Italian language in Slovenia

The Italian language is an officially recognized minority language in Slovenia, along with Hungarian. Around 3,700 Slovenian citizens speak Italian as their mother tongue. Italian has a strong presence in Slovenia, both historical and current. An estimated 15% of Slovenians speak Italian as a second language, which is one of the highest percentages in the European Union.

Between the Late Middle Ages and 1797, part of the territory of the Slovenian Istria (almost entirely corresponding to the current municipalities of Koper, Izola and Piran) was under Venetian rule. During that period, the population of the coastal area, which had spoken various Romance dialects (either of Rhaeto-Romance or Istriot origin) adopted the Venetian dialect of Italian. During Austrian rule, which lasted until 1918, Italian was the official language of these areas, along with German. Only in the late 19th century, Slovene became co-official, but only in those rural areas where there was a Slovene ethnic majority.

According to the last Austrian census of 1910, of the around 75,000 inhabitants of Slovenian Istria, around 30,000 or 40% spoke Italian as their native language, while 60% spoke Slovene. Taken only the three municipalities of Koper, Izola in Piran (in their current border), the figures are 52% Italian speakers vs. 47% Slovene speakers. There was a big linguistic divide among the urban population and the rural areas: the towns were almost exclusively Italian speaking, while the rural areas had a large Slovene majority. Within the current borders of the municipality of Koper, 87% of the urban population was Italian speaking, while in its predominantly rural surroundings, they represented the 22,3% of the population. In Izola, Italian speakers amounted to 97% in the town, but only 12,8% in the surroundings. Only in the Piran municipality, they had a majority both in the urban and rural areas, with 95,9% and 64%, respectively.

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