A predominantly urban population
Italy has a population of 60,360,000 (2019) and a high density of 201 inhabitants per square kilometre. The most populated regions are Lazio, Lombardy, Campania, Sicily and Piedmont. It should be noted that 70% of the Italian population is urban (75% for France) and that the Italian urban network is made up of a large number of small towns. Only two cities have more than one million inhabitants: Rome (4th largest city in Europe, with 2.87 million inhabitants) and Milan (1.37 million), ahead of Naples (less than 1 million) and Turin (890,000). Some 50 cities have more than 100,000 inhabitants, 11 of which have between 200,000 and 500,000 inhabitants. While Piedmont is densely populated, as are the regions of Milan and the lakes, the Dolomites are full of villages along the valleys. The two main cities, Bolzano and Trento, do not exceed 250,000 inhabitants. But the population density changes with the seasons, as in Cortina d'Ampezzo, which has only 7,000 inhabitants in the low season, compared with 40,000 in the high season for skiing and hiking.
An aging Aboriginal population
Life expectancy is 80.6 years for men and 85.1 years for women, one of the highest in Europe. Its fertility rate is one of the lowest in the world, with 1.3 children per woman (in 2019), and is therefore insufficient to renew generations. A worrying demography for the oldest country in the world after Japan. These figures reflect a real phenomenon of society, a change in mentality due to urbanization, enrichment, and also the declining influence of the Church, especially among the young. There are, however, strong disparities between regions, and mainly between the "great north", which has a birth rate deficit, and the Mezzogiorno (the south), where the natural balance has remained in surplus.
A historical South/North migration
During the 1960s, Italy experienced its economic miracle. The annual growth rate was 6% and unemployment in the North was almost non-existent. However, the situation in the south remained serious and the gap between the two parts of the country was widening. The inhabitants of southern Italy had previously turned to the New World: 700,000 New Yorkers are still descendants of this diaspora and it is estimated that there are now 58 million people of Italian origin in the world. But the flourishing situation of the "industrial triangle" formed by Turin, Genoa and Milan pushed many Calabrians, Sicilians and Neapolitans to embark on the treno del sole. Between 1951 and 1961, the number of Italian immigrants from the South trying their luck in the North was estimated at 2 million, of which almost 600,000 settled in Milan. Integration was obviously not easy, especially because of a kind of racism. Scornfully referred to as terroni (southern rednecks), they have long had a reputation for being ignorant, lazy, disrespectful of certain hygienic and, above all, civic norms. These strong stereotypes finally disappeared in the 1970s, when internal immigration stabilized and with it the problems of integration, so that today 50% of the Milanese population has southern origins. Immigrants from elsewhere have replaced Italians from the south, but very little. The latest estimate in 2018 puts the number of immigrants living in Italy at 5.054 million, or 8.3% of the total population.
A mixed Italian language
The Italian language bears unmistakable traces of the continual crossbreeding to which this people has been exposed for centuries. Thus, ragazzo and magazzino (boy and warehouse) are words of Arabic origin (the Arabs were present in Sicily for a long time), while albergo, banca, guardia or sapone
(hotel, bank, guard, soap) are of Germanic origin. Charles V joked that we speak to God in Spanish, to men in French and to women... in Italian! Italian is, in fact, one of the most melodious Latin languages. Formed very late, it only appeared as a literary idiom in the 12th century, the aristocracy and Italian writers having long preferred to speak Latin, Provençal or French. This evolution was gradual, since at the end of the 13th century Marco Polo wrote his famous Il Milione in Franco-Venetian. Little by little, a language was formed and formalized, thanks to authors such as Dante, Boccaccio or Petrarch. They used the Tuscan dialect, which is the origin of Italian as we know it today. From the 16th century onwards, the Renaissance fascinated Europe and borrowings from Italian languages multiplied, particularly in the works of the great French writers of the time.Regional dialects of the North
With the standardization of education, television and radio, dialects are gradually losing their importance, but remain an essential cultural and historical reference for understanding Italy. In the Alpine and pre-alpine region, the distribution of language groups is more than 60% for Italian speakers and 35% for German speakers. A small minority speaks French and Ladin. Other minority languages are Occitan (Piedmont, Liguria), Slovene (Friuli-Venezia Giulia)... Similarly, Provençal is spoken by 90,000 people established since the 13th and 14th centuries (Aosta Valley, northern Piedmont).
Ladin, language of the Dolomites
Ladin is a remnant of the Romance language, which was once much more widely spoken in this Alpine region. It is only in the most remote and isolated valleys that Ladin has been able to survive. With Italian unification, all the territories where Ladin dialects were spoken gradually passed from Austrian to Italian rule. The Italian nationalist movement has always considered the Ladin dialects as Italian dialects, which is refuted by the speakers. It was only when the administrative autonomy of the South Tyrol was established that the Ladin speakers were recognised as a cultural minority. Ladin is still spoken in the Dolomites: in Cortina d'Ampezzo, in Val Gardena, Val Fassa and around Bolzano.
The Dolomites: a trilingual region
The autonomous province of Bolzano has about 470,000 inhabitants. They are spread over 116 municipalities, the main ones being Bolzano (capital), Merano, Bressanone, Brunico, Laives and Vipiteno. Alto Adige, like the Aosta Valley, is officially a multilingual region. In fact, two thirds (70%) of its inhabitants are native German speakers and less than 5% are native Dolomite speakers. Italian speakers (25%) are concentrated mainly in the capital, Bolzano (Bolzen in German), and in the towns of Merano (Meran in German), Bressanone (Brixen in German), Laives (Leifers in German) and Bronzolo (Branzoll in German). The Ladin speakers (5%) are mainly in the Gardena Valley (Gherdëina) and in the Badia Valley. In the autonomous province of Bolzano, the signage is fully bilingual, in Italian and German. You will hear Grüssgot (good morning in Bavarian) rather than Bongiuourno. In the Ladin-speaking municipalities of the province, signage is mostly trilingual (Ladin, German and Italian).
French in the Aosta Valley
Historically a Franco-Provençal region, within the States of Savoy and then the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Aosta Valley did not follow the fate of Savoy and Nice, which were subjected to a plebiscite and attached to France in 1860, and remained within the new unitary Italian state. From then on, the region never stopped fighting against the attacks on its culture. The Fascist period was particularly violent with a policy of systematic Italianisation. The ban on the French language contributed to the lasting upheaval of this isolated mountain society. All place names were Italianized (Aosta in Aosta, Saint-Pierre in San Pietro, Morgex in Valdigna d'Aosta, Chamois in Camosio, Champorcher in Campo Laris, etc.). The French language was banned, and the population limited itself to the oral practice of Franco-Provençal, tolerated by the authorities. In reaction to these authoritarian measures, a current of cultural resistance led by a young lawyer, Emile Chanoux, was formed. The latter, at the head of the "Ligue valdôtaine pour la protection de la langue française dans la vallée d'Aoste", was to lead a systematic action in favour of the defence of French. His linguistic demands soon went hand in hand with federalist demands. Having fled to France, Chanoux returned to the Aosta Valley in 1943. There, he was arrested on May 18, 1944, by the fascist authorities and died during the night. Charles de Gaulle, who was sensitive to the language issue, had considered for a while the annexation of the Aosta Valley to France, encouraged by a strong "rattachiste" current among the Valle d'Aostans. However, the fierce opposition of the Americans, coupled with the seasonal difficulties of passage between France and the valley (the tunnels did not exist), led to the abandonment of this project. De Gaulle did, however, obtain the assurance of an autonomous regime for the valley. The post-war period saw the official return of French, with the status of autonomy. The 1960s and 1970s, with the development of industry and tourism, accelerated the modernisation of the region. Today it is not uncommon to hear French spoken in the valley, also spoken in the high valleys of Piedmont.
The Milanese dialect: an ancestral heritage
In 600 B.C., the Gauls settled in the Milan area, and their culture influenced the life and customs of the pre-existing populations. The name Milan itself derives from the Celtic word Mediolanum. Similarly, the name Brianza (the geographical area to the north-east of Milan) derives from the Celtic word brig, "place on high ground" and Lecco from the word leukos
, "wood, forest". From 222 B.C. Milan was occupied by the Romans. Classical Latin, which was spoken only by the elites, was popularized by the people and became the official language. The mixing of the "barbarian" populations with the Romanized peoples accelerated the popularization of Latin, thus generating the Milanese dialect, also called meneghino, the language spoken by the servants, the little people. The Milanese dialect is therefore very close to French because it is made up of 70% of words of Latin origin. However, as for most Italian dialects, the influence of foreign domination has left important traces. Thus we find in the Milanese dialect words of Spanish, Austrian and French origin: artichoke becomes in Milanese articiock and ham, giabun.
