Language
While most Corsicans spoke a Corsican dialect at home, until the first half of the 19th-century Italian was the language most publicly spoken and written on the island.
The first Corsican Constitution, for the short-lived Corsican Republic established in 1755, was written in Italian and Paoli proclaimed Italian as the official language of Corsica. Italian was the 'language of culture' in Corsica until the end of the 19th century. Even Paoli's second Corsican Constitution, for the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom in 1794, was in Italian. In the second half of the 19th century French replaced Italian, mainly because of Napoleon III. The Corsican dialect started to be used by Corsican intellectuals.
The actual Corsican language is directly related to the Tuscan dialect of Pisa, an Italian city that dominated the island before Genoa. In the north of the island (Calvi), there is a local dialect very similar to the medieval Genoese. In the mountainous interior of Corsica there is a significant number of villages where nearly all the inhabitants speak Corso, a medieval Pisan dialect mixed with Sardinian words.
The extreme similarity of the Corso to Italian can be seen in an example phrase:
Corso: Sò natu in Corsica è g'aghju passatu i megli anni di a mio ghjuventù
Italian: Sono nato in Corsica e ci ho passato i migliori anni della mia gioventù
English: I was born in Corsica and spent the best years of my youth there
Nearly 12% of Corsicans speak Italian, while three-quarters understand it thanks to the television programmes from Italy.
The irredentist Marco Angeli di Sartèna wrote the first book in "Corso" (titled Terra còrsa) in 1924 and many lyrics (titled Malincunie) in Ajaccio. He created and wrote the newspaper «Gioventù» of the "Partito Corso d'azione", partially in Italian and Corsican.
Today Italian Corsicans speak French fluently, but most of them are second-language speakers.
Read more about this topic: Italian Irredentism In Corsica
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
“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)
“Which I wish to remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar:
Which the same I would rise to explain.”
—Bret Harte (1836–1902)