119-467: The Italian Republican Party ( Italian : Partito Repubblicano Italiano , PRI ) is a political party in Italy established in 1895, which makes it the oldest political party still active in the country. The PRI identifies with 19th-century classical radicalism , as well as Mazzinianism , and its modern incarnation is associated with liberalism , social liberalism , and centrism . The PRI has old roots and
238-664: 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
357-545: A PdL candidate in 2008, returned to the Senate after the death of a PdL senator. In January 2012, Ossorio replaced a Democrat in the Chamber and joined the PRI sub-group. In the 2013 Italian general election , the PRI contested the election locally as a stand-alone list and obtained negligible results. In December 2013, Nucara resigned from secretary after more than twelve years at the top. He
476-675: A centrist parliamentary alliance with the Italian Democratic Socialists (SDI) and the Union for the Republic (UpR). The Clover was responsible for the fall of the D'Alema I Cabinet in December 1999. At the 2001 Italian general election , the party formed an alliance with Silvio Berlusconi 's House of Freedoms and got one deputy (Giorgio La Malfa) and one senator ( Antonio Del Pennino ) elected. This led two left-wing groups to secede from
595-566: A five-party government, the Spadolini I Cabinet . Under Spadolini, an urgent decree outlawing all secret lodges, such as Propaganda Due (which included numerous members of previous governments and of military forces), was approved. The Spadolini II Cabinet fell in November 1983 due to a strife between Beniamino Andreatta (DC) and Rino Formica , Ministers of the Treasury and Finances respectively. At
714-550: 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
833-615: A joint list with the new Italian Liberal Party and won 3.8% of the vote in Calabria, 1.0% in Sicily and 1.0% in Apulia . In 2008, the PRI gained a surprising 9.4% in the provincial election of Messina , Sicily. In Romagna, where it always retained its alliance with the centre-left, the party won the 4.2% of the vote in the provincial election of Forlì-Cesena in 2004 and 3.8% in Ravenna in 2006; and 6.1% in
952-524: A joint political program. On the occasion of the 2022 Italian general election , the PRI, after having joined Civic Commitment (an electoral list led by Luigi Di Maio within the centre-left coalition ) for a few days, joined forces with the Action – Italia Viva , which ran outside the two main electoral coalitions. The splitaway MRE opted to join the Democratic and Progressive Italy coalition instead. In 2024
1071-464: 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
1190-692: A long history that began with a left-wing position, being the heir of the Historical Far Left and claiming descent from the political thought of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi . With the rise of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) to its left, it was associated with centre-left politics . The early PRI was also known for its anti-clerical , anti-monarchist , republican , and later anti-fascist stances. While maintaining those traits, during
1309-645: 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
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#17328521458011428-574: A reconciliation between the MRE and the PRI. During the third congress of the MRE in February 2009, the two parties signed a joint declaration under which despite their different coalition allegiances, the two parties pledged to join forces in Parliament on some key issues such as civil liberties and freedom of research. In October, a joint committee was installed in order to reach an agreement of re-unification between
1547-598: A reduction of the party's share to 2.5%. In the following years, the strongest party faction was that of La Malfa, who refused to participate to the DC-led governments until 1962. In 1963, the party voted in favour of the first centre-left government in Italy led by Aldo Moro . Pacciardi, who had voted against, was expelled and founded a separate movement, Democratic Union for the New Republic (UDNR), whose electoral result were disappointing and whose members had largely returned to
1666-417: 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
1785-509: 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
1904-631: A second round of voting on 23 May. The Historical Left was led by the Prime Minister of Italy , Agostino Depretis , longtime Prime Minister of Italy. The bloc of the Historical Right was led by Marco Minghetti , a conservative politician and former Prime Minister, from Bologna . A third large parliamentary group was the Dissident Left , composed by former members of the Left, which were against
2023-474: 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: 1880 Italian general election Benedetto Cairoli Historical Left Benedetto Cairoli Historical Left General elections were held in Italy on 16 May 1880, with
2142-474: 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
2261-578: A splinter group from Lega Nord led by Flavio Tosi , whose sub-group in the Mixed Group of the Chamber of Deputies was named Act!–PRI. After Enrico Costa 's entry in August 2017, the sub-group was renamed Act!–PRI–Liberals. In the run-up of the 2018 Italian general election , Saponaro was elected secretary and an alliance with the Liberal Popular Alliance (ALA) was formed. The PRI–ALA list, which
2380-504: 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
2499-427: 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
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#17328521458012618-729: 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
2737-668: 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
2856-528: 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
2975-455: 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
3094-410: Is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around
3213-575: 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
3332-538: 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
3451-501: 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,
3570-936: 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 ),
3689-781: The 1900 Italian general election the PRI won 4.3% of the vote (7.3% in Lombardy , 9.6% in Emilia-Romagna, 15.0% in the Marche, 9.6% in Umbria and 7.2% in Apulia ) and 29 seats from several regions of Italy, including also Veneto and Sicily , where they had some local strongholds. After that, the Republicans were reduced almost to their power base in Romagna and Northern Marche, where the party had more than 40% and where most of their deputies came from. That
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3808-491: The 1983 Italian general election , the PRI gained its best result ever (5.1%) thanks to Spadolini's popularity after his stint as Prime Minister and became the third largest party after the DC and the PCI in several Italian cities, notably including Turin . Spadolini was Minister of Defence from 1983 to 1987 under Bettino Craxi (PSI). Following the 1987 Italian general election , Spadolini
3927-590: The Council of Europe . The exclusion of left-wing parties from the government in 1947 led the PRI to join the De Gasperi IV Cabinet . Pacciardi refused to take a position as minister. As the PCI became ever closer to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , Pacciardi later changed his mind and became Deputy Prime Minister. The 1948 Italian general election saw the PRI as a solid ally of the DC, but also
4046-635: The Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and finally merged into the Democrats of the Left (DS) in 1998. Others, notably including Enzo Bianco and Antonio Maccanico , joined Democratic Union (UD), The Democrats (Dem) and finally Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL). The party continued to exist under the leadership of La Malfa, who had been elected MEP for the ELDR Group at the 1994 European Parliament election in Italy and who worked hard to re-organise
4165-672: 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
4284-649: 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
4403-698: 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
4522-459: The Kingdom of Sardinia ( Piedmont ) of the rest of Italy. After the latter was unified under the Savoy kings, following the political lines of moderates such as Camillo Benso di Cavour , the Republicans remained aside from the political life of the new country, proclaiming their abstention from elections. They created several democratic movements, like the Brotherhood Pact of Workers' Societies, founded by Mazzini in 1871. However, Mazzini's death
4641-907: 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
4760-423: 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
4879-402: The Province of Forlì-Cesena (11.3%) and the Province of Ravenna (13.9%). At the 1992 Italian general election , the last before the Tangentopoli scandals, the PRI won 4.4% of the vote (+0.7% from 1987 ) and increased its share of vote in the South. With the end of the First Republic , the party was severely diminished in term of votes and retreated to its traditional strongholds and in
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4998-469: The Ravenna municipal election. In the 2011 local elections, the party was almost stable in Ravenna and its province (5.1% and 3.1%, respectively) and in Reggio Calabria and its province (3.1% and 4.1%), but it gained some ground in Naples (1.5%). In the 2012 municipal elections, the party won 6.5% in Brindisi . In 2016, the party won 4.4% in Ravenna. The electoral results of the PRI in general elections (Chamber of Deputies) from 1897 to 1992 are shown in
5117-434: The Segni Pact . At that time, the party seemed quite finished. Many Republicans, including Jas Gawronski , Guglielmo Castagnetti , Alberto Zorzoli , Luigi Casero , Denis Verdini , Piergiorgio Massidda and Mario Pescante , left the PRI in order to join Forza Italia . Others, mostly affiliated to SR, including Giorgio Bogi , Stefano Passigli , Giuseppe Ayala , Andrea Manzella and Adolfo Battaglia , approached with
5236-437: The Spanish Civil War . In 1940, the German occupation of France, where many Republicans had taken refuge, put the party in jeopardy. During the armed resistance against the German occupation of Italy from 1943, PRI members were part of the provincial National Liberation Committees (CLN), but they did not participate to the national CLN as they did not want to collaborate with Italian monarchists, some of whom were active members of
5355-406: 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
5474-406: 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
5593-458: 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
5712-438: 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
5831-444: The DS soon after the election, but during the legislature the PRI was joined by three more deputies elected with other parties: Gianantonio Mazzocchin , Giovanni Marongiu (both former DS members) and Luigi Negri (a former member of Lega Nord and Forza Italia). The Republicans were very disappointed by the five years of government of the centre-left and soon became critical supporters of the Prodi I Cabinet as part of The Clover ,
5950-417: 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
6069-439: 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,
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#17328521458016188-400: The Marche (26.6% in Ancona and 32.9% in Jesi ), 11.0% in Umbria and 15.2% in Lazio . However, the PRI soon lost its character as a mass party in those areas (although it retained some of its positions there), as the Italian Communist Party conquered many formerly Republican workers' votes and the party settled around 1–2% at the national level in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, under
6307-497: The Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank , humanism , and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from
6426-411: The PCI; the other, led by Giovanni Conti and Cipriano Facchinetti , considered the PCI the cause of the government's lack of efficiency. The latter was to prevail. Carlo Sforza , a Republican, was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the De Gasperi III Cabinet , although only as an independent. Sforza signed the treaty of peace and contributed to the entrance of Italy into the Marshall Plan , NATO and
6545-407: The PRI allied with the centre-right; this caused the European Republicans Movement to again split away from the Party to pursue an alliance with the centre-left. In 2021 Carlo Cottarelli , a former director of the International Monetary Fund , was chosen by the PRI, A, +E, the Liberal Democratic Alliance for Italy (ALI), and The Liberals to head of a scientific committee designed to elaborate of
6664-501: The PRI as a stable member of the so-called Pentapartito , an alliance between the DC, the PSI, the PRI, the Italian Liberal Party (PLI) and the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI) which governed Italy from 1983 to 1991. The PRI abandoned the coalition in 1991 in disagreement with the Mammì bill (named after Oscar Mammì , a Republican) on telecommunications. In June 1981, Spadolini became Prime Minister of Italy (the first non-Christian Democrat to do so following 1945) and formed
6783-421: The PRI by the late 1960s (although Pacciardi, who received much criticism at this time for his association with coup plotters and neo-fascists , did not come back until after the UDNR was disbanded in 1980). La Malfa was elected national secretary in 1965. The alliance with the DC ended in 1974 when the Republicans left over disagreements on budgetary policy. In 1979, La Malfa received by President Sandro Pertini
6902-456: The PRI formed a federative pact with Action. Throughout the Kingdom of Italy , the Republicans along with the other party of the far left, the Italian Radical Party , were strong especially among the rural workers in Romagna , in the Marche and around Rome . In the 1890s, they suffered from competition with the Italian Socialist Party for the single-seat constituencies of Emilia-Romagna , where both parties had their heartlands. However, at
7021-418: The PRI to become one of the leaders of the PSI. In the 1920s, the rise of the National Fascist Party (PNF) caused the collapse of all Italian left-wing parties, including the PRI, which was banned in 1926. Several Republicans were arrested, confined or exiled and the PRI collaborated to the anti-fascist struggle. In 1927, the party joined Anti-fascist Concentration. In the late 1930s, it also participated in
7140-415: The South. After that, most Republicans from the Marche left the party to join the European Republicans Movement in 2001, and most Republicans from Campania switched to the Democratic Republicans . The PRI was left only with Romagna (where the local party is affiliated to the centre-left) and its new heartlands in Calabria and Sicily. At the 2004 European Parliament election in Italy , the party formed
7259-416: The alliance with the Right. Also known as La Pentarchia (The Pentarchy), its main leader was Giuseppe Zanardelli , a jurisconsult from Brescia . The Historical Left group emerged as the largest in Parliament , although left-wing dissidents won 119 of the 508 seats, becoming the third parliamentary group. Only 621,896 men of a total population of around 29 million were entitled to vote. Benedetto Cairoli
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#17328521458017378-444: 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
7497-438: The chart below. 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
7616-455: The colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian
7735-415: The committee. In 1946, the PRI gained 4.4% of the popular vote in the election for a Constituent Assembly , confirming its traditional strongholds. However, it was very weak if compared to Christian Democracy (DC) and the Italian Communist Party (PCI). After that, a ballot on the same day abolished monarchy in Italy and the PRI declared itself available to take a role in the government of Italy, entering
7854-405: The country (some 0.42% of the total population). Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus , which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of
7973-408: 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
8092-446: 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
8211-415: The country. The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians ( Istrian Italians ) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population). Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians ) in
8330-464: 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
8449-420: The diffusion of Italian television in the country. Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period , Italian is still understood by some in former colonies such as Libya. Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule , Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi , who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of
8568-472: 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
8687-458: 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
8806-433: 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
8925-619: The first non Christian Democrat since 1945. From 1976 to 2010, the PRI was a member of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party (ELDR), along with the PLI, and the two parties usually ran together in European Parliament elections. After joining the centrist Segni Pact in 1994, the PRI was part of the centre-left coalition from 1996 to 2006, and then of the centre-right coalition from 2008 to 2013 (its leader Giorgio La Malfa
9044-417: The following year and internationalism put the Republicans in a difficult position. In the run-up of the 1880 Italian general election , the Republicans chose to abandon abstentionism. At the time, their ranks included both members of the middle class, such as Giovanni Bovio , Arcangelo Ghisleri and Napoleone Colajanni , as well as the working class, such as Valentino Armirotti . The PRI, whose power base
9163-468: 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
9282-483: 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
9401-631: 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
9520-491: 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
9639-525: 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
9758-563: 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
9877-522: The leadership of Giovanni Spadolini the Republicans gained support among educated middle-class voters, losing some ground in their traditional strongholds, but also increasing their share of vote elsewhere, notably in Piedmont , Lombardy and Liguria , where they became a strong competitor to the Italian Liberal Party for the votes of entrepreneurs and professionals. This led to a gradual recovery in
9996-541: The mandate to form a new government. It was the first time for a non-DC member since the Italian Republic had been created. The attempt failed and a new government led by Giulio Andreotti was formed, with La Malfa as Deputy Prime Minister, but he suddenly died five days later. In September, the PRI chose Giovanni Spadolini as national secretary and Bruno Visentini as president. The following twelve years, first under Spadolini and then under La Malfa's son Giorgio , saw
10115-555: 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
10234-412: 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
10353-467: 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
10472-580: 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
10591-630: 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
10710-584: 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:
10829-453: 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
10948-482: The outbreak of World War I , the PRI sided with interventionists, aiming at supporting France (considered the motherland of human rights ) and annexing Trento and Trieste (then part of Austria-Hungary ). After the end of the conflict, the party tried to form an alliance with other left-wing parties, but the attempt failed as the PSI at was strongly influenced by its "maximalist" (radical) wing. In 1921, Pietro Nenni left
11067-477: The party decided to run under its own banner for the Senate in some regions, obtaining little more than 0.1% of the vote. Del Pennino was elected senator on Forza Italia's list. At the 2008 Italian general election , the PRI got two deputies elected in the list of The People of Freedom (PdL): La Malfa and Nucara. At time, the party had 12,000 members. The common battle in Parliament against electoral reform favoured
11186-483: The party helped bring together DC and PSI in Italy's first centre-left government, the Organic centre-left . Although small in terms of voter support, the PRI was influential thanks to leaders like Eugenio Chiesa , Giovanni Conti , Cipriano Facchinetti , Randolfo Pacciardi , Oronzo Reale , Ugo La Malfa , Bruno Visentini , Oddo Biasini and Giovanni Spadolini . The latter served as Prime Minister of Italy in 1981–1982,
11305-666: The party's fortunes, which reached their highest peak at the 1983 Italian general election . Spadolini had been Prime Minister of Italy for two years by this point, and the party enjoyed a bounce which led it to the 5.1% of the vote. This time, the PRI did better in Piedmont (7.7%, 10.3% in Turin and 12.8% in Cuneo ) and Lombardy (6.9%, 12.3% in Milan ) than in Emilia-Romagna (5.1%) and the Marche (4.7%). The party did very well in its local strongholds, such as
11424-455: The party, welcoming back people such as Sbarbati who had left it in the wake of the 1994 general election. From 1996 to 2001, the PRI was part of The Olive Tree centre-left coalition led by Romano Prodi . At the 1996 Italian general election , the party elected two deputies (Giorgio La Malfa and Luciana Sbarbati) and two senators ( Antonio Duva and Stelio De Carolis ) thanks to the alliance with larger parties. Duva and De Carolis switched to
11543-716: The party: the European Republicans Movement (MRE), led by Luciana Sbarbati; and the Democratic Republicans , led by Giuseppe Ossorio . The PRI took part to Berlusconi's governments and La Malfa was appointed Minister of European Affairs in the Berlusconi III Cabinet . At the 2006 Italian general election , Nucara and La Malfa were elected on the Forza Italia's lists for the Chamber of Deputies while
11662-406: 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
11781-518: 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
11900-528: The pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line ); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern. In contrast to
12019-415: 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
12138-529: 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
12257-472: The second government of Alcide De Gasperi . In late 1946, Ugo La Malfa and Ferruccio Parri , formerly members of the Action Party (PdA), moved to the PRI. La Malfa would be appointed as minister in several of the following governments. At the 19th congress of the party held in 1947, there were two main inner trends: one, represented by the national secretary Randolfo Pacciardi , supported an alliance with
12376-519: The second half of the 20th century the party moved towards the centre on the left–right political spectrum , becoming increasingly economically liberal . After 1949, the PRI was a member of the pro- NATO alliance formed by Christian Democracy (DC), the Italian Democratic Socialist Party , and the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), enabling it to participate in most governments of the 1950s, a period later known as Centrism . In 1963,
12495-464: 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,
12614-463: 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
12733-529: 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 ),
12852-561: The two parties. By February 2011, the MRE and Ossorio's Democratic Republicans reunited with the PRI. Another split loomed when La Malfa voted against the Berlusconi IV Cabinet and was suspended from the party in December 2010. Moreover, La Malfa along with Sbarbati (MRE) took part to the foundation of the New Pole for Italy (NPI) instead. In May 2011 La Malfa was finally expelled from the party. In June 2011, Del Pennino, who had been
12971-548: 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
13090-516: 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
13209-414: Was composed of only Republican candidates, presented its slates in one third of the constituencies and obtained 0.1% of the vote. In 2019, Giorgio La Malfa was welcomed back into the party's fold. The PRI was part of More Europe (+E) at the 2019 European Parliament election . In 2020, the PRI formed a pact with Action (A), a political party led by Carlo Calenda . In the 2020 Marche regional election ,
13328-520: Was divided in three groups: one led by Giorgio La Malfa joined the Pact for Italy , a second one led by Luciana Sbarbati joined Democratic Alliance (AD) and a third group left the party and formed Republican Left (SR). At the 1994 Italian general election , some PRI members including Sbarbati were elected to the Italian Parliament from the list of AD while Carla Mazzuca were the sole elected with
13447-412: Was elected president of the Senate (an office he would retain until 1994) and was replaced by Giorgio La Malfa as party leader. The early-1990s Tangentopoli scandals destroyed the party which fell under 1% of the vote, making it dependent on alliances with other parties to survive under the new electoral system based on plurality . In 1992–1994, the PRI lost most of its voters and members. The party
13566-606: Was limited to Romagna , Umbria , Marche , the Tuscan littoral and Lazio , all but Tuscany former Papal States territories, was officially founded in 1895. By the end of the century, the party was allied with the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Italian Radical Party in several local governments, including Milan , Florence and Rome . In 1904 the Republican Youth Federation was formed in Terni . At
13685-419: Was minister in 2005–2006). Afterwards, it ran alone until joining the centrist Action – Italia Viva in 2022. The PRI traces its origins from the time of Italian unification and more specifically to the democratic-republican wing represented by figures such as Giuseppe Mazzini , Carlo Cattaneo and Carlo Pisacane . They were against the so-called piemontesizzazione of Italy, meaning the conquest by war of
13804-443: 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
13923-630: 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
14042-467: Was replaced by two successive coordinators, Saverio Collura (from March 2014, when Nucara was contextually elected president, to December 2015) and Corrado Saponaro (from January 2016). In the 2014 European Parliament election in Italy , the PRI supported the European Choice electoral list, which won 0.7% of the vote and failed to elect any MEPs. In April 2016, the party joined forces with Act! ,
14161-468: Was why the party, which was little more than a regional party, lost many seats when proportional representation was introduced in 1919. At the 1946 Italian general election , despite competition from the Action Party , which had a similar constituency and regional base, the PRI won 4.4% of the vote, with peaks in its traditional strongholds: around 21% in Romagna (32.5% in Forlì and 37.3% in Ravenna ), 16.4% in
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