the strikes in Milan and Turin, Italian soldiers fraternised with

5460-479: A peace attempt made through Papal intermediaries. More importantly, Victor Emmanuel was proudly misogynistic , holding women in complete contempt as the King believed it to be a scientific fact that the brains of women were significantly less developed than the brains of men. Victor Emmanuel simply did not believe that Marie José was competent to serve as a diplomat. For all these reasons, the King vetoed Marie José's peace attempt. After her failure – she never met

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5720-658: 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

5980-694: A political uproar in Italy and a brief rift in Belgian-Italian relations, but in March 1932 Umberto asked for a pardon for de Rosa, who was released after having served slightly less than half his sentence and was eventually killed in the Spanish Civil War . In 1928, after the colonial authorities in Italian Somaliland built Mogadishu Cathedral ( Cattedrale di Mogadiscio ), Umberto made his first publicised visit to Mogadishu ,

6240-417: 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

6500-422: A republic or a monarchy instead of having the "institutional question" decided by the national assembly that would write Italy's post-war constitution. Umberto's interview caused controversy as the republican parties widely feared that a referendum would be rigged, especially in the south of Italy. In the same interview, Umberto mentioned his belief that, after the war, monarchies all over the world would move towards

6760-575: 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

7020-604: A separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States . Her interlocutor from the Vatican was Giovanni Battista Monsignor Montini, a senior Papal diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI . Her attempts were not sponsored by her father-in-law, the King, and Umberto was not (directly at least) involved in them. Victor Emmanuel III was anti-clerical, distrusting the Catholic Church , and wanted nothing to do with

7280-774: 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: King Alexander I of Yugoslavia Born in Cetinje , Montenegro , Alexander was the second son of Peter and Zorka Karađorđević . The House of Karađorđević had been removed from power in Serbia 30 years prior, and Alexander spent his early life in exile with his father in Montenegro and then Switzerland. Afterwards he moved to Russia and enrolled in

7540-585: A sign of the trouble to come, Trumbić demanded to have the right to speak for the South Slavs living under Austrian rule, a demand that Alexander rejected under the grounds that the Serbian government represented the South Slavs. After the army was regrouped and reinforced, it achieved a decisive victory on the Macedonian Front , at Kajmakchalan . The Serbian army carried out a major part in

7800-470: A single flag for the entire country, brought in a single legal code for his realm, imposed a single fiscal code so all of his subjects would pay the same tax rate, and a Yugoslav Agrarian Bank was created by merging all of the regional agrarian banks into one. Alexander tried to promote a sense of Yugoslav identity by always taking his vacations in Slovenia, naming his second son after a Croat king, and being

8060-479: 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

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8320-525: A soldiery man most comfortable in a military milieu who was very quiet and surprisingly modest for a king. Seton-Watson described Alexander as having an "autocratic" personality, a man who was first and foremost a soldier who spent "six of his formative years" in the Serbian Army, which left him with a "military outlook which unfitted him to deal with the delicate problems of constitutional government and which made compromise hard for him". Seton-Watson wrote that Alexander "...was very courageous, though not ever

8580-601: A stop in Marseille , he was assassinated by Vlado Chernozemski , a member of the pro-Bulgarian Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization , which received assistance from the Croat Ustaše led by Ante Pavelić . French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou also died in the attack. Alexander was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son, Peter II , under the regency of his first cousin Prince Paul . Alexander Karađorđević

8840-587: A successor. Umberto used the impasse to reassert the Crown's powers. The crisis ended on 12 December 1944 with Umberto appointing a new government under Bonomi consisting of ministers from four parties, the most important of which were the Communists and the Christian Democrats. In response to objections from the CLN, Bonomi, in practice, accepted their claim that they represented the Italian people rather than

9100-400: A suffocating childhood, where he was never permitted to express his personality or hold views of his own. In the same interview, Umberto stated that he hoped to make Italy a democracy by executing "the vastest education programme Italy has ever seen" to eliminate illiteracy in Italy once and for all. A few days later, on 19 April 1944, Umberto in an interview with The Times complained that

9360-631: A time"), Umberto was kept apart from active politics until he was named Lieutenant General of the Realm . He made an exception when Adolf Hitler asked for a meeting. This was not considered proper, given the international situation; thereafter, Umberto was more rigorously excluded from political events. In 1935, Umberto supported the war against the Ethiopian Empire , which he called a "legitimate war" that even Giovanni Giolitti would have supported had he still been alive. Umberto wanted to serve in

9620-513: 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

9880-406: A very congenial companion whose intelligence he respected, but was afraid that he suited his conversation according to his company". By late 1944, the question of whether the CLN or the Crown represented the Italian people came to a head. On 25 November 1944, Bonomi resigned as prime minister, saying he could not govern owing to his difficulties with the CLN, and as the politicians could not agree on

10140-427: 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

10400-759: 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

10660-534: 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

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10920-460: 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

11180-504: 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 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

11440-422: Is no material or moral credit in the country. Nobody believes anything anymore!" However, Alexander remain unperturbed, stating in an interview with the press: "Yugoslav politics will never again be driven by narrow religious, regional or national interests". In response to pressure from Yugoslavia's allies, especially France and Czechoslovakia, led Alexander to decide to lessen the royal dictatorship by bringing in

11700-410: 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

11960-577: Is regarded by the Serbs as holy ground. It was a great honor for him to pay his respects to the Serbs who had fallen in that earlier battle. In the aftermath of the First Balkan War , disputes emerged among the victors over control of Macedonia , and Serbia and Greece signed an alliance against the Kingdom of Bulgaria . After the Ottoman defeat and withdrawal from Skopje (most of whom had left after

12220-432: Is simply repeating his father's arguments. He chooses to do this at the very moment when, having been designated lieutenant of the kingdom, he ought to be overcoming doubt and distrust as I personally hoped he would succeed in doing. To me it seems unworthy to try to unload the blame and errors of royalty on the people. I, an old monarchist, am therefore especially grieved when I see the monarchs themselves working to discredit

12480-648: Is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as 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

12740-549: 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

13000-692: Is weak and dissipated, with a degenerate and even oriental disposition inherited from his Balkan mother". Sam Reber, an American official with the ACC, who had known Umberto before the war, met the prince in Naples in early 1944 and wrote he found him "greatly improved. The Balkan playboy period was over. But he has a weak face and, to judge by first meeting, has not, I should say, the personality to inspire confidence and devotion in others". More damaging, Victor Emmanuel let it be known that he regretted handing over his powers to his son, and made clear that he felt that Umberto

13260-581: The Colonne du Congrès when, with a cry of 'Down with Mussolini!', Fernando de Rosa fired a single shot that missed him. De Rosa was arrested and, under interrogation, claimed to be a member of the Second International who had fled Italy to avoid arrest for his political views. His trial was a major political event, and although he was found guilty of attempted murder, he was given a light sentence of five years in prison. This sentence caused

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13520-509: 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,

13780-991: 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 ),

14040-402: The Albanian revolt of 1912 ), Prince Alexander was met with flowers by the local people. He stopped and asked a seven-year-old girl, Vaska Zoicheva, "What are you?" ( Pa šta si ti? ) When she replied "Bulgarian!" ( Bugarka! ), the prince slapped her. This news of the event spread quickly around Bulgaria . Later in 1913, during the Second Balkan War , Alexander commanded the Serbian Army at

14300-405: The Battle of Bregalnica against the Bulgarians. In 1920 and 1921, Serbian authorities searched for the girl's father, Danail Zoichev, and offered him money to renounce the event as fictional, but he refused. In the aftermath of the Second Balkan War , the region of Vardar Macedonia was attributed to the Kingdom of Serbia by the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). Prince Alexander took sides in

14560-487: The Battle of El Alamein , the Italo-German force was defeated by the British Eighth Army , marking the end of Axis hopes of conquering Egypt . The Axis retreated back into Libya . In November 1942, as part of the Battle of Stalingrad , the Red Army launched Operation Uranus , which saw the Soviets annihilate much of the Italian expeditionary force in Russia and encircle the German 6th Army. The disastrous Italian defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein turned Umberto against

14820-404: The Black Hand came to ahead, when Colonel Dimitrijević began to openly criticize his leadership. Suspecting a threat to the throne, Alexander promptly had officers who were members of the Black Hand arrested in December 1916 and tried for insubordination; after their convictions, Dimitrijević and several other Black Hand leaders were executed by firing squad on 23 June 1917. At the same time,

15080-463: The Ethiopian war , but was prevented from doing so by his father, who did, however, allow four royal dukes to serve in East Africa. Umberto conformed to his father's expectations and behaved like an army officer; the prince obediently got down on his knees to kiss his father's hand before speaking. However, Umberto privately resented what he regarded as a deeply humiliating relationship with his cold and emotionally distant father. Umberto's attitude toward

15340-440: The First , Fourth and the Seventh Army (kept in reserve), which attacked French forces during the Italian invasion of France . Umberto was appointed to this position by his father, who wanted the expected Italian victory to also be a victory for the House of Savoy, as the King feared Mussolini's ambitions. A few hours after France signed an armistice with Germany on 21 June 1940, the Italians invaded France. The Italian offensive

15600-494: The First Balkan War , Alexander played the role of a diplomat, visiting Sofia to meet Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria for secret talks for a Balkan League to drive the Ottoman Turks out of the Balkans. Both Bulgaria and Serbia had rival claims to the Ottoman region of Macedonia , so Alexander, along with Ferdinand's son Crown Prince Boris , traveled to Petrograd to see the Russian Emperor Nicholas II to ask for Russian mediation. In March 1912, Serbia and Bulgaria signed

15860-471: The First World War , he held nominal command of the Royal Serbian Army . In 1918, Alexander oversaw the unification of Serbia and the former Austrian provinces of Croatia-Slavonia , Slovenia , Vojvodina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , and Dalmatia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on the basis of the Corfu Declaration . He ascended to the throne upon his father's death in 1921. An extended period of political crisis followed, culminating in

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16120-401: 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

16380-465: The Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and 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

16640-422: The House of Savoy , Fascist newspapers in the area under the control of the Italian Social Republic "outed" Umberto, calling him Stellassa ("Ugly Starlet" in the Piedmontese language ). The Fascist newspapers reported in a lurid, sensationalist, and decidedly homophobic way Umberto's various relationships with men as a way of discrediting him. It was after Umberto was "outed" by the Fascist press in late 1943 that

16900-431: The Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of 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

17160-399: 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

17420-698: 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

17680-502: The Little Entente with Czechoslovakia and Romania to guard against Hungary. Hungary refused to accept the Treaty of Trianon and made territorial claims against all three states of the Little Entente. In 1921, a war veteran and communist Spasoje Stejić Baćo attempted to assassinate king Alexander by throwing a bomb at his carriage. The bomb was thrown from a balcony and it got stuck in the telephone wires and it ended up wounding several bystanders. The principal enemy of Yugoslavia in

17940-423: 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

18200-401: The Royal Serbian Army as a private with instructions to his officers to only promote his son if he proved worthy. On 25 March 1909, Alexander was suddenly recalled to Belgrade by his father with no explanation offered other than that he had an important announcement for his son. In 1909, a scandal broke when Crown Prince George , Alexander's older brother, killed a servant by kicking him in

18460-434: The Russian Emperor Nicholas II to give him a refuge, where he was treated with much honor and respect. As a page , Alexander was described as hard-working and determined while also being a "loner" who kept to himself and rarely showed his feelings. Being a Karađorđević led to Alexander being invited by the Russian Emperor Nicholas II to dinner at the Winter Palace , where he was the guest of honor at meals hosted by

18720-661: The Russian Empire , at the time of Alexander's birth and early childhood, the House of Karađorđević was in political exile, with family members scattered all over Europe, unable to return to Serbia. Serbia had recently been transformed from a principality into a kingdom under the Obrenovićs, who ruled with strong support from the Austro-Hungarian Empire . The antagonism between the two rival royal houses

18980-683: The Russian imperial family , which was a great honor for a prince from Serbia's deposed princely family. During his time in Petrograd, Alexander visited the Alexander Nevsky Monastery , where the abbot gave Alexander an icon of Prince Alexander Nevsky and guided him to the grave of Marshal Alexander Suvorov . After his visit to the monastery, Alexander expressed the wish to be a great general like Marshal Suvorov or Prince Alexander Nevsky, saying he wanted to be commanding either

19240-553: The Second World War in June 1940, Umberto hinted to his father that he should use the royal veto to block the Italian declarations of war on Britain and France, but was ignored. After the war, Umberto criticised the decision to enter the war, saying that Victor Emmanuel was too much under "Mussolini's spell" in June 1940 to oppose it. Following Italy's entry into the war, Umberto ostensibly commanded Army Group West , made up of

19500-531: The Soviet Union , saying that, as a Catholic, he fully supported Operation Barbarossa and wanted to do battle with the "godless communists". Mussolini refused the request, and instead gave Umberto the responsibility of training the Italian forces scheduled to participate in Operation Hercules , the planned Axis invasion of Malta . On 29 October 1942, he was awarded the rank of Marshal of Italy ( Maresciallo d'Italia ). During October–November 1942, in

19760-659: The State of São Paulo , where the largest Italian colony in the country lived. However, a major rebellion broke out on 5 July 1924, when Umberto had already departed from Europe, imposing a change in the Royal tour. The prince had to stop in Salvador , the capital of Bahia , to supply the ships, going directly to the other countries of South America. On his return, Umberto could only be received in Salvador again. Governor Góis Calmon,

20020-528: 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

20280-534: The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand could operate on Serbian soil with the powers of arrest, which would have been the effective end of Serbia as an independent state. As expected, the Austrians declared war on Serbia , and Alexander threw himself into preparing his nation's defense. In a letter to King Nicholas of Montenegro , Alexander wrote: "God has willed yet again that the Serbian people should give their lives for Serbs everywhere ... I pray for

20540-528: The banovinas , only one had a Slovene majority, two had Croat majorities and the rest had Serb majorities, which especially angered the Bosnian Muslims who were in a minority in every banovina . The way in which the banovinas were based on new borders that did not correspond to the historical regional borders led to much resentment, especially in Bosnia and Croatia. The banovinas were named after

20800-517: The "institutional question", and only the Liberal Party was committed to preserving the monarchy, though many individual Liberals were republicans. Only a minority of the partisan bands fighting for the CLN were monarchists, and a prince of the House of Savoy led none. After the war, Umberto claimed that he wanted to join the partisans, and only his wartime duties prevented him from doing so. The Italian Royal Court relocated itself to Brindisi in

21060-532: 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

21320-510: 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

21580-682: The 1920s was Fascist Italy , which wanted much of what is now modern Slovenia and Croatia. The origins of the Italo-Yugoslav dispute concerned the Italian contention that they had been "cheated" out of what they had been promised in the secret Treaty of London in 1915 at the Paris peace conference in 1919. It was largely out of the fear of Italy that Alexander in 1927 signed a treaty of alliance with France, which therefore became Yugoslavia's principal ally. In fact, Alexander I and Benito Mussolini were arch-rivals. Starting in 1926, an alliance of

21840-562: 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

22100-517: The ACC at a meeting on 10 April 1944, Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to Umberto. The King bitterly told Lieutenant-General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane that Umberto was unqualified to rule, and that handing power over to him was equivalent to letting the Communists come to power. However, events had moved beyond Victor Emmanuel's ability to control. After Rome was liberated in June, Victor Emmanuel transferred his remaining constitutional powers to Umberto, naming his son Lieutenant General of

22360-475: The ACC in this plan, calling Victor Emmanuel a "despicable weakling" and Umberto "a pathological case", saying neither was qualified to rule Italy. However, given the unwillingness of the King to abdicate, nothing came of it. At a meeting of the leading politicians from the six revived political parties on 13 January 1944 in Bari , the demand was made that the ACC should force Victor Emmanuel to abdicate to "wash away

22620-510: The ACC was too liberal in giving Italians too much freedom, as the commissioners "seemed to expect the Italian people to run before they could walk". In the same interview, Umberto demanded the ACC censor the Italian press to end the criticism of the Royal Family, and claimed he had no choice but to support Mussolini because otherwise he would have been disinherited. Finally, Umberto made the controversial statement that Mussolini "at first had

22880-822: The Albanian and Bosnian Muslim landlords lived. On August 16, 1921, upon the death of his father, Alexander ascended to the throne of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , which from its inception was colloquially known both in the Kingdom and the rest of Europe alike as Yugoslavia . The historian Brigit Farley described Alexander as something of a cipher to historians as he was a taciturn and reserved man who loathed to express his feelings either in person or in writing. As Alexander kept no diary or wrote no memoirs, Farley wrote that any biography of Alexander could easily be titled "In search of King Alexander" as he remains an elusive and enigmatic figure. The British historian R. W. Seton-Watson , who knew Alexander well, called him

23140-570: The Allied lines. The King and the rest of the Royal Family fled Rome via a car to Ortona to board a corvette, the Baionetta , that took them south. A small riot occurred at the Ortona dock as about 200 senior-ranking Italian military officers, who had abandoned their commands and unexpectedly showed up, begged the King to take them with him. Almost all of them were refused permission to board, making

23400-631: The Allied occupation, the Americans were far more supportive of Italian republicanism than the British, with Churchill in particular believing the Italian monarchy was the only institution that was capable of preventing the Italian Communists from coming to power after the war. Unlike the conservative Badoglio, the social democrat Bonomi started to move Italian politics in an increasingly democratic direction as he argued that King Victor Emmanuel III, who had only turned against Mussolini when it

23660-399: The Allies pushed northwards, aside from the damage caused by the fighting, the retreating Germans systematically destroyed all of the infrastructure, leading to a humanitarian disaster in the liberated parts. Umberto, together with the rest of his father's government, spent time attempting to have humanitarian aid delivered. Under intense pressure from Robert Murphy and Harold Macmillan of

23920-595: The American agents – she was sent with her children to Sarre , in the Aosta Valley , and isolated from the political life of the Royal House. In the first half of 1943, as the war continued to go badly for Italy, several senior Fascist officials, upon learning that the Allies would never sign an armistice with Mussolini, began to plot his overthrow with the support of the King. Adding to their worries were

24180-492: The American diplomats in Madrid that King Victor Emmanuel III and Prince Umberto were now hated by the Italian people even more than Mussolini. By this time, many Fascist gerarchi had become convinced that it was necessary to depose Mussolini to save the Fascist system, and on the night of 24–25 July 1943, at a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council , a motion introduced by the gerarca Dino Grandi to take away Mussolini's powers

24440-591: The American historian Anthony Di Renzo wrote that he was: "Tall, stiff, and balding, he had smooth, clean-shaven blue cheeks, thin lips, and a weak chin. Dressed in military uniform as First Marshal of the Empire , decorated with the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, he seemed more like a majordomo than a king. On the campaign trail, Umberto was received with much more friendliness in

24700-525: The Austrians, which greatly delayed the movement of the Serbian Army. Field Marshal Radomir Putnik persuaded Crown Prince Alexander and King Peter that it was better to keep the Serbian Army intact to one day liberate Serbia rather to stand and fight in Kosovo as many Serb officers wanted. The Serbian Army withdrew through the gorges of Montenegro and northern Albania to the Greek island of Corfu , where it

24960-640: The Bonomi cabinet, allowed the ministers to take either their oaths to himself as the Lieutenant General of the Realm or to the Italian state; Bonomi himself chose to take his oath to Umberto while the rest of his cabinet chose to take their oaths only to the Italian state. Churchill especially disapproved of the replacement of Badoglio with Bonomi, complaining that, in his view, Umberto was being used by "a group of aged and hungry politicians trying to intrigue themselves into an undue share of power". Through

25220-509: The British and the Americans on behalf of the regent in September 1944 for Italy to be governed by a triumvirate consisting of himself, Bonomi and another former prime minister, Vittorio Orlando , which purged the prefects in the liberated areas who were "agents of Togliatti and Nenni" with Fascist-era civil servants. Badoglio also spoke of Umberto's desire not to lose any territory after the war to Greece, Yugoslavia and France. Badoglio's offer

25480-542: The British historian David Ellwood noted, "...anti-Fascism had compromised with the traditional state and the defenders of Fascism, and the Communist Party had engineered this compromise. A quite new phase in Italy's liberation was opening". Besides the "institutional question", the principle responsibility of the Royal Italian Government was the reconstruction of the liberated areas of Italy. As

25740-605: The Bulgarians took Niš , severing the railroad that linked Serbia to Thessalonika in Greece . Being attacked from the north by the Austrians and the Germans and from the south by the Bulgarians, the Serbs by 25 November 1915 had been forced into the Kosovo region. The massacres committed by the Austrians when they invaded Serbia in 1914 twice caused enormous panic and hundreds of thousands of Serbs fled their homes to escape

26000-443: The CLN into the government, which required sacrificing Badoglio. As Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were willing to see Badoglio continue as prime minister, seeing him as a force for order, Umberto could have held out for him. However, as part of his efforts to distance himself from Fascism, Umberto agreed to appoint Bonomi as prime minister. Reflecting the tense "institutional question" of republic vs. monarchy, Umberto, when swearing in

26260-560: The Croats. Since we cannot, it would be better to separate. The best way to be to effect a peaceful separation like Sweden and Norway did". When Pribićević protested that this would be an act of "treason", Alexander told him he would think some more about what to do. Alexander appointed the Slovene Catholic priest, Father Anton Korošec prime minister with one mandate, namely to stop the slide towards civil war. On 1 December 1928,

26520-476: The Crown, while still swearing an oath of loyalty to Umberto as the Lieutenant General of the Realm when he took the prime minister's oath. An attempt by Umberto to have Churchill issue a public statement in favour of the monarchy led Macmillan to warn Umberto to try to be more politically neutral as regent. However, Churchill, during a visit to Rome in January 1945, called Umberto "a far more impressive figure than

26780-462: The Fascist regime varied: at times, he mocked the more pompous aspects of Fascism and his father for supporting such a regime, while at other times, he praised Mussolini as a great leader. Umberto shared his father's fears that Mussolini's policy of alliance with Nazi Germany was reckless and dangerous, but he made no move to oppose Italy becoming one of the Axis powers . When Mussolini decided to enter

27040-726: The First Army, Crown Prince Alexander fought victorious battles in Kumanovo and Bitola . One of Alexander's most cherished moments came when he drove the Ottoman Turks out of Kosovo and on 28 October 1912 led the Royal Serbian Army on a review on the Field of Blackbirds . The Field of Blackbirds was where the Serbs under Prince Lazar had been defeated in a legendary battle by the Ottoman sultan Murad I on 28 June 1389, and

27300-601: The Germans and to the south by the Allies. Because of what Weinberg called the "extraordinary incompetence" of Badoglio, who, like Victor Emmanuel, had not anticipated Operation Achse until it was far too late, thousands of Italian soldiers with no leadership were taken prisoner by the Germans without resisting in the Balkans, France and Italy itself, to be taken off to work as slave labour in factories in Germany, an experience that many did not survive. How Victor Emmanuel mishandled

27560-520: The Germans without a fight in September 1943. Umberto had ordered Badoglio to bring members of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) into his cabinet after the liberation of Rome to broaden his basis of support and ensure national unity by preventing the emergence of a rival government. Umberto moved into the Quirinal Palace , while at The Grand Hotel, the Rome branch of the CLN met with

27820-619: The House of Romanov-including the Grand Duchess Tatiana-and during his reign was very hostile towards the Soviet Union, welcoming Russian emigres to Belgrade. The lavish royal wedding to Princess Maria of Romania was intended to cement the alliance with Romania, a fellow "victor nation" in World War I which like Yugoslavia had territorial disputes with the defeated nations like Hungary and Bulgaria. For Alexander,

28080-556: The Italian Social Republic, the charges of homosexuality made against Umberto had an impact on the voters, causing at least some conservatives to vote for the republic. From his exile in Egypt, where King Farouk had welcomed him as a guest, Victor Emmanuel expressed no surprise at the result of the referendum as he always viewed Umberto as a failure who was unfit to be King, and claimed that the monarchists would have won

28340-656: The Italian colony and other entities warmly welcomed the heir to the Italian Throne. Umberto was educated for a military career and in time became the commander-in-chief of the Northern Armies, and then the Southern ones. This role was merely formal, the de facto command belonging to his father, King Victor Emmanuel III, who jealously guarded his power of supreme command from Il Duce , Benito Mussolini . By mutual agreement, Umberto and Mussolini always kept

28600-417: 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

28860-546: The Italian forces in Sicily and reported to his father that the Italians had no hope of holding Sicily. Mussolini had assured the King that the Regio Esercito could hold Sicily, and the poor performance of the Italian forces defending Sicily helped to persuade the King to finally dismiss Mussolini, as Umberto informed his father that Il Duce had lied to him. On 16 July 1943, the visiting Papal Assistant Secretary of State told

29120-489: 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,

29380-403: The Italian left out of power, and during the referendum campaign, Catholic priests used their pulpits to warn that "all the pains of hell" were reserved for those who voted for a republic. The Catholic Church presented the referendum not as a question of republic vs monarchy, but instead as a question of Communism vs Catholicism, warning to vote for a republic would be to vote for the Communists. On

29640-483: The Italian military and civil servants to do their best and fled Rome during the night of 8–9 September 1943. Not trusting his son, Victor Emmanuel had told Umberto nothing about his attempts to negotiate an armistice nor about his plans to flee Rome if the Germans should occupy it. For the first time in his life, Umberto openly criticised his father, saying the King of Italy should not be fleeing Rome and only reluctantly obeyed his father's orders to go south with him towards

29900-472: The King was completely unwilling to abdicate, all the more so as he believed that Umberto was unfit to be monarch. On 17 August 1943, Sicily was taken and the last Axis forces crossed over to the Italian mainland. On 3 September 1943, the British Eighth Army landed on the Italian mainland at Reggio Calabria while the U.S. 5th Army landed at Salerno on 9 September 1943, a few hours after it

30160-500: The King would appoint half of the upper house directly, and legislation could become law with the approval of one of the houses alone if it were also approved by the King. The 1931 constitution kept Yugoslavia as a unitary state, which enraged the non-Serbian peoples who demanded a federation and saw Alexander's royal dictatorship as thinly disguised Serbian domination. In the elections for the skupština in December 1931 – January 1932,

30420-556: 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

30680-484: The Neapolitans, while much of the female population of Naples turned to prostitution to survive. As dire as the economic situation was in southern Italy, food shortages and inflation were even worse in northern Italy as the Germans carried out a policy of ruthless economic exploitation. Since the war in which Mussolini had involved Italy in 1940 had become such an utter catastrophe for the Italian people by 1943, it had

30940-500: The Prince of Piedmont to be shallow, vain, superficial, and of low intelligence, and alluding to his homosexuality stated his private life was "tainted by scandal". The diplomat and politician Count Carlo Sforza wrote in his diary that Umberto was utterly unqualified to be King as he called the prince "a stupid young man who knew nothing of the real Italy" and "he had been as closely associated with fascism as his father. In addition he

31200-515: The Realm ) to govern in place of his father. Since northern and central Italy were still occupied by Germany, it was finally decided at the Bari conference that the "institutional question" should be settled only once all of Italy was liberated, so all of the Italian people could have their say. In the Salò Republic , Mussolini returned to his original republicanism and, as part of his attack on

31460-490: The Realm . However, Victor Emmanuel retained the title and position of King . During his period as Regent, Umberto saw his father only three times, partly out of a bid to distance himself and partly because of tensions between father and son. Mack Smith wrote that Umberto was: "More attractive and outgoing than his father, he was even more a soldier at heart, and completely inexperienced as a politician...In personality-less astute and intelligent than his father...less obstinate, he

31720-475: The Realm, showed certain "progressive" tendencies. In April 1946, a public opinion poll of registered members of the conservative Christian Democratic party showed that 73% were republicans, a poll that caused immense panic in the monarchist camp. The American historian Norman Kogan cautioned the poll was of Christian Democratic members, which was not the same thing as Christian Democratic voters who tended to be "...rural, female, or generally apolitical". Nonetheless,

31980-582: The Realm. After the liberation of Rome, Umberto received a warm welcome from ordinary people when he returned to the Eternal City. Mack Smith cautioned that the friendly reception that Umberto received in Rome may have been due to him being a symbol of normalcy after the harsh German occupation as opposed to genuine affection for the prince. During the German occupation, much of the Roman population had lived on

32240-462: The Realm; while retaining the title of King. As the country prepared for the 1946 Italian institutional referendum on the continuation of the Italian monarchy , Victor Emmanuel abdicated his throne in favour of Umberto, in the hope that his exit might bolster the monarchy. The June 1946 referendum saw voters voting to abolish the monarchy, and Italy was declared a republic days later. Umberto departed

32500-502: The Royal Serbian Army was estimated to have the strength of about 420,000 men, of whom 94,000 had been killed or wounded while another 174,000 had been captured or were missing during the fall campaign in 1915 and the subsequent retreat to the sea. The losses taken by Serb civilians during the autumn campaign in 1915 together with the retreat to the sea have never been calculated, but are estimated to be massive. The situation

32760-565: The Serb Democrats led by Svetozar Pribićević and the Croat Peasant Party led by Stjepan Radić had systematically obstructed the skupština to press for federalism for Yugoslavia, filibustering and filing nonsensical motions to prevent the government from passing any bills. In response to obstructionism from the opposition parties, in June 1928, one frustrated deputy from Montenegro took out his handgun and shot Radić on

33020-551: The Serbian Army was the only army in Europe where officers would shake hands with the other ranks. However, the Serbian Army suffered major shortages of equipment with a third of the men called up in August 1914 having no rifles or ammunition, and new recruits being advised to bring their own boots and clothing as there were no uniforms for them. Alexander ordered the Serbian police to conduct searches of houses all over Serbia to see if there were any rifles and ammunition to be seized for

33280-606: The Serbian government-in-exile led by Prime Minister Nikola Pašić was in contact with the Yugoslav Committee , a group of anti-Habsburg Croat , Slovene , and Bosnian Serb politicians and political activists led by Ante Trumbić who aimed to create a new nation to be called Yugoslavia which would unite all of the South Slavic peoples into one unitary state. In June 1917, the Corfu Declaration

33540-594: The Serbs in the back". As a Karađorđević, Alexander was very conscious of the long blood-feud between the Houses of Obrenović and Karađorđević that had disfigured Serb politics in the 19th century and that the 1903 coup d'état that finally brought down the Obrenovićs and led to the Karađorđevićs regaining the throne had happened because the last Obrenović king, Alexander, was widely viewed as too subservient to Austria-Hungary and as having betrayed Serb interests. Because of

33800-563: The Slovenes to prefer living with their fellow Slavs. On 1 December 1918, the National Council asked Alexander to declare Serbia united with the former Austrian provinces of Croatia-Slavonia , Slovenia , Vojvodina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , and Dalmatia on the basis of the Corfu Declaration . Serbia had been devastated by the war, and 1 out of every 5 Serbs who were alive in 1914 were dead by 1918. Much of Alexander's time in

34060-400: The armistice was to become almost as controversial in Italy as his support for Fascism. Under the terms of the armistice, the ACC had the ultimate power with the Royal Italian Government in the south, being in many ways a similar position to the Italian Social Republic under the Germans. However, as the British historian James Holland noted, the crucial difference was that: "In the south, Italy

34320-403: The army. In 1915, the Serbian Army was attacked on several fronts by the allied forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary , suffering heavy losses. On 7 October 1915 an Austro-German army group under the command of Field Marshal August von Mackensen invaded Serbia and after encountering fierce resistance took Belgrade on 9 October. On 14 October 1915, Bulgaria invaded Serbia and on 16 October

34580-526: The assassination of Croat leader Stjepan Radić . In response, Alexander abrogated the Vidovdan Constitution in 1929, prorogued the parliament, changed the name of the country to Kingdom of Yugoslavia and established a royal dictatorship . The 1931 Constitution formalised Alexander's personal rule and confirmed Yugoslavia's status as a unitary state , further aggravating the non- Serb population. Political and economic tensions escalated on

34840-529: The battles at Cer and at the Drina (the Battle of Kolubara ) in 1914, scoring victories against the invading Austro-Hungarian forces and evicting them from the country. The British historian Max Hastings described the Royal Serbian Army in 1914 as the toughest army in Europe and also the most egalitarian , with none of the distinctions of rank that characterized the other European armies, exemplified by how

35100-400: The belated hope of influencing public opinion ahead of a referendum on the continuation of the monarchy , Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated in favour of Umberto on 9 May 1946 and left for Egypt. Before departing for Egypt, Victor Emmanuel saw Umberto for the last time, saying farewell in a cold, emotionless way. The Catholic Church saw the continuation of the monarchy as the best way of keeping

35360-628: The best way of saving Fascism. On 25 July 1943, Victor Emmanuel III finally dismissed Mussolini and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba , as prime minister with secret orders to negotiate an armistice with the Allies. Baron Raffaele Guariglia , the Italian ambassador to Spain , contacted British diplomats to begin the negotiations. Badoglio went about the negotiations halfheartedly while allowing many German forces to enter Italy. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that Badoglio as prime minister "...did almost everything as stupidly and slowly as possible", as he dragged out

35620-427: The brink of starvation, young people had been arrested on the streets to be taken off to work as slave labourers in Germany, while the Fascist Milizia , together with the Wehrmacht and SS , had committed numerous atrocities. Badoglio, by contrast, was greeted with widespread hostility when he returned to Rome, being blamed by many Italians as the man, together with the King, who was responsible for abandoning Rome to

35880-424: The cabinet on 22 April 1944 to preempt the Communists who joined the cabinet on 24 April. The Christian Democratic leader Alcide De Gasperi believed in 1944 that a popular vote would ensure a republic immediately, and sources from the Vatican suggested to him that only 25% of Italians favoured continuing the monarchy. The Catholic Church was in favour of Umberto, who, unlike his father, was a sincere Catholic who it

36140-402: The cabinet. Speaking on behalf of the CLN in general, the Roman leadership of the CLN refused to join the cabinet as long as Badoglio headed it but indicated that Bonomi was an acceptable choice as prime minister for them. Lieutenant-General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane of the ACC visited the Quirinal Palace and convinced Umberto to accept Bonomi as prime minister because the Crown needed to bring

36400-421: The capitulation of France, Mussolini kept Umberto inactive as an Army commander. In the summer of 1940, Umberto was to command a planned invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . Still, Mussolini subsequently cancelled the invasion of Yugoslavia in favour of invading the Kingdom of Greece . In June 1941, supported by his father, Umberto strongly lobbied to be given command of the Italian expeditionary force sent to

36660-443: The case for revising the armistice. Most of the Committee of National Liberation (CLN) leaders operating underground in the north tended to lean in a republican direction. Still, they were willing to accept Umberto temporarily out of the belief that his personality and widespread rumours about his private life would ensure that he would not last long as either Lieutenant General of the Realm or as King, should his father abdicate. After

36920-444: 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

37180-455: 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

37440-443: The complicated power struggle over how Macedonia should be administered. In this, Alexander bested Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević "Apis" and in the wake of this, Alexander's father, King Peter, agreed to hand over royal powers to his son. Though Colonel Dimitrijević was the mastermind of the 1903 coup that had restored the House of Karađorđević to the Serbian throne, Alexander distrusted him, regarding his attempts to set himself up as

37700-448: The contrary, do they want to hand over the fate of their future to the impossible omnipotence of a secular state without extraterrestrial ideals, without religion, and without God. One of these two alternatives shall occur according to whether the names of the champions or the destroyers of Christian civilization emerge victorious from the urns". Umberto believed that the support from the Catholic Church would be decisive and that he would win

37960-405: 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

38220-408: 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

38480-446: 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

38740-415: 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

39000-413: The country; he and other male members of the House of Savoy were barred from returning. He lived out the rest of his life in exile in Cascais , on the Portuguese Riviera . He died in Geneva Cantonal Hospital in 1983. Umberto was born at the Castle of Racconigi in Piedmont . He was the third child and the only son of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, Jelena of Montenegro . As such, he

39260-415: The criticism of himself or his father. The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden , wrote after meeting Umberto, in a message to London, that he was "the poorest of poor creatures", and his only qualification for the throne was that he had more charm than his charmless father. The historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce , a minister in Badoglio's cabinet, called Umberto "entirely insignificant" as he found

39520-431: The day before the referendum, 1 June 1946, Pope Pius XII , in a sermon on St. Peter's Square , said in what was widely seen as endorsing Umberto: "What is the problem? The problem is whether one or the other of those nations, of those two Latin sisters [elections were taking place in France on the same day] with several thousands of years of civilisation, will continue to lean against the solid rock of Christianity;... or on

39780-464: 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

40040-420: 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

40300-420: 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

40560-417: The effect of discrediting all those associated with the Fascist system, including Victor Emmanuel. In late 1943, Victor Emmanuel stated that he felt he bore no responsibility for Italy's plight, for appointing Mussolini as prime minister in 1922 and for entering the war in 1940. This further increased his unpopularity and led to demands that he abdicate at once. In northern Italy, a guerrilla war began against

40820-409: 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

41080-425: The event the monarchy lost by a tight margin. On the 2 June 1946 referendum, which saw the participation of almost 90% of voters, over 54% majority voted to make Italy a republic. The conservative, rural Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) region voted solidly for the monarchy while the more urbanised and industrialised Nord (northern Italy) voted equally firmly for a republic. In northern Italy, which had been ruled by

41340-433: 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

41600-401: The fascists, both Italian and German, with most of the guerrilla units fighting under the banner of the National Liberation Committee ( Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale -CLN), who were very strongly left-wing and republican. Of the six parties that made up the CLN, the Communists, the Socialists and the Action Party were republican; the Christian Democrats and the Labour Party were ambiguous on

41860-410: The final Allied breakthrough on the Macedonian Front in the autumn of 1918. The debate whatever the Serbian Army was fighting for Yugoslavia or Serbia resolved itself in October–November 1918 as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed , leaving the Royal Serbian Army to move into the vacuum. The Kingdom of Italy had ambitions to annex Dalmatia , Istria , and much of Slovenia , leading the Croats and

42120-399: The first acts of the new regime was to carry out a purge of the civil service with one-third of the civil service being fired by May 1929 in an attempt to address popular complaints about rampant corruption in the bureaucracy. He also changed the name of the country to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and changed the internal divisions from the 33 oblasts to nine new banovinas on 3 October. Of

42380-415: The floor of the skupština . The charismatic Radić, the "uncrowned king of Croatia", had inspired intense devotion in Croatia and his assassination was seen as a sort of Serb declaration of war. The assassination pushed Yugoslavia to the brink of civil war and led Alexander to consider the "amputation" of Croatia as preferable to federalism. Alexander mused to Pribićević that: "We cannot stay together with

42640-416: The four children, including Alexander, to Geneva , Switzerland where the young man completed his elementary education. Alongside his older brother George , he continued his schooling at the imperial Page Corps in Petrograd , Russian Empire . The British historian Robert Seton-Watson described Alexander as becoming a Russophile during his time in Petrograd, feeling much gratitude for the willingness of

42900-410: 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

43160-444: The frequent changes in loyalty in the Royal Serbian Army in the 19th century between the feuding royal families, Alexander was never entirely convinced that the Serb-dominated officer corps of the Royal Yugoslav Army were completely loyal to him, and always had the fear if he was seen to be betraying Serbdom as the last Obrenović king was, he too might be overthrown and killed. On 8 June 1922, he married Princess Maria of Romania , who

43420-409: The full support of the nation" in bringing Italy into the war in June 1940. Victor Emmanuel III had only signed the declarations of war because "there was no sign that the nation wanted it otherwise. No single voice was raised in protest. No demand was made for summoning parliament". The interview with The Times caused a storm of controversy in Italy, with many Italians objecting to Umberto's claim that

43680-445: The high society of Rome and Turin, and that as a general knew that Italy was unready for war in 1940, but did not warn Mussolini against entering the war. Mack Smith wrote that "some of the more extreme monarchists" expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the referendum, claiming that millions of voters, many of them pro-monarchist, were unable to vote because they had not yet been able to return to their local areas to register. Nor had

43940-457: The immediate post-war years was to be taken up with reconstruction. On 1 December 1918, in a prearranged set piece, Alexander, as Prince Regent, received a delegation of the People's Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs , an address was read out by one of the delegation, and Alexander made an address in acceptance. This was considered to be the birth of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes . One of Alexander's first acts as Prince Regent of

44200-468: The imperial Page Corps . Following a coup d'état and the murder of King Alexander I Obrenović in 1903, his father became King of Serbia . In 1909, Alexander's elder brother, George , renounced his claim to the throne, making Alexander heir apparent . Alexander distinguished himself as a commander during the Balkan Wars , leading the Serbian army to victory over the Ottoman Turks and the Bulgarians . In 1914, he became prince regent of Serbia . During

44460-431: 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

44720-416: The issue of Italy's borders been settled definitively, so the voting rights of those in disputed areas had not been satisfactorily clarified. Other allegations were made about voter manipulation, and even the issue of how to interpret the votes became controversial, as it appeared that not just a majority of those validly voting but of those votes cast (including spoiled votes), was needed to reach an outcome in

44980-415: The issue of his homosexuality came to widespread public notice. As the Allies freed more and more of Italy from the Salò Republic , it became apparent that Victor Emmanuel was too tainted by his previous support of Fascism to have any further role. A sign of how unpopular the House of Savoy had become was that on 28 March 1944, when the Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti returned to Italy after

45240-470: The land were Christians, and in both places land reform was seen as an attack on the political and economic power of the Muslim gentry. In Croatia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina, the majority of the landlords who lost their land were Austrian or Hungarian nobility who usually did not reside in those places, meaning that however much they might have resented the loss of their land it did not have the sort of political repercussions it did in Macedonia and in Bosnia where

45500-451: 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 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

45760-531: 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

46020-434: 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

46280-424: 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

46540-489: The lavish celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the triune Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that the government organized led to rioting that left 10 dead in Zagreb. In response to the political crisis triggered by the assassination of Stjepan Radić , King Alexander abolished the Constitution on 6 January 1929, prorogued the Parliament and introduced a personal dictatorship (the so-called " January 6th Dictatorship ", Šestojanuarska diktatura ). One of

46800-514: 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

47060-411: The left, and stated that under his leadership Italy would go leftwards "in an ordered, liberal way" as he understood "the weight of the past is the monarchy's greatest handicap", which he would resolve by a "radical revision" of the Statuto Albertino . Umberto spoke favourably of Togliatti as he was "clever, agreeable, and easy to discuss problems with". In private, Umberto said he found Togliatti "to be

47320-431: The liberated areas of northern Italy civil servants appointed by the CLN, restoring the career civil servants who had served the Fascist regime back to their former posts. Over the opposition of the left-wing parties who wanted the "institutional question" resolved by the Constituent Assembly, De Gasperi announced that a referendum would be held to decide the "institutional question". At the same time, Italian women were given

47580-460: The liberation of Rome on 6 June 1944, the various Italian political parties all applied strong pressure on Umberto to dismiss Pietro Badoglio as prime minister, as the Duke had loyally served the Fascist regime until the Royal coup on 25 July 1943, which resulted in the social democrat Ivanoe Bonomi being appointed prime minister. On 5 June 1944, Victor Emmanuel formally gave up his powers to Umberto, finally recognising his son as Lieutenant General of

47840-400: The monarchy". Various Italian politicians had attempted to persuade the Allies to revise the armistice of 1943 in Italy's favour because there was a difference between the Fascist regime and the Italian people. Umberto's statement that the House of Savoy bore no responsibility when he asserted that the Italian people had been of one mind with Mussolini in June 1940, was widely seen as weakening

48100-462: The monarchy. Kogan wrote Victor Emmanuel's flight from Rome was "bitterly remembered" in the Nord as an act of cowardice and betrayal by the King who abandoned his people to the German occupation without a fight. The socialist leader Sandro Pertini warned Umberto not to campaign in Milan as otherwise he would be lynched by the Milanese working class if he should appear in that city. Republican cartoonists mercilessly mocked Umberto's physical quirks, as

48360-412: 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

48620-406: The new kingdom was to declare his support for the widespread demand for land reform, stating: "In our free state there can and will be only free landowners". On 25 February 1919, Alexander signed a land reform decree breaking up all feudal estates over the size of 100 cadastral yokes with compensation to be paid for the former landowners except for those who belonged to the House of Habsburg and

48880-408: 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

49140-630: 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

49400-584: 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:

49660-403: 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

49920-425: The other ruling families of enemy states in the Great War. Under the land reform decree some two million hectares of land was handed over to a half million peasant households, though the implementation was very slow, taking 15 years before land reform was complete. In both Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the majority of the landlords who lost land were Muslims while the majority of their former tenants who received

50180-432: The outbreak of the Great Depression , which devastated the predominantly rural country. In foreign affairs, Alexander supported the Balkan Pact with Greece , Romania , and Turkey , and sought to improve relations with Bulgaria . In 1934, Alexander embarked on a state visit to France in order to secure support for the Little Entente against Hungarian revanchism and Fascist Italy 's imperialist designs . During

50440-527: The parts of Yugoslavia that Mussolini had annexed in 1941. Both the British and Americans told Umberto that Ethiopia had its independence restored in 1941 and would not revert to Italian rule, while the Allies had promised that Yugoslavia would be restored to its pre-war frontiers after the war. Umberto later stated that he would have never signed the peace treaty of 1947 under which Italy renounced its empire. On 15 April 1944, in an interview with The Daily Express , Umberto stated his hope that Italy would become

50700-486: The past out of the fear of assassination. On 14 February 1931, Alexander visited Zagreb, and the men of the Turnopolje district, who for centuries always provided a mounted honour guard for any royal visitor to Zagreb, failed to show up, a snub that shown how unpopular Alexander had become in Croatia. On 19 February 1931, the Croat historian Milan Šufflay was murdered by police agents, becoming an international cause célèbre with Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann leading

50960-465: The politicians". As a gesture to promote national unity after the traumas of the war, in June 1945, Umberto appointed as prime minister, a prominent guerrilla leader, Ferruccio Parri . In December 1945, Umberto appointed a new, more conservative government under Alcide De Gasperi . One of the first acts of the new government was to announce the High Commission for Sanctions Against Fascism would cease operating as of 31 March 1946 and to start purging from

51220-483: The poll led to appeals from Umberto to the ACC to postpone the referendum, leading to the reply that the De Gasperi cabinet had set the date for the referendum, not the ACC. The possibility of losing the referendum also led to the monarchists to appeal to Victor Emmanuel to finally abdicate. De Gasperi and the other Christian Democratic leaders refused to take sides in the referendum, urging Christian Democratic voters to follow their consciences when it came time to vote. In

51480-406: 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

51740-414: The population to the brink of starvation in both northern and southern Italy. In 1943–44, the cost of living in southern Italy skyrocketed by 321%, while it was estimated that people in Naples needed 2,000 calories per day to survive while the average Neapolitan was doing well if they consumed 500 calories a day in 1943–44. Naples in 1944 was described as a city without cats or dogs which had all been eaten by

52000-469: 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

52260-465: 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

52520-415: 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

52780-422: The referendum by a narrow margin. The De Gasperi cabinet accepted Umberto as King, but refused to accept the standard appellation for Italian kings "by the Grace of God and the will of the people". In northern Italy, which had been the scene of the guerrilla struggle against the Italian Social Republic and the Germans, much of the population had been radicalised by the struggle, and feelings were very much against

53040-487: The referendum if only he had not abdicated. Umberto himself had expected to win the referendum and was deeply shocked when the majority of his subjects chose a republic. The republic was formally proclaimed four days later, ending Umberto's brief (effective 12 June) 34-day reign as King. Umberto at first refused to accept what he called "the outrageous illegality" of the referendum and took his deposition badly. In his last official statement as King, Umberto refused to accept

53300-420: 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

53560-401: The regions of Italy instead of just Piedmont to make the Royal Court more representative of Italy. Umberto, in September 1944, vetoed an attempt by the Bonomi government to start an investigation of who was responsible for abandoning Rome in September 1943 as he feared that it would show his father was a coward. The same month, Badoglio, who was kept on as an adviser by Umberto, made an offer to

53820-413: The republic, saying he was the victim of a coup d'état by his ministers and the referendum had been rigged against him. In response, De Gasperi, who became Acting President, replied in a press statement: Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] ) is a Romance language of

54080-456: The responsibility for Italy entering the war rested with ordinary Italians and his apparent ignorance of the difficulties of holding public protests under the Fascist regime in 1940. Sforza wrote in his diary of his belief that Victor Emmanuel, "that little monster", had put Umberto up to the interview to discredit his son. Croce wrote: "The Prince of Piedmont for twenty-two years has never shown any sign of acting independently of his father. Now he

54340-417: The right to vote and to hold official office for the first time, again over the opposition of the left-wing parties, who viewed Italian women as more conservative than their menfolk, and believed that female suffrage would benefit the monarchist side in the referendum. The monarchists favoured putting off the referendum as long as possible out of the hope that a return to normalcy would cause the Italians to take

54600-403: The royal dictatorship for the first time made Alexander into an unpopular figure. The British historian Richard Crampton wrote many Serbs "...were alienated by the attempt, albeit unsuccessful, to lessen the Serbian domination on which, to add insult to injury, many of the faults of the previous system were blamed. Alexander had implicitly made the Serbs, the most reliable proponents of centralism,

54860-423: The royal wedding was especially satisfactory as most of the royal families of Europe attended, which showed that the House of Karađorđević, a family of peasant origins who were disliked for slaughtering the rival House of Obrenović in 1903, were finally accepted by the rest of European royalty. In foreign policy, Alexander favored maintaining the international system created in 1918–19, and in 1921 Yugoslavia joined

55120-447: The secret peace talks going on in Lisbon and Tangier , being unwilling to accept the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. During the secret armistice talks, Badoglio told Count Pietro d'Acquarone that he thought he might get better terms if Victor Emmanuel abdicated in favour of Umberto, complaining that the armistice terms that the King wanted were unacceptable to the Allies. D'Acquarone told Badoglio to keep his views to himself as

55380-453: The shame of the past". Beyond removing Victor Emmanuel, which everyone at the Congress of Bari wanted, the Italian politicians differed, with some calling for a republic to be proclaimed at once, some willing to see Umberto succeed to the throne, others wanting Umberto to renounce his claim to the throne in favour of his son, and finally those who were willing to accept Umberto as Luogotenente Generale del Regno (English: Lieutenant General of

55640-403: The south of Italy after fleeing Rome. In the fall of 1943, many Italian monarchists, like Benedetto Croce and Count Carlo Sforza , pressed for Victor Emmanuel III to abdicate and for Umberto to renounce his right to the succession in favour of his 6-year-old son, with a regency council to govern Italy as the best hope of saving the monarchy. Count Sforza tried to interest the British members of

55900-624: The south of Italy than in the north. People in the Mezzogiorno loved their King, who on the campaign trail in Sicily showed an encyclopedic knowledge of Sicilian villages which greatly endeared him to the Sicilians. Umberto's principal arguments for retaining the monarchy were it was the best way to revive Italy as a great power; it was the only institution capable of holding Italy together by checking regional separatism; and it would uphold Catholicism against anti-clericalism. The republicans charged that Umberto had done nothing to oppose Fascism, with his major interest being his "glittering social life" in

56160-403: The stomach. Following pressure from powerful figures such as Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and high-ranking officers Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijević and Petar Živković , George publicly renounced his claim to the throne in March of that year in favour of Alexander. In 1910, Alexander nearly died from stomach typhus and was left with stomach problems for the rest of his life. In the run-up to

56420-474: The striking workers, who used slogans associated with the banned Socialist and Communist parties, deeply worried Italy's conservative establishment. By this point, the successive Italian defeats had so psychologically shattered Mussolini that he become close to being catatonic , staring into space for hours on end and saying the war would soon turn around for the Axis because it had to, leading even his closest admirers to become disillusioned and to begin looking for

56680-498: The struggle to get to the head of the queue pointless. With the exceptions of Marshal Enrico Caviglia , General Calvi di Bergolo and General Antonio Sorice , the Italian generals simply abandoned their posts on the night of 8–9 September to try to flee south, which greatly facilitated the German take-over, as the Regio Esercito was left without senior leadership. On the morning of 9 September 1943, Umberto arrived with Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio in Brindisi . In September 1943, Italy

56940-416: The support of my dear and wise forefathers". At the outbreak of World War I he was the nominal supreme commander of the Royal Serbian Army ; true command was in the hands of the Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters, a position held by Stepa Stepanović (during the mobilisation), Radomir Putnik (1914–1915), Petar Bojović (1916–1917) and Živojin Mišić (1918). The Serbian Army distinguished itself in

57200-401: 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,

57460-425: The territory's capital. Umberto made his second publicised visit to Italian Somaliland in October 1934. Umberto was married in the city of Rome on 8 January 1930 to Princess Marie José of Belgium (1906–2001), the daughter of King Albert I of the Belgians and his wife, Queen Elisabeth ( née Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria ). They had four children: Following the Savoyards' tradition ("Only one Savoy reigns at

57720-410: 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

57980-400: The topography of Yugoslavia rather than the historical names in a bid to weaken regional loyalties, being governed by bans appointed by the King. In the same month, he tried to banish by decree the use of Serbian Cyrillic to promote the exclusive use of the Latin alphabet in Yugoslavia. Alexander replaced the three regional flags for the triune Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with

58240-421: 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 ),

58500-451: The villains of the Vidovdan piece". The royal dictatorship was seen in Croatia as merely a form of Serbian domination, and one result was a marked upswing in support for fascistic Ustashe , which advocated winning Croat independence via violence. By 1931, the Ustaše were waging a terrorist campaign of bombings, assassinations, and sabotage, which at least in part explained Alexander's reluctance to engage with ordinary people as he done in

58760-473: The war and led him to conclude that Italy must sign an armistice before it was too late. In late 1942, Umberto had his cousin, the 4th Duke of Aosta , visit Switzerland to contact the British consulate in Geneva , where he passed on a message to London that the King was willing to sign an armistice with the Allies in exchange for a promise that he be allowed to keep his throne. In 1943, Marie José, Princess of Piedmont, involved herself in vain attempts to arrange

59020-437: The war, not breaking it up. Not willing to antagonise Wilson, Alexander favored a " greater Serbia " that saw the Serbs annex South Slav-inhabited parts of the Habsburg lands . Though the Crown Prince declared in a speech during a visit to Britain that he was "fighting for Yugoslav unity in a Yugoslav state", when he addressed his own soldiers he stated he was fighting for "the reestablishment of Serbia, our dear homeland". In

59280-416: The way, as one Serbian soldier wrote in his diary how the refugees rested by the side of the road were: "Immobilized by the snow their heads rest to their breasts. The white snowflakes dance around them while the alpine winds whistle their songs of death. The heads of horses and oxen which have fallen protrude from the snow". As the Serbs braved the icy winds and snowdrifts, the only consolation for Alexander

59540-430: 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 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

59800-411: Was heir apparent from birth since the Italian throne was limited to male descendants. He was accorded the title Prince of Piedmont , which the Royal Decree formalised on 29 September 1904. During the crisis of May 1915, when Victor Emmanuel III decided to break the terms of the Triple Alliance by declaring war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire , he found himself in a quandary as the Italian Parliament

60060-438: Was a "justifiable risk". As Prince of Piedmont , Umberto visited South America, between July and September 1924. With his preceptor , Bonaldi, he went to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. This trip was part of the political plan of Fascism to link the Italian people living outside of Italy with their mother country and the interests of the regime. In Brazil, visits were scheduled to the national capital Rio de Janeiro and

60320-419: Was a complete fiasco, with Umberto's reputation as a general only being saved by the fact that the already defeated French signed an armistice with Italy on 24 June 1940. Thus, he could present the offensive as a victory. The Italian plans called for the Regio Esercito to reach the Rhone river valley, which the Italians came nowhere close to reaching, having penetrated only a few kilometres into France. After

60580-399: Was a daughter of Ferdinand I of Romania . They had three sons: Crown Prince Peter , and Princes Tomislav and Andrej . He was said to have wished to marry Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia , a cousin of his wife and the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II , and was distraught by her untimely death in the Russian Civil War . The Russophile Alexander was horrified by the murders of

60840-426: Was against declaring war; several times, the king discussed abdication with the throne to pass to the 2nd Duke of Aosta instead of Umberto. The British historian Denis Mack Smith wrote that it is not entirely clear why Victor Emmanuel was prepared to sacrifice his 10-year-old son's right to succeed to the throne in favour of the Duke of Aosta. Umberto was brought up in an authoritarian and militaristic household and

61100-439: 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

61360-419: 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

61620-480: Was announced that Italy had signed an armistice. Adolf Hitler had other plans for Italy, and in response to the Italian armistice ordered Operation Achse on 8 September 1943, as the Germans turned against their Italian allies and occupied all of the parts of Italy not taken by the Allies. In response to the German occupation of Italy, neither Victor Emmanuel nor Marshal Pietro Badoglio made any effort at organised resistance; they instead issued vague instructions to

61880-443: Was approved by a vote of 19 to 8. The fact that the majority of the Fascist Grand Council voted for the motion showed just how disillusioned the Fascist gerarchi had become with Mussolini by the summer of 1943. The intransigent and radical group of Fascists led by the gerarchi Roberto Farinacci , who wanted to continue the war, were only a minority, while the majority of the gerarchi supported Grandi's call to jettison Mussolini as

62140-455: Was believed would keep the Communists out of power. However, De Gasperi admitted that though the monarchy was a conservative institution, "it was difficult to answer the argument that the monarchy had done little to serve the interests of the country or people during the past thirty years". Umberto's relations with the Allies were strained by his insistence that after the war, Italy should keep all of its colonial empire , including Ethiopia and

62400-443: Was born on 16 December 1888 [ O.S. 4 December] in the Principality of Montenegro as the fourth child and second son of Peter Karađorđević and his wife, Princess Zorka . His paternal grandfather, also named Alexander , had been forced to abdicate as prince of Serbia and surrender power to the rival House of Obrenović . Alexander's maternal grandfather was Nicholas I, Prince of Montenegro . Despite enjoying support from

62660-438: Was clear that the war was lost, was unfit to continue as monarch. On 25 June 1944, the Bonomi government, which like Badoglio's government, ruled by Royal Decree as there was no parliament in Italy, had a Royal Decree issued in Umberto's name promising a Constituent Assembly for Italy after the war. As Umberto continued as regent, he surprised many, after his rocky start in the spring of 1944, with greater maturity and judgement than

62920-451: Was expected to "show an exaggerated deference to his father"; both in private and public, Umberto always had to get down on his knees and kiss his father's hand before being allowed to speak, even as an adult, and he was expected to stand to attention and salute whenever his father entered a room. Umberto was given the formal military education of a Savoyard prince and like the other Savoyard princes before him, Umberto received an education that

63180-410: Was expected. Croce advised him to make a break with his father by choosing his advisers from the democratic parties, and it was due to Croce's influence that Umberto appointed Falcone Lucifero , a socialist lawyer, as Minister of the Royal House. Lucifero suggested reforms, which were implemented, such as reducing the number of aristocrats and generals at the Royal Court, while bringing in people from all

63440-403: Was far more open, affable and ready to learn". As Regent, Umberto initially made a poor impression on almost everyone as he surrounded himself with Fascist-era generals as his advisers, spoke of the military as the basis of his power, frequently threatened to sue for libel anyone who made even the slightest critical remarks about the House of Savoy, and asked the ACC to censor the press to prevent

63700-413: Was further worsened by the outbreak of a typhus and relapsing fever epidemic which ravaged the country in 1915. Serb losses as a percentage of the population were the greatest of any belligerent in the war. The surviving Serb soldiers were ultimately taken to Thessalonika to join the Armées alliées en Orient . In the fall of 1916, Alexander's long-standing dispute with the secret military society of

63960-454: Was his belief in keeping Yugoslavia as a unitary state and his consistent opposition to federalism, which he believed would lead to the break-up of Yugoslavia and perhaps his own assassination. In turn, Alexander's opposition to federalism related to his belief that in a federalised Yugoslavia, the prečani Serbs would be discriminated against by the Croats and Bosnian Muslims, once telling a Serb Orthodox priest that federalism would be "stabbing

64220-443: 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

64480-449: Was notably short on politics; Savoyard monarchs customarily excluded politics from their heirs' education with the expectation that they would learn about the art of politics when they inherited the throne. Umberto was the first cousin of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia . In a 1959 interview, Umberto told the Italian newspaper La Settimana Incom Illustrata that in 1922 his father had felt that appointing Benito Mussolini as prime minister

64740-463: Was now moving closer towards democracy". In the part of Italy under the control of the ACC, which issued orders to the Italian civil servants, freedom of the press, association and expression were restored along with other civil rights and liberties. During 1943–45, the Italian economy collapsed with much of the infrastructure destroyed, inflation rampant, the black market becoming the dominant form of economic activity, and food shortages reducing much of

65000-426: Was one of the first Serbian officials to see the Austrian ultimatum containing terms deliberately written to inspire rejection. Turning to Russia for help, Alexander was advised to help the ultimatum as much as he could. Alexander was late to say he "went as far as an independent could" to accept the ultimatum, as Serbia accepted all of the terms except for the one demanding that Austrian police officers investigating

65260-516: Was otherwise inactive as an army commander during much of the Second World War . Umberto turned against the war following Italian defeats at Stalingrad and El Alamein , and tacitly supported the ouster of Benito Mussolini . In 1944, Victor Emmanuel, compromised by his association with Italian fascism and desperate to repair the monarchy's image, transferred most of his powers to Umberto. He transferred his remaining powers to Umberto later in 1944 and named him Lieutenant General ( Luogotenente ) of

65520-410: Was partitioned between the south of Italy, administered by the Italian government with an Allied Control Commission (ACC) having supervisory powers, while Germany occupied northern and central Italy with a puppet Italian Social Republic (popularly called the Salò Republic), headed by Mussolini holding nominal power. By 16 September 1943, a line had formed across Italy with everything to the north held by

65780-406: Was rejected as Admiral Ellery W. Stone of the ACC was opposed to Umberto's plans to have Bonomi share power with Badoglio and Orlando, seeing this as upsetting the delicately achieved political consensus for no other reason than to increase the Crown's power. In October 1944, Umberto, in an interview with The New York Times , stated that he favoured a referendum to decide whether Italy was to be

66040-401: Was reorganized. The march across the Prokletije ("Accursed") Mountains was a harrowing one as the Serbian Army together with a mass of refugees had to cross mountains that rose to 3,000 feet high in the middle of winter, with the average daily temperature being −20° while battling the hostile Albanian tribes with the armies of Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria in pursuit. Many Serbs died along

66300-406: 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

66560-411: Was signed by Pašić and Trumbić promising Yugoslavia after the war. Alexander seems to have been dubious about the plans for Yugoslavia, as throughout the war, he spoke in terms of liberating Serbia. The introduction of the 14 Points by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in January 1918 increased Alexander's doubts about Yugoslavia as Point 10 spoke of "substantial autonomy" in the Austrian Empire after

66820-545: Was such, that, after the assassination of Prince Mihailo Obrenović in 1868 (an event Karađorđevićs were suspected of taking part in), the Obrenovićs resorted to making constitutional changes, specifically proclaiming the Karađorđevićs banned from entering Serbia and stripping them of their civic rights. Alexander was two when his mother, Princess Zorka, died in 1890 from complications while giving birth to his younger brother, Andrej, who died 23 days later. Alexander spent his childhood in Montenegro. In 1894, his widower father took

67080-416: Was that the winter weather was also delaying the German, Austrian, and Bulgarian armies under the command of von Mackensen that were pursuing his army. Alexander repeatedly exposed himself to danger during the march to the sea while his health declined. Upon reaching the sea, the surviving Serbs who numbered about 140,000 were rescued by British and French ships, which took them to Corfu. In September 1915,

67340-407: Was the third child and only son among the five children of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Elena of Montenegro . As heir apparent to the throne, he received a customary military education and pursued a military career afterwards. In 1940, he commanded an army group during the brief Italian invasion of France shortly before the French capitulation. In 1942, he was promoted to Marshal of Italy but

67600-432: Was unfit to succeed him as part of a bid to take back his lost powers. After Togliatti and the Communists entered Badoglio's cabinet, taking the oaths of loyalty to Umberto in the so-called Svolta di Salerno ("Salerno turn"), the leaders of the other anti-Fascist parties felt they had no choice but to join the cabinet as to continue to boycott it might lead Italy to be open to Communist domination. The other parties entered

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