McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 26

in Canada, Italian is Italy’s only national
language. However, it operates beside
about 15 main dialect groups roughly
corresponding to regional subdivisions,
whose high usage today is especially
surprising considering the unitary design of
the Italian state and mounting pressure from
the national language. Italian originated
as a written language from 14th century
literary Florentine but was not widely used
due to high illiteracy along the peninsula.
Consequently, a plethora of local dialects
continued to develop, and written Italian
was confined to the more privileged40. These
dialects are separate Romance languages
and can differ from each other as much
as French differs from Spanish. They are
not varieties or adaptations of the national
Italian language, but are all ‘sister’ languages
derived from spoken Latin. Dialects such as
Turinese, Milanese, Florentine, etc. differ
from each other in phonology, grammar, and
lexis, and can vary so much from each other
as to be reciprocally unintelligible to their
users. From a strictly linguistic viewpoint,
there is no difference between a language
and a dialect, and a dialect used officially by
a state is called a language41.
The question of Italian dialects is treated
separately from that of linguistic minorities,
which are enclaves of speakers of foreign
languages42. Although Italian dialects are
separate Romance languages originating
from Latin, they share more common
ground than English and French languages,
which differ in their Germanic and
Romance origins. In this respect, Frenchspeaking Canadians represent a linguistic
minority within Canada, and thus the
french language requires institutionalized
protection within the framework of
federal government. As a unitary system
of government prevailed in Italy, between
1861 and 1918, Italian was considered to
be the national language and dialects were
Voghera, et al., “Linguistic Variety in Italy,” 71.
Ibid., 69-72.
42
Ibid., 72.
40
41

26 | McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014

generally disregarded43. In the years of Fascist
Italy, authorities tried to introduce forced
assimilation of linguistic minorities, which
included the Italianization of surnames. The
unitary system of government provided no
protection for linguistic minority rights or
preservation of dialects, as regulations on
education imposed the use of Italian even
in schools for children who were German or
Slovene-speaking44.
Although Italy is historically more
regionally and linguistically fragmented than
Canada, the fact that Italian dialects stem
from Latin and share similarity as Romance
languages helps explain why no major
regional secessionist movements emerged
in I