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, language and/or religion:
“I suggested to them also the great desirability of a general knowledge on the Island of the English language. They are under an English speaking government and are a part of the territory of an English speaking nation.... While I appreciated the desirability of maintaining their grasp on the Spanish language, the beauty of that language and the richness of its literature, that as a practical matter for them it was quite necessary to have a good comprehension of English.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”
—Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945)