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186-576: The Regia Marina ( Italian for 'Royal Navy'; pronounced [ˈrɛːdʒa maˈriːna] ) ( RM ) or Royal Italian Navy was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy ( Regno d'Italia ) from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic ( Repubblica Italiana ), the Regia Marina changed its name to Marina Militare ("Military Navy"). The Regia Marina

372-463: A line of sight path, limiting its range to the visual horizon like existing forms of visual signalling. Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries including a demonstration on the transmission and detection of radio waves by the British physicist Oliver Lodge and an article about Hertz's work by Augusto Righi . Righi's article renewed Marconi's interest in developing

558-475: A Submarine Legion and complemented German Kriegsmarine U-boat operations as part of Operation Ursula . At least two Republican freighters, one Soviet and another Panamanian were either sunk or forced to run aground by Italian destroyers near the Strait of Sicily . Two light cruisers took part in the shelling of Barcelona and Valencia in 1937, resulting in the deaths of more than 30 civilians. In 1939,

744-498: A distance of about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) across Salisbury Plain . On 13 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over the open sea – a message was transmitted over the Bristol Channel from Flat Holm Island to Lavernock Point near Cardiff , a distance of 6 kilometres (3.7 mi). The message read "Are you ready". The transmitting equipment was almost immediately relocated to Brean Down Fort on

930-527: A fleet air arm. The High Command had reasoned that since the Italian navy would be operating solely in the Mediterranean, their vessels would never be far from an airfield and so the time and the resources needed to develop a naval air arm could be directed elsewhere. This proved problematic on a number of occasions. The Italians had the aircraft carriers Aquila and Sparviero under construction at

1116-572: A flotilla from La Spezia headed towards Sardinia . This was intercepted and attacked by German aircraft and the battleship Roma was sunk by two hits from Fritz X guided glide-bombs. Among the 1600 sailors killed on board Roma was the Italian Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Carlo Bergamini . Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] )

1302-799: A force capable of taking on the British Royal Navy , especially after the Fascist takeover. The British response to the Corfu incident left Benito Mussolini and his military advisors convinced that Italy was "imprisoned in the Mediterranean" through British bases in Gibraltar , the Suez Canal , Malta , and Cyprus . Italian naval construction was limited by the Washington Naval Conference . The 1922 treaty required

1488-510: 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

1674-471: 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

1860-657: 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

2046-539: A magazine explosion (although there were rumours of Austrian sabotage). The Austrians also sank the Italian armed merchant cruiser SS Principe Umberto on 8 June 1916. While transporting troops in the Adriatic, the ship was sunk by Austro-Hungarian U-boat U-5 with the loss of 1,926 men. It was the worst naval disaster of World War I in terms of human lives lost. In the last part of the war, the Regia Marina developed

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2232-462: A marked disadvantage in numbers and equipment, superior handling by the Austrians under Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff resulted in a severe defeat for Italy, which lost two armoured ships and 640 men. After the war, the Regia Marina passed through some difficult years as the naval budget was substantially reduced, thus impairing the fleet's efficiency and the pace of new construction; only in

2418-555: A member of the Fascist Grand Council . Marconi was an apologist for fascist ideology and actions such as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War . In his lecture he stated: "I reclaim the honour of being the first fascist in the field of radiotelegraphy, the first who acknowledged the utility of joining the electric rays in a bundle, as Mussolini was the first in

2604-654: A naval base in the concession territory of Tientsin in China . The primary Italian vessels based in China were the mine-layer Lepanto and the gunboat Carlotto . During World War II, Italian supply ships, auxiliary cruisers and submarines operated throughout the waters of the Far East, often in disguise. The Italians also utilized Japanese-controlled port facilities such as Shanghai, China , and Kobe , Japan . Seven Italian submarines operating from France were converted by

2790-417: A parity in naval forces between the Italian and French navies, with equality in total displacement in battleships and carriers. The treaty influenced the development of the Italian fleet over the years between the two world wars. Between the late twenties and early thirties a construction program began, focusing first on cruisers up to 10,000 tons, followed by the building of destroyers and submarines, and lastly

2976-638: A patent on 2 June 1896. British Patent number 12039 titled "Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor", which became the first patent for a communication system based on radio waves. Marconi made the first demonstration of his system for the British government in July 1896. A further series of demonstrations for the British followed, and, by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over

3162-497: A patent was obtained. He also encouraged Marconi to come to Britain, where he believed it would be easier to find the necessary funds to convert his experiments into practical use. Finding little interest or appreciation for his work in Italy, Marconi travelled to London in early 1896 at the age of 21, accompanied by his mother, to seek support for his work. (He spoke fluent English in addition to Italian.) Marconi arrived at Dover , and

3348-658: 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

3534-435: A radio transmitter and receiver to his mother, a set-up that made a bell ring on the other side of the room by pushing a telegraphic button on a bench. Supported by his father, Marconi continued to read through the literature and picked up on the ideas of physicists who were experimenting with radio waves. He developed devices, such as portable transmitters and receiver systems, that could work over long distances, turning what

3720-417: 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

3906-514: A reporter from The New York Times to talk with Bride, the surviving operator. After this incident, Marconi gained popularity and became more recognised for his contributions to the field of radio and wireless technology. On 18 June 1912, Marconi gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry into the loss of Titanic regarding the marine telegraphy's functions and the procedures for emergencies at sea. Britain's Postmaster-General summed up, referring to

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4092-473: A reputation for being technically conservative, in particular by continuing to use inefficient spark-transmitter technology, which could be used only for radio-telegraph operations, long after it was apparent that the future of radio communication lay with continuous-wave transmissions which were more efficient and could be used for audio transmissions. Somewhat belatedly, the company did begin significant work with continuous-wave equipment beginning in 1915, after

4278-512: 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

4464-822: A series of tests at La Spezia , in his home country, for the Italian government. A test for Lloyd's between The Marine Hotel in Ballycastle and Rathlin Island , both in County Antrim in Ulster , Ireland , was conducted on 6 July 1898 by George Kemp and Edward Edwin Glanville . A transmission across the English Channel was accomplished on 27 March 1899, from Wimereux , France to South Foreland Lighthouse , England. Marconi set up an experimental base at

4650-484: 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: Guglielmo Marconi Marconi was also an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in the United Kingdom in 1897 (which became

4836-634: A signal on behalf of the merchant vessel Elbe which had run aground on Goodwin Sands . The message was received by the radio operator of the South Foreland lighthouse, who summoned the aid of the Ramsgate lifeboat. In the autumn of 1899, his first demonstration in the United States took place. Marconi had sailed to the U.S. at the invitation of The New York Herald newspaper to cover

5022-427: A significant reconstruction project, with only 40% of the original structures being left. The ship's guns were upgraded in main armament, going from 13 guns of 305 mm diameter, to 10 guns of 320 mm diameter. The middle turret and the vessel's central tower were eliminated. To increase speed the coal-fired boilers were replaced with modern oil-fired boilers and ten meters were added to the ship's length to improve

5208-479: 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

5394-524: A son, Giulio, 2nd Marchese Marconi (1910–1971). In 1913, the Marconi family returned to Italy and became part of Rome society. Beatrice served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elena . At Marconi's request, his marriage to Beatrice was annulled on 27 April 1927, so he could remarry. Marconi and Beatrice had divorced on 12 February 1924 in the free city of Fiume ( Rijeka ). Marconi went on to marry Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali (2 April 1900 – 15 July 1994),

5580-766: A squadron of gunboats there. These were destroyed while attempting to withdraw into the Mediterranean at the Battle of Kunfuda Bay . Before 1914, the Kingdom of Italy built six dreadnought battleships: ( Dante Alighieri as a prototype; Giulio Cesare , Conte di Cavour and Leonardo da Vinci of the Conte di Cavour class ; and Andrea Doria and Duilio of the Andrea Doria class ), but they did not participate in any major naval actions in World War I . During

5766-465: A technical disadvantage. The Italian ships relied on speed but could easily be damaged by shell or torpedo, due to their relatively thin armour, as happened in the battle of Cape Spada . The fatal and final blow to the Italian Navy was a shortage of fuel, which forced its main units to remain at anchor for most of the last year of the Italian alliance with Germany. From 10 June 1940, submarines of

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5952-596: A transmission from the Marconi station in Glace Bay , Nova Scotia, Canada, became the world's first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America. In 1901, Marconi built a station near South Wellfleet, Massachusetts , that sent a message of greetings on 18 January 1903 from United States President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. However, consistent transatlantic signalling

6138-513: 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

6324-581: A wireless telegraphy system based on radio waves, a line of inquiry that Marconi noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing. At the age of 20, Marconi began to conduct experiments in radio waves, building much of his own equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio (now an administrative subdivision of Sasso Marconi ), Italy, with the help of his butler, Mignani. Marconi built on Hertz's original experiments and, at

6510-427: 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

6696-691: Is a Romance language of 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

6882-759: 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

7068-534: 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

7254-460: 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

7440-504: 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

7626-540: Is no practical experience". Thus, the Italian navy entered the Second World War with a marked technical inferiority to the British Royal Navy . Albert Kesselring , overall commander of Axis forces in the Mediterranean, observed that the Italian navy was "a good weather" force, unable to operate effectively at night or in heavy seas. Two training ships were built during this period, in addition to

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7812-410: 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

7998-648: 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

8184-549: 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

8370-409: The Regia Marina conducted experiments with Guglielmo Marconi in the use of radio communications. 1909 saw the first use of aircraft with the fleet. An Italian naval officer, Vittorio Cuniberti , was the first in 1903 to envision in a published article the all-big gun battleship design, which would be later come to be known as dreadnought . In 1911 and 1912, the Regia Marina was involved in

8556-517: The Regia Marina supported the invasion of Albania . All ground forces involved in the invasion had to cross the Adriatic Sea from mainland Italy and the crossings were accomplished without incident. On 10 June 1940, after the German invasion of France , the Kingdom of Italy declared war on France and the United Kingdom and entered World War II. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini saw

8742-809: The Regia Marina took part in the Battle of the Atlantic alongside the U-boats of Nazi Germany 's Kriegsmarine . The Italian submarines were based in Bordeaux , France at the BETASOM base. While more suited for the Mediterranean Sea than the Atlantic Ocean , the thirty-two Italian submarines that operated in the Atlantic sank 109 Allied ships for a total of 593,864 tons. The Regia Marina even planned an attack on New York Harbor with midget submarines for December 1942, but this plan

8928-701: The Elettra , was commandeered and refitted as a warship by the German Navy. She was sunk by the RAF on 22 January 1944. After the war, the Italian Government tried to retrieve the wreckage, to rebuild the boat, and the wreckage was removed to Italy. Eventually, the idea was abandoned, and the wreckage was cut into pieces which were distributed amongst Italian museums. In 1943, the Supreme Court of

9114-509: 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,

9300-991: 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 ),

9486-419: The Marchese Marconi suffered nine heart attacks in the span of three years preceding his death. Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937 at age 63, following the ninth, fatal, heart attack , and Italy held a state funeral for him. As a tribute, shops on the street where he lived were "Closed for national mourning". In addition, at 6 pm the next day, the time designated for the funeral, transmitters around

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9672-421: The America's Cup international yacht races off Sandy Hook , New Jersey . The transmission was done aboard the SS Ponce , a passenger ship of the Porto Rico Line . Marconi left for England on 8 November 1899 on the American Line 's SS  Saint Paul , and he and his assistants installed wireless equipment aboard during the voyage. Before this voyage the Second Boer War had begun, and Marconi's wireless

9858-403: The BBC , and he spoke of the close association of aviation and wireless telephony in that same year at a private gathering with Florence Tyzack Parbury , and even spoke of interplanetary wireless communication. In 1924, the Marconi Company co-established the Unione Radiofonica Italiana (now RAI ). Have I done the world good, or have I added a menace? In 1914, Marconi was made a Senator in

10044-440: The Cape of Good Hope and ultimately sailed to German occupied Bordeaux , France . One or two Italian merchant ships from the Red Sea Flotilla made it to Vichy French -controlled Madagascar . On 10 June 1941, the British launched Operation Chronometer, landing a battalion of troops from the British Indian Army at Assab , the last Italian-held harbour on the Red Sea. By 11 June, Assab had fallen. Two days later, on 13 June,

10230-467: The Danube River at Vienna , Austria , and then transported by water to Constanța , Romania . The flotilla had an active and successful campaign, based at Yalta and Feodosia . After Italy quit the war, most of the Italian vessels on the Black Sea were transferred to Nazi Germany 's Kriegsmarine . In early 1944, six MAS boats were transferred to the Royal Romanian Navy . By August 1944, they were ultimately captured by Soviet forces when Constanța

10416-404: The Elettra ' s crew was Adelmo Landini , his personal radio operator, who was also an inventor. In December 1898, the British lightship service authorised the establishment of wireless communication between the South Foreland lighthouse at Dover and the East Goodwin lightship , twelve miles distant. On 17 March 1899, the East Goodwin lightship sent the first wireless distress signal ,

10602-401: 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

10788-465: 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

10974-423: The Haven Hotel , Sandbanks , Poole Harbour , Dorset , where he erected a 100-foot high mast. He became friends with the van Raaltes, the owners of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, and his steam yacht, the Elettra , was often moored on Brownsea or at The Haven Hotel. Marconi purchased the vessel after the Great War and converted it to a seaborne laboratory from where he conducted many of his experiments. Among

11160-405: The Italo-Turkish War against forces of the Ottoman Empire . As the majority of the Ottoman Navy stayed behind the relative safety of the Dardanelles , the Italians dominated the Mediterranean during the conflict winning victories against Ottoman light units at the battles of Preveza and Beirut . In the Red Sea the Italian forces were vastly superior to those of the Ottomans who possessed only

11346-399: 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

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11532-698: 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

11718-496: The MAS boats , that, by chance, managed to sink the Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS  Szent István in the Adriatic Sea on 10 June 1918; and an early type of human torpedo (codenamed Mignatta , or "leech") carrying two men, which entered the harbour of Pola and planted two magnetic mines during the early hours of the morning which exploded sinking the Austro-Hungarian flagship SMS  Viribus Unitis , with considerable loss of life, on 1 November 1918, shortly after

11904-557: The Marconi Company ). In 1929, Marconi was ennobled as a Marchese (marquis) by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and, in 1931, he set up Vatican Radio for Pope Pius XI . Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi was born in Palazzo Marescalchi in Bologna on 25 April 1874, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi (an Italian aristocratic landowner from Porretta Terme who lived in the countryside of Pontecchio ) and his Irish wife Annie Jameson (daughter of Andrew Jameson of Daphne Castle in County Wexford , and granddaughter of John Jameson,

12090-423: 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

12276-449: The Scottish founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons ). His father, who was a widower with a son, Luigi, married Jameson on 16 April 1864 in Boulogne-sur-Mer , France. Alfonso, Marconi's older brother, was born in 1865. Between the ages of two and six, Marconi and Alfonso lived with their mother in the English town of Bedford . Having an Irish mother helped explain Marconi's many activities in Great Britain and Ireland. When he

12462-482: The Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK. During World War I , Italy joined the Allied side of the conflict, and Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio service. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Italian Royal Army and of commander in the Regia Marina . In 1929, he was made a marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III . While helping to develop microwave technology,

12648-516: The Somerset coast, stretching the range to 16 kilometres (9.9 mi). Impressed by these and other demonstrations, Preece introduced Marconi's ongoing work to the general public at two important London lectures: "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall on 11 December 1896; and "Signalling through Space without Wires", given to the Royal Institution on 4 June 1897. Numerous additional demonstrations followed, and Marconi began to receive international attention. In July 1897, he carried out

12834-411: The Titanic disaster: "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi ... and his marvellous invention." Marconi was offered free passage on Titanic before she sank, but had taken Lusitania three days earlier. As his daughter Degna later explained, he had paperwork to do and preferred the public stenographer aboard that vessel. Over the years, the Marconi companies gained

13020-406: 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

13206-414: The White Star Line but by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company . After the sinking of the ocean liner, survivors were rescued by the RMS Carpathia of the Cunard Line . Carpathia took a total of 17 minutes to both receive and decode the SOS signal sent by Titanic . There was a distance of 58 miles between the two ships. When Carpathia docked in New York, Marconi went aboard with

13392-549: The coefficient of fineness . Though the ships were improved, they still were not an equal match for the Queen Elizabeth -class battleships and the Renown -class battlecruisers, both of which carried larger guns and heavier armour. Though scientific research on tracking devices such as radar and sonar was being conducted in Italian universities and military laboratories by men such as Ugo Tiberio and Guglielmo Marconi ,

13578-435: The cruiser HMS  Neptune lost, along with the destroyer HMS  Kandahar . In addition, another destroyer was seriously damaged. All told 800 seamen were lost, and Force K, which had been effectively interdicting Axis convoys, was put out of action. This series of successes allowed the Regia Marina to achieve naval supremacy in the central Mediterranean. Coupled with an intensive bombing campaign against Malta,

13764-524: The "Battle of Mid-June") and Operation Pedestal (the "Battle of Mid-August"). All of these engagements ended favourably for the Axis. Despite this activity, the only real success of the Italian fleet was the surface attack on the Harpoon convoy, supported by Axis aerial forces. These attacks sank several Allied warships and damaged others. Only two transports of the original six in the convoy reached Malta. This

13950-463: 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

14136-510: 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

14322-408: The 1870s, under Simone Pacoret de Saint Bon 's ministry, did the situation begin to improve. In 1881, the battleship Duilio was commissioned, followed in 1882 by the battleship Enrico Dandolo ; at the time these were the most powerful warships in the world, and signalled the Italian fleet's renewed power. In 1896 the corvette Magenta completed a circumnavigation of the world. The following year

14508-465: The 1920s, such as Giovanni delle Bande Nere were built with a newly designed and relatively thin armour. This would have a decisive role in a number of naval battles, including the Battle of Cape Spada . Later classes, such as the Zara and Raimondo Montecuccoli classes, were built to a more balanced design with thicker armor. The modernization work on the four Great War era battleships turned into

14694-562: 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

14880-490: The Adriatic, which was successful with regards to surface units, but failed for the submarines, which found safe harbours and easy passage into and out of the area for the whole of the war. Considered a relatively minor part of the naval warfare of World War I , it nonetheless tied down significant forces. In December 1915, and January 1916, when the Serbian army was driven by the German foces under General von Mackensen toward

15066-489: The Albanian coast, 138,000 Serbian infantry and 11,000 refugees were ferried across the Adriatic and landed in Italy in 87 trips by the Conte di Cavour and other shps of the Italian Navy under the command of Admiral Conz. These ships also carried 13,000 cavalrymen and 10,000 horses of the Serbian army to Corfu in 13 crossings from the Albanian port of Vallons. For most of the war the Italian navy avoided wherever possible

15252-520: The Austro-Hungarian navy. The Italian fleet lost the destroyer Turbine in 1915 to an Austro-Hungarian fleet sortie; the armoured cruiser Amalfi was sunk by Austrian submarine U-26 on 7 July 1915; the armoured cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi , sunk by Austrian submarine U-4 on 18 July 1915, the pre-dreadnought battleship Benedetto Brin at Brindisi (27 September 1915) and the dreadnought Leonardo da Vinci at Taranto (2 August 1916) due to

15438-575: The Axis supply routes from southern Europe to North Africa were almost untouched by the Royal Navy or its allies for the next several months. The Italian fleet went on the offensive, blocking or mauling three large Allied convoys bound for Malta. This led to a number of naval engagements, including the Second Battle of Sirte in March 1942, Operation Harpoon and Operation Vigorous , (known as

15624-835: The Customs officer opened his case to find various apparatuses. The customs officer immediately contacted the Admiralty in London. With worries in the UK about Italian anarchists and suspicion Marconi was importing a bomb, his equipment was destroyed. While in the UK, Marconi gained the interest and support of William Preece , the Chief Electrical Engineer of the General Post Office (the GPO). Marconi applied for

15810-487: The Far East, but only two of these vessels were completed before Italy quit the war. Both of these submarines were destroyed by Allied action almost as soon as they were launched. In 1943, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was deposed and the new Italian government agreed to an armistice with the Allies . Under the terms of this armistice, the Regia Marina had to sail its ships to an Allied port. Most sailed to Malta, but

15996-598: The Indian trawler Parvati became the last naval casualty of the East African Campaign when it struck a moored mine near Assab. In May 1942, at German request, the Regia Marina deployed four 24-ton torpedo motorboats ( Motoscafo Armato Silurante , MAS ), six CB-class midget submarines , five torpedo motorboats, and five explosive motorboats to the Black Sea . The vessels were transported overland to

16182-580: The Italian Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, then under the direction of Maggiorino Ferraris, explaining his wireless telegraph machine and asking for funding, but never received a response. An apocryphal tale claims that the minister (incorrectly named first as Emilio Sineo, later as Pietro Lacava ) wrote "to the Longara" on the document, referring to the insane asylum on Via della Lungara in Rome, but

16368-417: 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

16554-711: The Italian fleet was formidable, but there were a large number of older vessels, and the service suffered in general from insufficient time at sea for crew training. Italy's lack of raw materials meant that it would have great difficulty building new ships over the course of the war. Thus, the assets that it had were handled with caution by Supermarina . Allied commanders at sea had a fair degree of autonomy and discretion to fight their vessels as circumstance allowed, but Italian commanders were required to confer with their headquarters before committing their forces in an engagement that might result in their loss. That led to delays in arriving at decisions and actions being avoided even when

16740-489: 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,

16926-441: The Italian vessels the ability to minimize close contact with vessels of the Royal Navy, whose crews were more experienced. In theory this would allow them to engage or break off at their own choosing, and would allow them to hit the enemy when he could not yet hit back. New guns were developed with longer ranges than their British counterparts of similar caliber. Speed was emphasized in their new construction. Italian cruisers built in

17112-483: The Italians had a clear advantage. An example occurred during " Operation Hats " in which the Regia Marina had superior forces but failed to commit them to take advantage of the opportunity. A further key disadvantage in the convoy support and interception battles that dominated the Battle of the Mediterranean was the intelligence advantage granted to the British in intercepting German Ultra and, through this,

17298-587: The Italians into " transport submarines " in order to exchange rare or irreplaceable trade goods with Japan. The submarines Alpino Bagnolini , Barbarigo , Comandante Cappellini , Giuseppe Finzi , Reginaldo Giuliani , Enrico Tazzoli , and Luigi Torelli were converted for service with the Monsun Gruppe ("Monsoon Group"). The name of Comandante Cappellini was changed to Aquila III . Twelve additional R-class blockade running transport submarines were specifically designed for trade with

17484-657: The Italians the use of the port of Berbera ; in January 1941, however, British and Commonwealth forces launched a successful counterattack in East Africa and the threat posed by the Red Sea Flotilla disappeared. Much of the Red Sea Flotilla was destroyed by hostile action during the first months of war or when the port of Massawa fell in April 1941. However, there were a few survivors. In February 1941, prior to

17670-484: The Italians. Their sea convoys were harassed day after day by the aerial and naval supremacy of the Allies. The maritime lane between Sicily and Tunisia became known as the "route of death". After years of back and forth, the Axis forces were forced to surrender in Tunisia, bringing the campaign for North Africa to a close. The Regia Marina performed well and bravely in its North African convoy duties, but remained at

17856-400: The Mediterranean, the four most modern of which were being re-fitted at the outbreak of the war. In addition to the six capital ships, the Italians had 19 cruisers, 59 destroyers, 67 torpedo boats, and 116 submarines. Though the Regia Marina had a number of fast new cruisers with good range in their gunnery, the older classes were lightly built and had inadequate defensive armor. Numerically

18042-556: 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

18228-792: The Needles Station at the Isle of Wight, was published on board the SS Saint Paul before its arrival. At the turn of the 20th century, Marconi began investigating a means to signal across the Atlantic to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables . Marconi established a wireless transmitting station at Marconi House, Rosslare Strand , County Wexford , in 1901 to act as a link between Poldhu in Cornwall , England, and Clifden in Connemara , County Galway , Ireland. He soon made

18414-475: The Royal Navy for control of the Mediterranean, there had been a lack of emphasis on the incorporation of technological advances such as radar and sonar . This meant that in night engagements or foul weather, the Italian ships were unable to detect the approach of their British adversaries. When engaged, they could only range their guns if they were able to visually locate their targets. The Regia Marina had six battleships with which to contend for control of

18600-489: The United States handed down a decision on Marconi's radio patents restoring some of the prior patents of Oliver Lodge , John Stone Stone , and Nikola Tesla . The decision was not about Marconi's original radio patents and the court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that since Marconi's claim to certain patents was questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents. There are claims

18786-476: The announcement that the message was received at Signal Hill in St. John's , Newfoundland (now part of Canada ), on 12 December 1901, using a 500-foot (150 m) kite-supported antenna for reception – signals transmitted by the company's new high-power station at Poldhu , Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about 2,200 miles (3,500 km). It was heralded as a great scientific advance, yet there also

18972-658: The border in the Italian invasion of France . By contrast, the Regia Marina prepared to secure the lines of communications between Italy, Libya and the East African colonies. The Italian High Command ( Comando Supremo ) did not approve of the plan devised by the Italian Naval Headquarters ( Supermarina ) to occupy a weakly defended Malta , which proved a crucial mistake. British High Command, thinking that Malta could not be defended because of

19158-444: 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

19344-653: 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

19530-407: The company struggled for many years to provide reliable communication to others. The role played by Marconi Co. wireless in maritime rescues raised public awareness of the value of radio and brought fame to Marconi, particularly the sinking of RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912 and RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915. RMS Titanic radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were not employed by

19716-597: The conflict for almost two years. This action , coming on the heels of the loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in the South China Sea, significantly weakened the surface strength of the Royal Navy, making it difficult for them to challenge Italian control of the eastern Mediterranean. On the night of 19 December, Force K , comprising three cruisers and four destroyers based at Malta , ran into an Italian minefield off Tripoli . Three cruisers struck mines, with

19902-941: The conservative Italian leadership had little interest in these new technologies, and did not use them to improve the effectiveness of the Italian vessels. This was mainly due to the influence of Admiral Domenico Cavagnari , whom Mussolini appointed as Chief of Staff of the Navy in 1933, and whom he later promoted to Secretary of the Navy. Likewise technological advancement in radio range finders and gunnery control devices for night combat were not incorporated. Regarding such devices, Cavagnari emphasized "not wanting traps in your way". Writing to Admiral Iachino, he wrote " procedere con estrema cautela nell'accettare brillanti novità tecniche che non siano ancora collaudate da una esperienza pratica sufficientemente lunga ", which can be translated to "proceed with extreme caution regarding brilliant technical innovations that have not yet been tested or with which there

20088-495: The construction of the new Littorio -class battleships; plans were also put in place to modernize the Conte di Cavour -class and Andrea Doria -class battleships. Much of these new naval units were responses to French naval constructions, as the Marine nationale was seen until the mid-1930s as the most likely enemy in a hypothetical conflict. The Regia Marina chose to build fast ships armed with longer ranged guns to give

20274-522: The control of the Mediterranean Sea as an essential prerequisite for expanding his " New Roman Empire " into Nice , Corsica , Tunis and the Balkans . Italian naval building accelerated during his tenure. Mussolini described the Mediterranean as " Mare Nostrum " (Our Sea). Before the declaration of war, Italian ground and air forces had prepared to strike at the beaten French forces across

20460-573: 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

20646-463: 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

20832-446: 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

21018-579: 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

21204-677: The daytime is not possible because of the heavy absorption of the skywave in the ionosphere. It was not a blind test; Marconi knew in advance to listen for a repetitive signal of three clicks, signifying the Morse code letter S . The clicks were reported to have been heard faintly and sporadically. There was no independent confirmation of the reported reception, and the transmissions were difficult to distinguish from atmospheric noise. A detailed technical review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S. Belrose's work of 1995. The Poldhu transmitter

21390-464: 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

21576-534: 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

21762-478: 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

21948-554: The effort to modernize and re-equip the combat vessels of the navy. These were square rigged school ships the Regia Marina ordered in 1925. The sailing ships followed a design by Lieutenant Colonel Francesco Rotundi of the Italian Navy Engineering Corps, reminiscent of ships of the line from the Napoleonic era . The first of these two ships, Cristoforo Colombo , was put into service in 1928 and

22134-424: The entire navy had been turned over to the newly founded neutral State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The battleship SMS  Tegetthoff (sister of the former two) was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1919. During the interwar years the Italian government set about modernizing the Regia Marina in a way that could enable it to reach dominance over the Mediterranean Sea. Italian naval planners also wanted

22320-462: 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

22506-433: 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

22692-580: The fall of Massawa, the colonial ship Eritrea and the auxiliary cruisers Ramb I and Ramb II broke out and sailed to Kobe , Japan . While Ramb I was sunk by the Royal New Zealand Navy cruiser HMNZS  Leander off the Maldives , Eritrea and Ramb II made it to Kobe. As the port of Massawa was falling, four submarines— Guglielmotti , Galileo Ferraris , Perla , and Archimede —sailed south from Massawa, rounded

22878-692: The first to show that radio signals for medium wave and longwave transmissions travel much farther at night than during the day. During the daytime, signals had been received up to only about 700 miles (1,100 km), less than half of the distance claimed earlier at Newfoundland, where the transmissions had also taken place during the day. Because of this, Marconi had not fully confirmed the Newfoundland claims, although he did prove that radio signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres (miles), despite some scientists' belief that they were limited essentially to line-of-sight distances. On 17 December 1902,

23064-476: 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

23250-506: The frequency of the waves compared to the dipole antennas used by Hertz, and radiated vertically polarized radio waves which could travel longer distances. By this point, he concluded that a device could become capable of spanning greater distances, with additional funding and research, and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily. Marconi's experimental apparatus proved to be the first engineering-complete, commercially successful radio transmission system. Marconi applied to

23436-699: The high court was trying to nullify a World War I claim against the United States government by the Marconi Company via simply restoring the non-Marconi prior patent. Marconi was a friend of Charles van Raalte and his wife Florence, the owners of Brownsea Island ; and of Margherita, their daughter, and in 1904 he met her Irish friend, The Hon. Beatrice O'Brien (1882–1976), a daughter of The 14th Baron Inchiquin . On 16 March 1905, Beatrice O'Brien and Marconi were married, and spent their honeymoon on Brownsea Island. They had three daughters, Lucia (born and died 1906), Degna (1908–1998), and Gioia (1916–1996), and

23622-533: The introduction of the oscillating vacuum tube (valve). The New Street Works factory in Chelmsford was the location for the first entertainment radio broadcasts in the United Kingdom in 1920, employing a vacuum tube transmitter and featuring Dame Nellie Melba . In 1922, regular entertainment broadcasts commenced from the Marconi Research Centre at Great Baddow , forming the prelude to

23808-489: The island of Corsica (but not in the neighbouring Sardinia , which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians , would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere ). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia , as well as

23994-435: The island of Vis in the Adriatic Sea . That was one of the few fleet actions of the 19th century and as a major sea battle that involved ramming , it is often considered to have had a profound effect on subsequent warship design and tactics. The Italian fleet, commanded by Admiral Persano, mustered 12 ironclad and 17 wooden-hulled ships, though only one, Affondatore , was of the most modern turret ship design. Despite

24180-484: The key information on Italian convoy routes, times of departure, time of arrival, and make up of the convoy. The warships of the Regia Marina had a general reputation as being well-designed. Italian small attack craft lived up to expectations and were responsible for many successful actions in the Mediterranean. Though Italian warships lacked radar , that was partly offset in fair weather by good optical rangefinder and fire-control systems. The Italian Navy lacked

24366-577: 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

24552-640: The language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found scattered across the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South. In Venezuela , Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers. In Uruguay , people who speak Italian as their home language are 1.1% of

24738-498: The late 18th century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton , for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian. Within the Catholic Church , Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents. Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in

24924-534: The late 19th to the mid-20th century, millions of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil, where Talian

25110-567: The law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica ) is closely related to medieval Tuscan , from which Standard Italian derives and evolved. The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the natural changes that all languages in regular use are subject to, and to some extent to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata . The most prevalent were substrata (the language of

25296-642: The letter was never found. In 1896, Marconi spoke with his family friend Carlo Gardini, Honorary Consul at the United States Consulate in Bologna, about leaving Italy to go to Great Britain . Gardini wrote a letter of introduction to the Ambassador of Italy in London, Annibale Ferrero, explaining who Marconi was and about his extraordinary discoveries. In his response, Ambassador Ferrero advised them not to reveal Marconi's results until after

25482-494: The long naval traditions of its constituents, especially those of Sardinia and Naples, but also suffered from some major handicaps. Firstly, it suffered from a lack of uniformity and cohesion; the Regia Marina was a heterogeneous mix of equipment, standards and practice, and even saw hostility between the officers from the various former navies. These problems were compounded by the continuation of separate officer schools at Genoa and Naples , and were not fully addressed until

25668-449: The maximum transmission distance for radio waves. A breakthrough came in the summer of 1895, when Marconi found that a much greater range could be achieved after he raised the height of his antenna and, borrowing from a technique used in wired telegraphy, grounded his transmitter and receiver. With these improvements, the system was capable of transmitting signals up to 2 miles (3.2 km) and over hills. The monopole antenna reduced

25854-629: The microphone: "With the help of God, who places so many mysterious forces of nature at man's disposal, I have been able to prepare this instrument which will give to the faithful of the entire world the joy of listening to the voice of the Holy Father". Marconi joined the National Fascist Party in 1923. In 1930, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him President of the Royal Academy of Italy , which made Marconi

26040-412: 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

26226-408: 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

26412-572: The only daughter of Francesco, Count Bezzi-Scali. To do this he had to be confirmed in the Catholic faith and became a devout member of the Church. He was baptised Catholic but had been brought up as a member of the Anglican Church . On 12 June 1927, Marconi married Maria Cristina in a civil service, with a religious ceremony performed on 15 June. Marconi was 53 years old and Maria Cristina

26598-411: The opening of a unified Naval Academy at Livorno in 1881. Secondly, unification occurred during a period of rapid advances in naval technology and tactics, as typified by the launch of Gloire by France in 1858, and later by the appearance of, and battle between, USS  Monitor and CSS  Virginia in 1862. These innovations quickly made older warships obsolete. Italy did not possess

26784-630: 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

26970-584: 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:

27156-458: The other hand, almost everyone still speaks the Corsican idiom , which, due to its linguistic proximity to the Italian standard language, appears both linguistically as an Italian dialect and therefore as a carrier of Italian culture, despite the French government's decades-long efforts to cut Corsica off from the Italian motherland. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it

27342-521: The political field who acknowledged the necessity of merging all the healthy energies of the country into a bundle, for the greater greatness of Italy". Not one Jew was allowed to join the Royal Academy during Marconi's tenure as president from 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler took power in Germany and eight years before Benito Mussolini 's race laws brought his regime's antisemitism into

27528-406: 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

27714-469: 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

27900-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to

28086-440: The proximity of Regia Aeronautica air bases in Italy , Sicily , and Libya , had put little effort into bolstering the islands' defences. Thus, at the outset of the war there were only 42 anti-aircraft guns on the island and twelve Gloster Sea Gladiators , half sitting in crates at the wharf. Entering the war, the Regia Marina was operating under a number of limitations. Though significant assets were available to challenge

28272-415: 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

28458-420: 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

28644-404: The ships and range their weapons at distance and at night. The better air reconnaissance skills of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and their close collaboration with surface units were other major causes of the Italian debacle. On 19 December 1941, the battleships HMS  Queen Elizabeth and HMS  Valiant were damaged by limpet mines planted by Italian frogmen , knocking both out of

28830-438: The shipyards or infrastructure to build the modern ships required, but the then Minister for the Navy, Admiral Carlo di Persano , launched a substantial programme to purchase warships from foreign yards. The new navy's baptism of fire came on 20 July 1866 at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence (parallel to the Seven Weeks War ). The battle was fought against the Austrian Empire and occurred near

29016-484: The start of the war, but neither was ever completed. Lastly, the lack of natural oil reserves and subsequent shortage of oil precluded extensive fleet operations. The Regia Marina and the Royal Navy engaged in a two-and-a-half-year struggle for control of the Mediterranean. The Regia Marina 's primary goal was to support the Axis forces in North Africa while obstructing the supply route to Alexandria and cutting off supplies to Malta. The Royal Navy's major effort

29202-451: The suggestion of Righi, began using a coherer , an early detector based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Édouard Branly and used in Lodge's experiments, that changed resistance when exposed to radio waves. In the summer of 1894, he built a storm alarm made up of a battery, a coherer, and an electric bell, which went off when it picked up the radio waves generated by lightning. Late one night, in December 1894, Marconi demonstrated

29388-401: 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,

29574-410: 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

29760-421: 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 ),

29946-785: The university and also to use the university's laboratory and library. From youth, Marconi was interested in science and electricity. In the early 1890s, he began working on the idea of " wireless telegraphy " – i.e., the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph . This was not a new idea; numerous investigators and inventors had been exploring wireless telegraph technologies and even building systems using electric conduction , electromagnetic induction and optical (light) signalling for over 50 years, but none had proved technically and commercially successful. A relatively new development came from Heinrich Hertz , who, in 1888, demonstrated that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation , based on

30132-420: The war, the Regia Marina spent its minor efforts in the Adriatic Sea , opposing the Austro-Hungarian Navy . The resulting Adriatic Campaign of World War I consisted mainly of Austro-Hungarian coastal bombardments of Italy's Adriatic coast, and wider-ranging German/Austro-Hungarian submarine warfare into the Mediterranean. Allied forces mainly limited themselves to blockading the Austro-Hungarian navy inside

30318-526: The winter when they would leave Bologna for the warmer climate of Tuscany or Florence . Marconi noted an important mentor was professor Vincenzo Rosa, a high school physics teacher in Livorno . Rosa taught the 17-year-old Marconi the basics of physical phenomena as well as new theories on electricity. At the age of 18 and back in Bologna, Marconi became acquainted with University of Bologna physicist Augusto Righi , who had done research on Heinrich Hertz 's work. Righi permitted Marconi to attend lectures at

30504-432: The work of James Clerk Maxwell . At the time, this radiation was commonly called "Hertzian" waves, and is now generally referred to as radio waves . There was a great deal of interest in radio waves in the physics community, but this interest was in the scientific phenomenon, not in its potential as a communication method. Physicists generally looked on radio waves as an invisible form of light that could only travel along

30690-430: 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

30876-422: The world observed two minutes of silence in his honour. The British Post Office also sent a message requesting that all broadcasting ships honour Marconi with two minutes of broadcasting silence. His remains are housed in the Mausoleum of Guglielmo Marconi in the grounds of Villa Griffone at Sasso Marconi , Emilia-Romagna, which assumed that name in his honour in 1938. In 1943, Marconi's elegant sailing yacht,

31062-413: Was 26. They had one daughter, Maria Elettra Elena Anna (born 1930), who married Prince Carlo Giovannelli (1942–2016) in 1966; they later divorced. For unexplained reasons, Marconi left his entire fortune to his second wife and their only child, and nothing to the children of his first marriage. Marconi wanted to personally introduce in 1931 the first radio broadcast of a Pope, Pius XI , and announced at

31248-481: Was a two-stage circuit. Feeling challenged by sceptics, Marconi prepared a better-organised and documented test. In February 1902, the SS Philadelphia sailed west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced coherer-tape reception up to 1,550 miles (2,490 km), and audio reception up to 2,100 miles (3,400 km). The maximum distances were achieved at night, and these tests were

31434-439: 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

31620-419: 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

31806-509: Was captured. The five surviving midget submarines were transferred to the Royal Romanian Navy. The Regia Marina operated a squadron of four MAS boats on Lake Ladoga during the Continuation War (1941–1944). As part of Naval Detachment K , German, Italian, and Finnish vessels operated against Soviet gunboats, escorts and supply vessels during the Siege of Leningrad between 21 June and 21 October 1942. The Italian vessels were ultimately turned over to Finland. The Regia Marina had

31992-445: Was delayed for many reasons and was never carried out. Initially, Italian forces enjoyed considerable success in East Africa. From 10 June 1940, the Regia Marina 's Red Sea Flotilla , based at Massawa , Eritrea , posed a potential threat to Allied shipping crossing the Red Sea between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. This threat increased in August 1940 with the Italian conquest of British Somaliland , which allowed

32178-491: Was difficult to establish. Marconi began to build high-powered stations on both sides of the Atlantic to communicate with ships at sea, in competition with other inventors. In 1904, he established a commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907 between Clifden , Ireland, and Glace Bay , but even after this

32364-427: Was essentially a laboratory experiment into a useful communication system. Marconi came up with a functional system with many components: In the summer of 1895, Marconi moved his experiments outdoors on his father's estate in Bologna. He tried different arrangements and shapes of antenna but even with improvements he was able to transmit signals only up to one half-mile, a distance Oliver Lodge had predicted in 1894 as

32550-442: Was established on 17 March 1861 following the proclamation of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy . Just as the Kingdom was a unification of various states in the Italian peninsula , so the Regia Marina was formed from the navies of those states, though the main constituents were the navies of the former kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples . The new Navy inherited a substantial number of ships, both sail- and steam-powered, and

32736-422: Was inflicted on the Regia Marina at Cape Matapan , where the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy intercepted and destroyed three heavy cruisers ( Zara , Pola and Fiume ; all of the same class) and two Oriani -class destroyers in a night ambush, with the loss of over 2,300 seamen. The Allies had Ultra intercepts, which uncovered the Italian movements, and radar , which enabled them to locate

32922-429: Was instrumental in delivering and supplying the invasion forces through Somali and Eritrean ports. At the time of the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War , the Regia Marina sent naval units in support of the Italian Corps of Volunteer Troops ( Corpo Truppe Volontarie ). Approximately 58 Italian submarines took part in operations against the Spanish Republican Navy . These submarines were organized in

33108-443: 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

33294-401: Was put into service in July of that year. She is still being used to this day. In 1928, the unified command of the " Armata Navale " was abolished, and the fleet was divided in two squadrons ( Squadre navali ), one based at La Spezia and the other based at Taranto. The Regia Marina played a limited role in the invasion of Ethiopia . While the Ethiopian Empire was landlocked, the navy

33480-406: 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

33666-400: Was the only undisputed squadron-sized victory for Italian surface forces in World War II. Despite the heavy losses suffered by the merchantmen and escorting forces of convoy Pedestal, the oil and supplies brought through allowed the near starving island of Malta to continue to hold out. With Allied landings in North Africa, Operation Torch , in November 1942, the fortunes of war turned against

33852-465: Was three years old, on 4 May 1877, Giuseppe Marconi decided to obtain British citizenship. Marconi could have thus also opted for British citizenship anytime, as both his parents had British citizenship. Marconi did not attend school as a child and did not go on to formal higher education. Instead, he learned chemistry, mathematics, and physics at home from a series of private tutors hired by his parents. His family hired additional tutors for Marconi in

34038-427: Was to bring news of the conflict to passengers at the request of "some of the officials of the American line." On 15 November the SS Saint Paul became the first ocean liner to report her imminent return to Great Britain by wireless when Marconi's Royal Needles Hotel radio station contacted her 66 nautical miles off the English coast. The first Transatlantic Times , a newspaper containing wireless transmission news from

34224-467: Was to maintain supply to the military forces and people of Malta, and secondarily to interdict convoy shipments to North Africa. The first major action occurred on 11 November 1940 when the British aircraft carrier HMS  Illustrious launched two waves of Fairey Swordfish torpedo-bombers in a surprise raid against the Italian Fleet moored at the naval base of Taranto . The raid came in undetected, and three battleships were sunk. Another major defeat

34410-400: Was used by the Italian Navy for training until 1943. After World War II , this ship was handed over to the Soviet Union as part of war reparations and was shortly afterwards decommissioned. The second ship of the design was Amerigo Vespucci . The ship was built in 1930 at the (formerly Royal) Naval Shipyard of Castellammare di Stabia ( Naples ). She was launched on 22 February 1931, and

34596-471: Was – and continues to be – considerable scepticism about this claim. The exact wavelength used is not known, but it is fairly reliably determined to have been in the neighbourhood of 350 metres (frequency ≈ 850 kHz). The tests took place at a time of day during which the entire transatlantic path was in daylight. It is now known (although Marconi did not know then) that this was the worst possible choice. At this medium wavelength, long-distance transmission in

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