Language and Religion
Most Italian Eritreans can speak Italian, as their language is still widely understood and spoken by many Eritreans of other ethnic and racial groups: there is only one remaining Italian-language school in Asmara, renowned in Eritrea for its sports activities. Italian is still spoken in commerce in Eritrea.
Until 1975, there were in Asmara an Italian Liceum, an Italian Technical Institute, an Italian Middle school and special university courses in Medicine done held by Italian teachers.
Gino Corbella, an Italian consul in Asmara, estimated that the diffusion of the Italian language in Eritrea was supported even by the fact that in 1959, nearly 20,000 Eritreans were descendants of Italians who had illegitimate sons/daughters with Eritrean women during colonial times.
Italian Eritreans can also speak the country's de facto official languages Tigrinya, Arabic, and English. The assimilated Italian Eritreans of the new generations (in 2007 they numbered nearly 900 persons) speak Tigrinya and only a bit of Italian or speak Italian as second language.
Nearly all are Roman Catholic Christians, while some are converts to other sects of Christianity.
Read more about this topic: Italian Eritreans
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or religion:
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Not thou nor thy religion dost controule,
The amorousnesse of an harmonious Soule,
But thou would’st have that love thy selfe: As thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,
Thou lov’st not, till from loving more, thou free
My soule: Who ever gives, takes libertie:
O, if thou car’st not whom I love
Alas, thou lov’st not mee.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)