Italian is certainly not a global language spoken by hundreds of millions of people, like English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian. However, contrary to what many might think, Italian is not only spoken in Italy. Today I want to talk to you about the countries where Italian is widespread outside Italy, starting with Europe.
My name is Davide and this is Podcast Italiano, a channel for those who love or learn the Italian language. If you learn Italian, consider turning on subtitles. You will find the transcript of this video on my site.
Link in description. Italy was born in the 12th century as a state, but the Italian language has a much longer history. All the states that merged into the Kingdom of Italy had for a long time a common concept of a cultured language, what we now call Italian and comes from literary Tuscan, as you know.
Let's understand, in those days only a very minority elite cared about these things and people spoke their own regional language. But that minority elite was at the same time the one who held power, who produced literature, who taught and therefore had great influence. Why am I telling you all this?
Because some Italian states, such as Naples and Sicily, Genoa, Piedmont, Lombardy and above all Venice had a presence in many places that today do not form part of Italy, which means that where their people arrived, their concept of cultured language, which is why today Italian is present in some form outside Italy. In some cases the language historically spoken in these territories was not even Italian, but rather another Italian language or dialect, as we say in Italy. However, being in the Italian cultural orbit, the regional language has been lost in favor of Tuscan literary Italian, as has happened or is happening in many parts of Italy.
So let's find out what places we are talking about. Our journey begins from Switzerland. I actually already talked about the Italian of Switzerland in a recent exciting video.
Haven't you seen it? Very bad. I'm very offended.
But to summarize, Italian is one of the four official languages of the country, along with French, Romansh and German. The Italian-speaking population consists of approximately 670,000 speakers, just over 8% of the country's population. Italian is mainly spoken in the Canton of Ticino, one of the Swiss cantons, where in the past, however, Ticino, a variant of Lombard, was spoken.
Schooling, the media and prestige have meant that Italian has slowly taken the place of Ticino, specifically a regional Italian very similar to the one spoken in Lombardy. So I really invite all Ticinese to do it. The sooner many of us are vaccinated, the sooner this Canton will emerge from the crisis that we are all starting to no longer tolerate.
That said, watch the video about Italian in Switzerland after this of course. Among other things, I also recently published a podcast with Gabriele Chierici, a true Swiss about life in Italian-speaking Switzerland. Have you already listened to it?
I'll leave you the link in the description. We leave Switzerland behind and enter Italian territory to exit again almost immediately. We are in Slovenia, on the Istrian peninsula.
Italian is a recognized minority language in Slovenia and is co-official, together with Slovenian, in some places. Specifically, four: Piran, Koper, Isola d'Istria and Ankaran. These are Italian toponyms.
In Slovenian they would be Piran, Koper, Izola and Ankaran respectively. According to a 2002 census — I haven't found any more recent ones — 3,762 people believed their native language was Italian, or 0. 2% of the population.
Despite the low figure, 15% say they speak Italian as a second language, the second highest figure in the entire European Union, surpassed only by Malta, and 5% say they use Italian in daily life, the highest percentage in the European Union after Italy itself. The vast majority of them live along the Slovenian coast, where daily contacts with Italy are very frequent. To go beyond what has been, there have been the events of history, the even painful events of the twentieth century, to reunite in a European perspective aimed at the present and the future.
We remain in Istria but go slightly south and enter Croatian territory. Italian is also official in Croatian Istria. Among other things, almost the entire peninsula belongs to Croatia.
According to the latest census of the Croatian National Institute of Statistics, in 2022 5. 4% of Istriots declared they spoke Italian. In the region there are eleven primary schools and four secondary institutes where the primary language is Italian.
In addition to the language, the survey also asked who felt Italian and this is interesting. We saw that the percentage of Italian speakers in Istria was 5. 4% and is slightly higher than the percentage of people who consider themselves Italian, which represents 5.
1% of the region's population. Italian is co-official with Croatian in 19 municipalities of the country, all obviously in Istria. …the last Wednesday of February was celebrated as pink shirt day, the day to fight against bullying.
The students of Istrian schools sent a clear message: stop the violence. Therefore the Italian presence in Istria, both in Slovenia and in Croatia, is relatively numerous. Why?
Thanks for the question. Istria was for a long time under the political orbit of first Venice and then Italy. The Istrian population was a mix of Italians and Slavs divided almost equally, but coexistence both here and in nearby Dalmatia, where there was also a certain but smaller Venetian presence, was not exactly peaceful, to put it mildly, as we will see soon.
However, the language spoken in Istria by the majority of the population of Venetian-Italian origin, as often happens, was not Italian but Venetian. Today the younger generation of Croatians from Italian families learns Italian at school and uses it with other descendants of Italians. But the Venetian, it seems, still survives.
How vital it is I don't know, so let me know if you live in those parts, leave me a comment. The fact is that the Croatian government in 2021 and apparently also the Slovenian one a few years earlier, in 2016, even recognized the Istro-Venetian variety, the Venetian of Istria, in fact, which is expected to be taught in schools in the future and will have the own official media. From this point of view, Slovenia and Croatia are ahead of Italy, where historically very important but now at risk languages, including Veneto, have no recognition.
As for Dalmatia, although the Republic of Venice has historically controlled many territories in this region too, Italian never became the lingua franca of the area, but only that of the governing elite, because the local elite spoke Dalmatian, a Romance language now extinct, and the population, based on their ethnic affiliation, Latin or Slavic, spoke either Dalmatian or Slavic languages. After the Second World War the area was handed over to Tito's communist Yugoslavia and there was a huge emigration of Italians from Istria and Dalmatia to Italy, known as the Julian Dalmatian exodus. It is an extremely complicated and controversial topic.
Simplifying as much as possible, it is estimated that 300,000 Italians were forced to emigrate following the massacres of Tito's government, which in turn were a sort of revenge for the persecutions that had occurred at the hands of the Italian army a few years earlier and for the forced Italianization occurred during the twenty years of fascist government. In short, as you can imagine, it is still an open wound today as well as an extremely politicized topic. Since this is not the place to delve into it, let's cross the Adriatic Sea to enter the Republic of San Marino.
But first… If you like learning Italian through my content, you probably embrace my philosophy of learning through input and immersion in the language. And this is the philosophy behind StoryLearning. Learn a language through stories.
A methodology that I really like. StoryLearning offers its series of “Italian Uncovered” courses to those learning Italian and if you follow my videos you will probably be interested in the upper-intermediate and advanced levels. I'll leave you the link below.
All of their courses are built around a story that unfolds over several chapters. And this is a great way to learn about the story because we become attached to the characters, we want to find out what happens next and this gives us a lot of motivation. I really like the idea of learning through a story, a context, and this applies to both vocabulary and grammar.
But every now and then it also makes sense to have a slightly more analytical approach. And in fact the course is structured and also has lessons on grammar, vocabulary, culture and colloquial language. So it's not just input, but it's a whole structured path with insights into various aspects of the language.
In addition to this, by purchasing the course you will also have access to a community of teachers and students who will guide you and give you assistance in your learning journey. Their courses are perfect for those who embrace my philosophy, so I really invite you to go and discover them at the links in the description and if you buy through my links you will have a €200 discount on both, so €97 instead of €297. Not bad as an offer.
Thank you all for the support and let's continue. Located on the border between Emilia Romagna and Marche, the Republic of San Marino, with its 61 square km and 34,000 inhabitants is a real state. It is worth a visit, if only for the fact that it is the oldest Republic in Europe, presided over by two heads of state called Captains Regent, who are changed every six months.
The traditional language spoken by the local San Marino population is Romagnolo. [clip in Romagna] . .
. Gallo-Italic language, therefore a language of northern Italy that shares many traits with Veneto, Ligurian, Lombard and so on. But the official language, the only official language, is Italian.
All administration, education, means of communication are in Italian. The relationship between the local language and the administrative and high language is in fact the same one that has developed in many parts of Italy, with the younger generations increasingly abandoning Romagna in favor of Italian. I can assure you, because partly due to my activity in the Council I have, let's say, quite prepared myself on this topic.
I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, that the DC is the most democratic party that exists in San Marino. We now cross Marche, Umbria and Lazio and arrive in the Eternal City, in the city: Rome. But we stay there for a short time because we cross a new border that takes us inside the Vatican City.
Yes, sometimes we forget, but Italian is also spoken in the Vatican which, although tiny, indeed the smallest state in the world, is a sovereign country in which the head of state is the bishop of Rome. Many people think that Latin is the official language of the state, but the truth is that the Vatican does not have an official language. Latin is certainly the most prestigious language for the Church, as well as the official language of the Holy See, and is still sometimes used in some liturgies, translations and writings of various kinds.
The Holy See is the seat of an organization, the Catholic Church, which is located in a state, the Vatican City. Yes, it's a little complicated. However, the Holy See is not the Vatican.
They are two separate entities. Although the Vatican has no official language, it has promulgated its laws and regulations in Italian since 1929. And then the Pope in Italy at least speaks Italian, not Latin.
Italian is the language most used by popes who are at the head of a confession with more than 1,000,000,000 faithful. And this, in a world that speaks more and more English, is in my opinion a very relevant fact. The next few months will lead us to the opening of the Holy Door with which we will begin the Jubilee.
I ask you to intensify your prayers to prepare us to live this event of grace well. As for the population, what language do the Vaticanians speak? Well, people with Vatican citizenship are not, for obvious reasons, born in the Vatican.
It deals with of priests, officials and workers from many countries, even if the majority is Italian and this is the vehicular language most used by the population. We leave the Vatican and say goodbye to the Holy See, but we remain in Rome, where another very interesting organization is based. Nice name, right?
Well, this is the official name of what is popularly known as the Order of Malta, an order of knights (yes, you heard correctly) founded in the 12th century, almost 1000 years ago. And who, after the era of the Crusades, after having passed through Jerusalem, Rhodes and Cyprus, settled permanently in Malta thanks to King Charles I of Spain, aka Charles V of Habsburg, the one of the empire on which the Sun. Maybe you remember something.
You will tell me "Davide, but it is not a country, it is a subject of international law". Dear pedantic legal friends who are writing, yes, I know, its legal status is strange. However, its official language is Italian.
So that's what matters to me . And by the way most countries have ambassadors in the order of Malta. And why did this order of noble knights choose Italian as their official language?
You ask yourself. The first official language was obviously Latin. French followed, which was the language most used in European diplomacy in the Middle Ages.
However, during the late Middle Ages Italian acquired some importance in the Mediterranean. It was the language of trade and banking and when the order moved to Rhodes, this island had a strong Venetian and Tuscan influence, which is why the Italian language became increasingly common among the knights and in the 12th century the official language of 'order. Then, due to Napoleon, the order had to leave Malta where it had settled in the meantime and after various wanderings, it ended up settling in Rome in 1834.
Currently the order no longer has a military character and is dedicated to charitable works and humanitarian activities. The Grand Master, its leader, now presides over a Council of State and Government that administers the Order's diplomatic relations and its activities around the world. All decisions, advice and actions are, yes, in the Italian language.
I John Timothy Dunlap only promise and swear on this most sacred Wood of the Cross and on the holy Gospels of God to observe the Constitutional Charter, the codes and rules and the laudable customs of our order. And speaking of Malta, we take a plane from Rome which we do first and land on the island, once the land of our dear knights. The Republic of Malta has two official languages, Maltese and English.
Nothing Italian. By the way, I highly recommend you watch a video of people speaking Maltese. Obviously after this video.
It is a Semitic language, an Arabic language but full of loanwords from Sicilian and Italian. A wonder for the ears. [maltese clip] According to a 2022 Maltese government survey, 96% of the population speaks English, 90 Maltese, 62 Italian and twenty French.
It is interesting to compare this statistic with another made in 1995: 98% of the population then spoke Maltese, 76 English, 36 Italian and ten French. The use of Italian has therefore almost doubled in just under 30 years. From the 14th to the 19th century the island was under the control of our friends, knights of the Order of Malta, as we said earlier.
Most of them were French and French was certainly a rather used and important language, but the official language of the order was Italian. To this we must add that the majority of the population spoke Maltese with Sicilian linguistic influence, because the island had been controlled by the Kingdom of Sicily in the Middle Ages, during the Napoleonic wars, as we have seen just now, the island rented to the Knights of Ordine was occupied by the French and in 1814 became part of the British Empire, which started a process of anglicisation of the island. Italian lost its status as an official language and its use became increasingly restricted.
Curiously, since the 1960s, with the advent of television, because Italian TV was also seen in Malta, the language began to come back into fashion among young people. Do you live in Malta? I'm curious to know how much and how Italian is used on the island and what coexistence with English, Maltese and French is like.
So let me know. For many of us Maltese, Italy represents our second home, a country with which we share not only geography, but also a large part of our history, culture and even language. Italian is also an official language in the European Union.
Italy's cultural importance, both in the past and today, means that many Europeans study Italian as a second or third language and maybe you are one of them. In any case, the journey through Italian-speaking Europe ends here, thanks to which we passed from the mountains of Switzerland to a Mediterranean island ruled by medieval knights. Not bad, right?
Stay tuned for the second part where we will talk about Italian in the rest of the world. Try StoryLearning and see you. HI!
