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167-496: Italian irredentism ( Italian : irredentismo italiano , Italian: [irredenˈtizmo itaˈljaːno] ) was a political movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Italy with irredentist goals which promoted the unification of geographic areas in which indigenous peoples were considered to be ethnic Italians . At the beginning, the movement promoted the annexation to Italy of territories where Italians formed

334-689: A local language of Italy , most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin. Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe . It is the third-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union (13% of the EU population) and it

501-565: 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

668-471: 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

835-539: A north-west / south-east direction. The closest large islands, Sicily , Sardinia , and Corsica , are not parts of it. The peninsula corresponds to about 45% of the Italian geographical region. The island part extends over an area of about 60,000 square kilometres (23,000 sq mi) (about 18.5% of the whole Italian region), of which 58,000 square kilometres (22,000 sq mi) for Sicily , Sardinia , and Corsica . Outside these large islands, numerous smaller islands, often grouped in archipelagos, are found along

1002-658: 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

1169-590: A portion of Carniola and Istria, and would unite the Adriatic to Rijeka; but at the Isonzo the mountains of the Alps are lowered and their consideration becomes less After the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the absolutist monarchical regimes , Italy remains according to Metternich 's expression " a simple geographical expression " without political unity. However, a process has been set in motion that will lead to

1336-417: 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

1503-522: A result. Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by languages of Italy, especially Tuscan and Venetian. These varieties were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts . Italy came to enjoy increasing artistic prestige within Europe. A mark of

1670-582: A segment of the Savoyard population demonstrated against the annexation. Indeed, the final vote count on the referendum announced by the Court of Appeals was 130,839 in favour of annexation to France, 235 opposed and 71 void, showing questionable complete support for French nationalism (that motivated criticisms about rigged results). At the beginning of 1860, more than 3000 people demonstrated in Chambéry against

1837-453: 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: Italy (geographical region) The Italian geographic region, in its traditional and most widely accepted extent, has an area of approximately 324,000 square kilometres (125,000 sq mi), which

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2004-620: A significant Italian presence in Dalmatia was the city of Zara (now called Zadar ). In the Austro-Hungarian census of 1910, the city of Zara had an Italian population of 9,318 (or 69.3% out of the total of 13,438 inhabitants). In 1921 the population grew to 17,075 inhabitants, of which 12,075 Italians (corresponding to 70,76%). In 1941, during the Second World War , Yugoslavia was occupied by Italy and Germany. Dalmatia

2171-479: 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

2338-450: A substantial local ethnic Italian population ( Dalmatian Italians ), making up 33% of the total population of Dalmatia in 1803, but this was reduced to 20% in 1816. In Dalmatia there was a constant decline in the Italian population, in a context of repression that also took on violent connotations. During this period, Austrians carried out an aggressive anti-Italian policy through a forced Slavization of Dalmatia. According to Austrian census,

2505-710: A sudden decrease: in the twenty years 1890-1910, in Rab they went from 225 to 151, in Vis from 352 to 92, in Pag from 787 to 23, completely disappearing in almost all the inland locations. One consequence of irredentist ideas outside of Italy was an assassination plot organized against the Emperor Francis Joseph in Trieste in 1882, which was detected and foiled. Guglielmo Oberdan , a Triestine and thus Austrian citizen,

2672-513: 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

2839-427: 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

3006-759: 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

3173-690: Is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia . Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania , although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties ) and

3340-486: Is an opposite thesis, supported by Charles de Gaulle at the end of World War II , which, assigning the nature of a transalpine pass to Colle di Tenda , excludes the entire Roia Valley with Ventimiglia from the Italian physical region. In a narrow sense, the continental part, delimited to the north by the Alpine watershed , to about 40% of the Italian region and is located in the north of an imaginary line that goes from

3507-584: Is beyond the Alps, nor Dalmatia, nor Istria, and we have understood the part of the Italian-Swiss nurses that are below the Alps, and all the part of Tyrol that pours its waters in the Adige and under the Brenner; all this, moreover, forms few changes. On the eastern side the border mark was placed on the Isonzo, even if the natural division of the mountains would pass between Laybach and Isonzo, would include

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3674-602: Is divided between several other states, some of which (in order of geographical extension: Malta , San Marino , Monaco , and Vatican City ) are entirely included in the political borders. Some strips of western Niçard and the Alpine sector near the French border (Italian up to the 1947 Peace Treaty ), Corsica , Italian Switzerland , the Maltese Islands , and Julian March , Slovenian and Croatian, are also ascribed to

3841-539: Is generally identified in Buccari. To the south-east of the Nauporto pass and to the north-west of Mount Pomario, the traceability of the natural border is rather difficult as in this area the hydrographic watershed does not coincide with the orographic chain, which is characterized by rather small peaks. As for the islands of Cherso and Lussino , their belonging to the Italian geographical region may vary according to

4008-670: Is greater than the area of the entire Italian Republic (301,230 square kilometres (116,310 sq mi)). The region also includes territories that are sovereign parts of Croatia , France , Slovenia , and Switzerland , as well as the four small sovereign states of the Principality of Monaco , the Republic of Malta , the Republic of San Marino , and the Vatican City State (the Holy See ). In common language,

4175-534: 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

4342-508: Is located between 36° and 46° degree of latitude, 4° and 16° of longitude of Paris; it consists of three parts: the mainland, the peninsula and the islands. The first is separated from the second by the Isthmus of Parma. If from Parma, as the center, a semicircle is traced on the north side with a radius equal to the distance from Parma to the mouth of the Var or the mouth of the Isonzo (60 leagues),

4509-460: 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

4676-462: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around

4843-524: Is not to be confused with the Risorgimento , the historical events that led to irredentism, nor with nationalism or Imperial Italy , the political philosophy that took the idea further under fascism . During the 19th century, Italian irredentism fully developed the characteristic of defending the Italian language from other people's languages such as, for example, German in Switzerland and in

5010-539: Is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom ) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million. Italian is the main working language of the Holy See , serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as

5177-549: 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

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5344-542: The Il Canzoniere (s. CXLVI, 13–14): that fair country , the Apennines divide, and Alps and sea surround. In his memoirs written during his captivity on the island of Saint Helena , but published only in 2010, Napoleon Bonaparte makes a description of Italy in the first chapter: Italy is surrounded by the Alps and the sea, its natural limits are determined with the same precision as if it were an island. It

5511-509: 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,

5678-991: 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 ),

5845-478: The Società di Studi Geografici of Florence was strongly imbued with a nationalist spirit which, during the following decades, will become more and more colonialist and militarist. This would explain, as Lucio Gambi demonstrated, the enthusiastic and almost unanimous adhesion of Italian geographers to fascism a few decades later. After World War I , the notion of the Italian geographical region diminished, as

6012-922: The Adriatic Sea . Together with the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkan Peninsula , they are the three peninsulas that make up Southern Europe . The peninsula in a narrow sense begins from the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines, starting from an imaginary line that goes from the mouth of the Magra river to that of the Rubicone river, and extends to the extreme southern offshoot of Capo Spartivento in Calabria . The peninsula has an extension of about 1.000 kilometre (0.621 mi) in

6179-728: The Allies that Zara was a chief logistic centre for German forces in Yugoslavia. By overstating its importance, he persuaded them of its military significance. Italy surrendered in September 1943 and over the following year, specifically between 2 November 1943 and 31 October 1944, Allied Forces bombarded the town fifty-four times . Nearly 2,000 people were buried beneath rubble: 10–12,000 people escaped and took refuge in Trieste and slightly over 1,000 reached Apulia. Tito's partisans entered Zara on 31 October 1944 and 138 people were killed. With

6346-702: 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

6513-600: The Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the empire with an Italian presence: His Majesty expressed the precise order that action be taken decisively against the influence of the Italian elements still present in some regions of the Crown and, appropriately occupying the posts of public, judicial, masters employees as well as with the influence of the press, work in South Tyrol , Dalmatia and Littoral for

6680-613: The Italia irredenta party. Italy gained Trieste , Gorizia , Istria and the Dalmatian city of Zara . In Dalmatia, despite the London Pact, only territories with Italian majority as Zara with some Dalmatian islands, such as Cherso , Lussino and Lagosta were annexed by Italy because Woodrow Wilson , supporting Yugoslav claims and not recognizing the treaty, rejected Italian requests on other Dalmatian territories, so this outcome

6847-428: The Italian language and the Lombard language , specifically the Ticinese dialect . Italian irredentism in Switzerland was based on moderate Risorgimento ideals, and was promoted by Italian-Ticinese such as Adolfo Carmine  [ it ] . Following a brief French occupation (1798–1800) the British established control over Malta while it was still formally part of the Kingdom of Sicily . During both

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7014-400: The Italian navy , appealed to the people of the United States to support Italian territorial claims over Trento , Trieste , Istria , Dalmatia and the Adriatic , writing that "we are fighting to expel an intruder from our home". The outcome of the World War I and the consequent settlement of the Treaty of Saint-Germain met some Italian claims, including many (but not all) of the aims of

7181-399: The Kingdom of Italy even areas where Italians were a minority or had been present only in the past. In the first case there were the Risorgimento claims on Trento , while in the second there were the fascist claims on the Ionian Islands , Savoy and Malta . The Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli was called "the precursor of Italian irredentism" by Niccolò Tommaseo because he was

7348-399: 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

7515-698: 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

7682-404: The Kvarner was the subject of claim and counter-claim because it had an Italian majority, but Fiume had not been promised to Italy in the London Pact, though it was to become Italian by 1924 (see Italian Regency of Carnaro , Treaty of Rapallo, 1920 and Treaty of Rome, 1924 ). The stand taken by the irredentist Gabriele D'Annunzio , which briefly led him to become an enemy of the Italian state,

7849-411: The Maltese Italians , Corfiot Italians and Corsican Italians in order to control the Mediterranean sea (his Mare Nostrum , from the Latin "Our Sea"). In the 1930s Mussolini promoted the development of an initial Italian irredentism in Durres , in order to occupy all of Albania later. Durres (called "Durazzo" in Italian) has been for centuries, during the Middle Ages, a city with territory under

8016-417: The Maritime Alps which, detaching itself from the Po-French drainage divide in correspondence with Monte Clapier , follows the Authion Massif , which culminates in Mont Bégo , and divides the Roia basin to the east from the Varo and Paglione basins to the west. The salient created by the side valley of the Bevera including the Mentone basin is orographically separated from everything, thus grafting

8183-907: The Middle Ages , the established written language in Europe was Latin, although the great majority of people were illiterate, and only few were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula , as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels ( phonology , morphology , syntax , lexicon , pragmatics ) and are classified typologically as distinct languages. The standard Italian language has

8350-423: 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

8517-498: The Risorgimento movement that fought for the unification of Italy. However, after the Third Italian War of Independence (1866), when the Veneto and Friuli regions were ceded by the Austrians to the newly formed Kingdom of Italy , Istria and Dalmatia remained part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire , together with other Italian-speaking areas on the eastern Adriatic. This triggered the gradual rise of Italian irredentism among many Italians in Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia, who demanded

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8684-408: The Strait of Sicily and the gulf of Taranto and Poseidonia ; but, having taken on a sort of predominance over time, this name has ended up extending to the foot of the Alps, also embracing, on the one hand, all of Liguria up to the Varo and of course also the surroundings of Liguria from the border with the Etruria , and, on the other side, all of Istria up to Pula . For several centuries,

8851-443: The Ten-Day War which saw the participation of thousands of people at the political rally in Piazza della Borsa followed by a long procession through the streets of the city, and on 8 November 1992, again in Trieste. The same Italian Social Movement and National Alliance asked for the review of the peace treaties signed by Italy after World War II, especially with regard to Zone B of the former Free Territory of Trieste , given that

9018-406: 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

9185-433: The unification of Italy . After the proclamation of Vittorio Emanuele II King of Italy on 17 March 1861, the new united Italy experienced the birth of the Italian nationalism and the Italian irredentism , which claimed that the natural border of Italy had to pass on the crest of the Alps based on geographical concepts. Furthermore, the environment that gravitates around the Società Geografica Italiana of Rome and

9352-406: 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

9519-420: The 12th century, Northern Italy itself found itself divided into a myriad of small states often in conflict with each other or victims of foreign expansionist aims. However, in the 14th century, Dante Alighieri wrote in the Divine Comedy ( L'Inferno , Canto IX, 114): As in Pola , near del Carnaro , where Italy closes and its terms wet. Similarly, Francesco Petrarca wrote at the same time in his work

9686-458: 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

9853-438: 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

10020-399: The African continental shelf ) are parts of the Italian Republic even though they are not parts of the Italian geographical region. The idea of Italy as a geographic region is very old. It was described with the geographical notion of peninsula as early as the 1st century BC in the oldest treatise called Geographica (in ancient Greek: Γεωγραφικά - Gheographikà), a work in 17 volumes by

10187-492: The Austro-Hungarian Empire or French in Nice and Corsica . The liberation of Italia irredenta was perhaps the strongest motive for Italy's entry into World War I and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 satisfied many irredentist claims. Italian irredentism has the characteristic of being originally moderate, requesting only the return to Italy of the areas with Italian majority of population, but after World War I it became aggressive – under fascist influence – and claimed to

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10354-524: The Dalmatian Italians formed 12.5% of the population in 1865. In the 1910 Austro-Hungarian census, Istria had a population of 57.8% Slavic-speakers (Croat and Slovene), and 38.1% Italian speakers. For the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia , (i.e. Dalmatia ), the 1910 numbers were 96.2% Slavic speakers and 2.8% Italian speakers. In 1909 the Italian language lost its status as the official language of Dalmatia in favor of Croatian only (previously both languages were recognized): thus Italian could no longer be used in

10521-486: The Dalmatian coast. By the end of hostilities in November 1918, the Italian military had seized control of the entire portion of Dalmatia that had been guaranteed to Italy by the Treaty of London and by 17 November had seized Fiume as well. In 1918, Admiral Enrico Millo declared himself Italy's Governor of Dalmatia. Famous Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio supported the seizure of Dalmatia and proceeded to Zara in an Italian warship in December 1918. The last city with

10688-453: The French and British periods, Malta officially remained part of the Sicilian Kingdom, although the French refused to recognise the island as such in contrast to the British. Malta became a British Crown Colony in 1813, which was confirmed a year later through the Treaty of Paris (1814) . Cultural changes were few even after 1814. In 1842, all literate Maltese learned Italian while only 4.5% could read, write and/or speak English. However, there

10855-428: The Germanization and Slavization of these territories according to the circumstances, with energy and without any regard. His Majesty calls the central offices to the strong duty to proceed in this way to what has been established. Istrian Italians were more than 50% of the total population of Istria for centuries, while making up about a third of the population in 1900. Dalmatia, especially its maritime cities, once had

11022-425: The Greek geographer Strabo (65/64 – 25/21 BC). In the 15th century, Guarino da Verona translated the entire work into Latin, thus contributing to its rediscovery. In the introduction of his book, Strabo gives his definition of Italy: Present-day Italy begins at the foot of the Alps : [I mean present-day Italy], because this name initially indicated only the ancient Ouitoulía, that is the district located between

11189-416: The Italian coast, mostly in the Tyrrhenian Sea . The list below shows the largest islands belonging to the Italian geographical region: The extreme points of the Italian geographical region, measured with respect to the Greenwich meridian , are: The orthodromic distance N–S is 1,269 km. The Italian Republic occupies 93% of the Italian geographical region. The remaining portion (23 000 km )

11356-417: 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

11523-408: The Italian geographical region, including the city of Fiume . The following countries are entirely included in the limits of the Italian geographical region: The following areas also fall within the borders of the Italian geographical region: Three alpine valleys, tributaries of the Rhine and Danube , as well as Lampedusa and Lampione of the Pelagie Islands (small islands located on

11690-516: The Italian intervention in the World War I is also considered the Fourth Italian War of Independence , in a historiographical perspective that identifies in the latter the conclusion of the unification of Italy , whose military actions began during the revolutions of 1848 with the First Italian War of Independence . Italy signed the Treaty of London (1915) and entered World War I with the intention of gaining those territories perceived by irredentists as being Italian under foreign rule. According to

11857-439: The Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie . Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi ( The Betrothed ) by Alessandro Manzoni , further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno " ( Florence 's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification,

12024-527: The Italian region generally refers to the Italian Peninsula. Similarly, the inhabitants of the islands use the term continent to designate the mainland that goes from the Alps to Reggio Calabria . Geographically, Italy running in north-west to south-east direction can be divided into the calcareous Alps , the alluvial plain , the Northern, Central and Southern Apennines and Sicily . The natural limits of

12191-602: The Italian region, marked by the Alpine drainage divide and the sea, are relatively clear, except at the western and eastern extremities of the Alps. On the eastern borders, the chain of the Julian Alps and the Kvarner Gulf are traditionally indicated, to which Dante Alighieri also refers. However, other proposed limits include a border along the Isonzo (formerly advocated by Austrian Empire ), which would exclude

12358-556: 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

12525-849: The Peace Treaty of 1947, Italians still living in Zara followed the Italian exodus from Dalmatia and only about 100 Dalmatian Italians now remain in the city. Under the Treaty of Peace with Italy, 1947 , Istria , Kvarner , most of the Julian March as well as the Dalmatian city of Zara was annexed by Yugoslavia causing the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus , which led to the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 of local ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ),

12692-1106: The Sella di Dobbiaco and the Tarvisio basin to the north-east of the Camporosso saddle, tributaries of the Black Sea through rivers affluent of the Danube . The Italian Peninsula , or the Italic Peninsula or the Apennine Peninsula, is a peninsula on the European continent crossed by the Apennine chain and delimited by four seas: the Ligurian Sea , the Tyrrhenian Sea , the Ionian Sea and

12859-514: The Varo river with its tributaries, placing Nice within the Italian region, or that, albeit smaller, than from Monte Clapier divides the Roia and Paglione basins on one side from that of the Varo on the other, reaching the coast not far from the latter's mouth, south-west of Nice, thus leaving Nice still in the geographic region of Italy (as Francesco Petrarca already claimed in 1331). However, there

13026-651: The absolute majority of the population, but retained by the Austrian Empire after the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. Even after the Capture of Rome (1871), the final event of the unification of Italy, many ethnic Italian speakers ( Trentino-Alto Adigan Italians, Savoyard Italians , Corfiot Italians , Niçard Italians , Swiss Italians , Corsican Italians , Maltese Italians , Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) remained outside

13193-563: The agreement between Italy and the Entente Allies in the Treaty of London of 1915 to have Dalmatia join Italy was revoked in 1919. To the west of Italy, the Fascists claimed that the territories of Corsica , Nice and Savoy held by France were Italian lands. The Fascist regime produced literature on Corsica that presented evidence of the island's italianità . The Fascist regime produced literature on Nice that justified that Nice

13360-580: The annexation to France rumours. On 16 March 1860, the provinces of Northern Savoy (Chablais, Faucigny and Genevois) sent to Victor Emmanuel II , to Napoleon III , and to the Swiss Federal Council a declaration - sent under the presentation of a manifesto together with petitions - where they were saying that they did not wish to become French and shown their preference to remain united to the Kingdom of Sardinia (or be annexed to Switzerland in

13527-637: The aspiration for the birth of a Great Italy and a vast Italian Empire . After World War II, Italian irredentism disappeared along with the defeated Fascists and the Monarchy of the House of Savoy . After the Treaty of Paris (1947) and the Treaty of Osimo (1975), all territorial claims were abandoned by the Italian Republic (see Foreign relations of Italy ). The Italian irredentist movement thus vanished from Italian politics. Italian irredentism

13694-498: The border at Capo d'Aglio where the entire Principality of Monaco is included. Due to the characteristic of being orographically separated from everything, the Menton basin can be excluded. In the latter case, the geographical limit would rejoin the current international state border at the height of Mount Buletta, corresponding with it up to the sea (this is not a priori correspondence but a simple correspondence by convergence between

13861-454: The borders of several countries around the newly created Kingdom of Italy. The irredentists sought to annex all those areas to the newly unified Italy. The areas targeted were Corsica , Dalmatia , Gorizia , Istria , Malta , County of Nice , Ticino , small parts of Grisons and of Valais , Trentino , Trieste and Fiume . Different movements or groups founded in this period included the Italian politician Matteo Renato Imbriani inventing

14028-700: The borders of the Kingdom of Italy and this situation created the Italian irredentism. During World War I the main "irredent lands" ( terre irredente ) were considered to be the provinces of Trento and Trieste and, in a narrow sense, irredentists referred to the Italian patriots living in these two areas. Italian irredentism was not a formal organization but rather an opinion movement, advocated by several different groups, claiming that Italy had to reach its " natural borders " or unify territories inhabited by Italians. Similar nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in

14195-505: The case a separation with Sardinia was unavoidable). Giuseppe Garibaldi complained about 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. In 1861, with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy , the modern Italian state was born. On 21 July 1878, a noisy public meeting was held at Rome with Menotti Garibaldi,

14362-444: 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

14529-460: The city of Fiume , Corsica , the island of Malta , the County of Nice and Italian Switzerland . After the end of World War I, the Italian irredentist movement was hegemonised, manipulated and distorted by fascism, which made it an instrument of nationalist propaganda, placed at the center of a policy, conditioned by belated imperial ambitions, which took the form of "forced Italianizations ", in

14696-453: The coast with the cities of Zadar , Šibenik , Trogir and Split , remained completely unheeded by all the Italian governments that followed one another in that period. Various points were brought forward as arguments in support of the irredentist theses of claim, such as the geographical belonging of those lands to the Italian peninsula or the presence of more or less numerous communities of Italians or Italian speakers. After World War I

14863-653: 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

15030-693: The control of the Italian states (Naples, Sicily, Venice), and many Italians settled there. The Durazzo section of the Albania Fascist Party was created in 1938, which was formed by some citizens of the city with distant and recent Italian roots (they started the local Italian irredentism). In 1939, all of Albania was occupied and united to the Kingdom of Italy: Italian citizens (more than 11,000) began to settle in Albania as colonists and to own land in 1940 so that they could gradually transform it into Italian territory. The italianization of Albania

15197-518: 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

15364-408: 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

15531-446: 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

15698-579: 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

15865-827: The defeated Fascists and the Monarchy of the House of Savoy . After the Treaty of Paris (1947) and the Treaty of Osimo (1975), all territorial claims were abandoned by the Italian Republic (see Foreign relations of Italy ). The Italian irredentist movement thus vanished from Italian politics. Today, Italy, France , Malta , Greece , Croatia and Slovenia are all members of the European Union , while Montenegro and Albania are candidates for accession. The 1947 Constitution of Italy established five autonomous regions ( Sardinia , Friuli-Venezia Giulia , Sicily , Aosta Valley and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol ), in recognition of their cultural and linguistic distinctiveness. In

16032-464: 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

16199-485: The development of the chain of the upper part of the Alps that separates Italy from the mainland. This semicircle forms the territory of the so-called continental part, the surface of which is 5,000 square leagues. The peninsula is a trapezoid between the mainland to the north, the Mediterranean to the west, the Adriatic to the east, the Ionian Sea to the south, the two main sides of which are 200 to 210 leagues long, and

16366-534: 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

16533-590: The early 1990s, the breakup of Yugoslavia caused nationalistic sentiments to re-emerge in these areas; worthy of note in this regard are the demonstrations in Trieste on 6 October 1991 "for a new Italian irredentism". These were promoted by the Italian Social Movement and inspired by rumours about negotiations for the passage through Trieste of the Yugoslav troops expelled from Slovenia during

16700-572: The early 19th century the ideals of unification in a single Nation of all the territories populated by Italian-speaking people created the Italian irredentism. Many Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians looked with sympathy towards the Risorgimento movement that fought for the unification of Italy. The current Italian Switzerland belonged to the Duchy of Milan until the 16th century , when it became part of Switzerland . These territories have maintained their native Italian population speaking

16867-478: 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

17034-413: The end of World War I , the Italian irredentist movement was hegemonised, manipulated and distorted by fascism, which made it an instrument of nationalist propaganda, placed at the centre of a policy, conditioned by belated imperial ambitions, which took the form of "forced Italianizations ", in the aspiration for the birth of a Great Italy and a vast Italian Empire . Fascist Italy strove to be seen as

17201-462: 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

17368-522: The existing autonomist tendencies in Corsica and then the independence of Corsica from France, that would be followed by the annexation of Corsica into Italy. In 1923, Mussolini temporarily occupied Corfu , using irredentist claims based on minorities of Italians in the island, the Corfiot Italians . Similar tactics may have been used towards the islands around the Kingdom of Italy – through

17535-497: The face of history and in the face of God ... As Corsicans we wish to be neither slaves nor "rebels" and as Italians we have the right to deal as equals with the other Italian brothers ... Either we shall be free or we shall be nothing... Either we shall win or we shall die (against the French), weapons in hand ... The war against France is right and holy as the name of God is holy and right, and here on our mountains will appear for Italy

17702-433: 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

17869-461: The first to promote the Italian language and socio-culture (the main characteristics of Italian irredentism) in his island; Paoli wanted the Italian language to be the official language of the newly founded Corsican Republic . Pasquale Paoli's appeal in 1768 against the French invader said: We are Corsicans by birth and sentiment, but first of all we feel Italian by language, origins, customs, traditions; and Italians are all brothers and united in

18036-650: The forefront of political culture. In Eastern Europe, where the Habsburg Empire had long asserted control over a variety of ethnic and cultural groups, nationalism appeared in a standard format. The beginning of the 19th century "was the period when the smaller, mostly indigenous nationalities of the empire – Czechs , Slovaks , Slovenes , Croats , Serbs , Ukrainians , Romanians – remembered their historical traditions, revived their native tongues as literary languages, reappropriated their traditions and folklore, in short, reasserted their existence as nations". In

18203-687: The formation of the Triple Alliance in 1882. The irredentists' dream of absorbing the targeted areas into Italy made no further progress in the 19th century, as the borders of the Kingdom of Italy remained unchanged and the Rome government began to set up colonies in Eritrea and Somalia in Africa. Italy entered the World War I in 1915 with the aim of completing national unity: for this reason,

18370-476: 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

18537-454: The geographical and political border; the latter is cited for convenience). This solution makes it possible to bring the border of the Italian geographic region closer to the ethno-linguistic one between Ligurian , Intemelio and Occitan languages of the Niçard dialect . Another hypothesis would have it that the border, after touching the top of Mont Pelat , includes the entire basin of

18704-723: The geographical description of Strabo did not change until the publication of the first universal geography of Conrad Malte-Brun (1775–1826), Geography or description of all parts of the world . After the fall of the Western Roman Empire , and in particular with the arrival of the Lombards , Italy lost its political unity. In the Carolingian age , a new Kingdom of Italy was born (in Latin, Regnum Italicum ), it includes only Northern Italy . In addition, starting from

18871-489: 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

19038-640: 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

19205-498: 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

19372-407: The late 19th century. The term "irredentism", coined from the Italian word, came into use in many countries (see List of irredentist claims or disputes ). This idea of Italia irredenta is not to be confused with the Risorgimento , the historical events that led to irredentism, nor with nationalism or Imperial Italy , the political philosophy that took the idea further under fascism . The term

19539-534: 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

19706-514: 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

19873-616: The liberation of Lombardy . On the basis of the Plombières Agreement , the Kingdom of Sardinia ceded Savoy and Nice to France, an event that caused the Niçard exodus , that was the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi was elected in 1871 in Nice at the National Assembly where he tried to promote the annexation of his hometown to the newborn Italian unitary state , but he

20040-526: The more general nation-building process in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries when the multi-national Austro-Hungarian , Russian and Ottoman Empires were being replaced by nation-states. The Italian nation-building process can be compared to similar movements in Germany ( Großdeutschland ), Hungary , Serbia and in pre-1914 Poland . Simultaneously, in many parts of 19th-century Europe liberalism and nationalism were ideologies which were coming to

20207-515: The most conservative Romance languages). Spoken by about 85 million people, including 67 million native speakers (2024), Italian is an official language in Italy , San Marino , Switzerland ( Ticino and the Grisons ), Corsica , and Vatican City . It has official minority status in Croatia , Slovenian Istria , and the municipalities of Santa Tereza and Encantado in Brazil . Italian

20374-684: The mouth of the Magra river to that of the Rubicone river. Most of them are made up of the water catchment areas of the Po , Adige , Brenta , Piave , Tagliamento and Isonzo rivers. From the continental part, however, some Alpine valleys are excluded which, although they are part of the Italian State, such as the Val di Lei tributary of the North Sea through the Rhine river, the Val di Livigno ,

20541-412: 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

20708-468: The natural borders, except for some marginal territory, were mostly reached with the annexation of Trentino-Alto Adige and Julian March , and it was on other scales that Italian nationalism and imperialism were expressed, well beyond the borders of the Italian geographical region. After World War II, Italy lost a large part of Julian March, and Italian geography eliminated all political and nationalistic aspects to focus only on geographic ones. Therefore,

20875-529: The natural result of war heroism against a " betrayed Italy " that had not been awarded all it "deserved", as well as appropriating the image of Arditi soldiers. In this vein, irredentist claims were expanded and often used in Fascist Italy's desire to control the Mediterranean basin. To the east of Italy, the Fascists claimed that Dalmatia was a land of Italian culture whose Italians had been driven out of Dalmatia and into exile in Italy, and supported

21042-755: The new term terre irredente ("unredeemed lands") in 1877; in the same year the movement Associazione in pro dell'Italia Irredenta ("Association for the Unredeemed Italy") was founded; in 1885 the Pro Patria movement ("For Fatherland") was founded and in 1891 the Lega Nazionale Italiana ("Italian National League") was founded in Trento and Trieste (in the Austrian Empire). Initially, the movement can be described as part of

21209-408: 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

21376-514: The official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta . Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels , and the language has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants. During

21543-630: 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

21710-584: 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:

21877-402: The orography and the scarcity of surface hydrography found in the region south of the Nauporto pass near Postumia , the continuity of the mountain bulwark is ensured by the reliefs placed between Mount Pomario and Mount Nevoso , its terminal pillar, where it reaches the Kvarner Gulf and the Bay of Buccari , immediately south-east of Fiume . To the east, therefore, the extreme limit of Italy

22044-403: 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

22211-444: The other two sides 60 to 30 alloys; its surface is 6000 square alloys. The third part, that is the islands, that is Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, which geographically belongs more to Italy than to France, forms an area of 4000 square leagues; which brings the surface of the whole of Italy to 15,000 square alloys. Here we have considered the natural limits without entering into any political division. Thus we have not understood Savoy , which

22378-491: The others being ethnic Slovenians, ethnic Croatians, and ethnic Istro-Romanians , choosing to maintain Italian citizenship. The Istrian-Dalmatian exodus started in 1943 and ended completely only in 1960. According to the census organized in Croatia in 2001 and that organized in Slovenia in 2002, the Italians who remained in the former Yugoslavia amounted to 21,894 people (2,258 in Slovenia and 19,636 in Croatia). After World War II, Italian irredentism disappeared along with

22545-435: The pact, Italy was to leave the Triple Alliance and join the Entente Powers . Furthermore, Italy was to declare war on Germany and Austria-Hungary within a month. The declaration of war was duly published on 23 May 1915. In exchange, Italy was to obtain various territorial gains at the end of the war. In April 1918, in what he described as an open letter "to the American Nation" Paolo Thaon di Revel , Commander in Chief of

22712-406: 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

22879-469: 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

23046-465: 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

23213-416: The public and administrative sphere. The Italian population in Dalmatia was concentrated in the major coastal cities. In the city of Split in 1890 there were 1,969 Dalmatian Italians (12.5% of the population), in Zadar 7,423 (64.6%), in Šibenik 1,018 (14.5%), in Kotor 623 (18.7%) and in Dubrovnik 331 (4.6%). In other Dalmatian localities, according to Austrian censuses, Dalmatian Italians experienced

23380-415: 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

23547-558: The qualification of Slovenia and Croatia as heirs of Yugoslavia was not a given and that the division of Istria between Slovenia and Croatia contradicted the clauses of the peace treaties which guaranteed the unity of the surviving Italian component in Istria ( Istrian Italians ), assigned to Yugoslavia after World War II, proposing the creation of an Istrian Euro-region also including the city of Rijeka . These claims, which also concerned Dalmatia (including islands such as Pag , Ugljan , Vis , Lastovo , Hvar , Korčula and Mljet ) and

23714-420: 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

23881-447: The return of Italians of Dalmatian heritage. Mussolini identified Dalmatia as having strong Italian cultural roots for centuries via the Roman Empire and the Republic of Venice . The Fascists especially focused their claims based on the Venetian cultural heritage of Dalmatia, claiming that Venetian rule had been beneficial for all Dalmatians and had been accepted by the Dalmatian population. The Fascists were outraged after World War I, when

24048-472: The situation of the claimed lands was as follows: Italian language Italian ( italiano , pronounced [itaˈljaːno] , or lingua italiana , pronounced [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna] ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire . Italian is the least divergent language from Latin , together with Sardinian (meaning that Italian and Sardinian are

24215-451: The son of Giuseppe Garibaldi, as chairman of the forum and a clamour was raised for the formation of volunteer battalions to conquer the Trentino. Benedetto Cairoli , then Prime Minister of Italy , treated the agitation with tolerance. However, it was mainly superficial, as most Italians did not wish a dangerous policy against Austria or against Britain for Malta. Many Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians looked with sympathy towards

24382-430: The sources and interpretations. In particular, they are included in the Italian geographical region as these islands are the natural continuation of Istria, being closer to the Istrian coasts than to the Dalmatian ones. On the contrary, to the west, the boundary is unchallenged and easily definable between the canton of Valais , Savoy , Aosta Valley and Piedmont , near the coast can be represented by that buttress of

24549-508: The sun of liberty Paoli's Corsican Constitution of 1755 was written in Italian and the short-lived university he founded in the city of Corte in 1765 used Italian as the official language. Paoli was sympathetic to Italian culture and regarded his own native language as an Italian dialect (Corsican is an Italo-Dalmatian tongue closely related to Tuscan ). After the Italian unification and Third Italian War of Independence in 1866, there were areas with Italian-speaking communities within

24716-401: 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,

24883-410: 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

25050-421: 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 ),

25217-429: The unification of the Julian March , Kvarner and Dalmatia with Italy. The Italians in Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia supported the Italian Risorgimento : as a consequence, the Austrians saw the Italians as enemies and favored the Slav communities of Istria, Kvarner and Dalmatia. During the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 12 November 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at

25384-411: The upper Isonzo valley, Trieste and Istria entirely. Other borders were listed by the historian, and exile from Cherso , Luigi Tomaz in " The border of Italy in Istria and Dalmatia ", among which, in the Augustan regional structure of Roman Italy , the administrative limes along the Arsa River , marked the end of Venetia et Histria . Therefore, to the east, despite the more depressed character of

25551-408: Was a huge increase in the number of Maltese magazines and newspapers in the Italian language during the 1800s and early 1900s, so as a consequence the Italian was understood (but not spoken fluently) by more than half the Maltese people before WW1 . The Kingdom of Sardinia again attacked the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence of 1859, with the aid of France , resulting in

25718-458: Was a strategic region during World War I that both Italy and Serbia intended to seize from Austria-Hungary. Italy joined the Triple Entente Allies in 1915 upon agreeing to the Treaty of London (1915) that guaranteed Italy the right to annex a large portion of Dalmatia in exchange for Italy's participation on the Allied side. From 5–6 November 1918, Italian forces were reported to have reached Lissa , Lagosta , Sebenico , and other localities on

25885-439: 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

26052-702: Was an Italian land based on historic, ethnic and linguistic grounds. The Fascists quoted Medieval Italian scholar Petrarch who said: "The border of Italy is the Var; consequently Nice is a part of Italy". The Fascists quoted Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi , a native of Nizza (now called Nice ) himself, who said: "Corsica and Nice must not belong to France; there will come the day when an Italy mindful of its true worth will reclaim its provinces now so shamefully languishing under foreign domination". Mussolini initially pursued promoting annexation of Corsica through political and diplomatic means, believing that Corsica could be annexed to Italy through Italy first encouraging

26219-419: 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

26386-425: Was denounced as a " Mutilated victory ". The rhetoric of "Mutilated victory" was adopted by Benito Mussolini and led to the rise of Italian fascism , becoming a key point in the propaganda of Fascist Italy . Historians regard "Mutilated victory" as a "political myth", used by fascists to fuel Italian imperialism and obscure the successes of liberal Italy in the aftermath of World War I. The city of Fiume in

26553-407: Was divided between Italy, which constituted the Governorate of Dalmatia , and the Independent State of Croatia , which annexed Ragusa and Morlachia . After the Italian surrender (8 September 1943) the Independent State of Croatia annexed the Governorate of Dalmatia, except for the territories that had been Italian before the start of the conflict, such as Zara. In 1943, Josip Broz Tito informed

26720-402: Was executed. When the irredentist movement became troublesome to Italy through the activity of Republicans and Socialists, it was subject to effective police control by Agostino Depretis . Irredentism faced a setback when the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881 started a crisis in French–Italian relations. The government entered into relations with Austria and Germany , which took shape with

26887-408: Was later expanded to also include multilingual and multiethnic areas, where Italians were a relative majority or a substantial minority, within the northern Italian region encompassed by the Alps, with German , Italian , Slovene , Croatian , Ladin and Istro-Romanian population, such as South Tyrol , Istria , Gorizia and Gradisca and part of Dalmatia . The claims were further extended also to

27054-399: Was meant to provoke a nationalist revival through corporatism (first instituted during his rule over Fiume), in front of what was widely perceived as state corruption engineered by governments such as Giovanni Giolitti 's. D'Annunzio briefly annexed to this Italian Regency of Carnaro even the Dalmatian islands of Veglia and Arbe , where there was a numerous Italian community. After

27221-443: 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

27388-444: Was not a formal organization but rather an opinion movement, advocated by several different groups, claiming that Italy had to reach its " natural borders " or unify territories inhabited by Italians. Similar nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the late 19th century. The term irredentism , coined from the Italian word, came into use in many countries (see List of irredentist claims or disputes ). This idea of Italia irredenta

27555-416: Was one of Mussolini's plans. During World War II , large parts of Dalmatia were annexed by Italy into the Governorship of Dalmatia from 1941 to 1943. Corsica and Nice were also administratively annexed by Italy in November 1942. Malta was heavily bombed, but was not occupied due to Erwin Rommel 's request to divert to North Africa the forces that had been prepared for the invasion of the island. Dalmatia

27722-424: Was prevented from speaking. Because of this denial, between 1871 and 1872 there were riots in Nice, promoted by the Garibaldini and called " Niçard Vespers ", which demanded the annexation of the city and its area to Italy. Fifteen Nice people who participated in the rebellion were tried and sentenced. In the spring of 1860 Savoy was annexed to France after a referendum and the administrative boundaries changed, but

27889-406: 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

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