Italian Language in Somalia
Prior to the Somali civil war, the legacy of Italian influence in Somalia was evinced by the relatively wide use of the Italian language among the country's ruling elite. Up until World War II, the Italian language was the only official language of Italian Somaliland. Italian was official in Italian Somaliland during the Fiduciary Mandate, and the first years of independence.
In 1954, the Italian government established the post-secondary institutions of law, economics, and social studies in Mogadishu. These institutions were satellites of the University of Rome, which provided all the instruction material, faculty, and administration.
All the courses were presented in Italian. In 1964, the institutions offered two years of study in Somalia, followed by two years of study in Italy. After a military coup in 1969, all foreign entities were nationalized, including Mogadishu's principal university, which was renamed Jaamacadda Ummadda Soomaliyeed (Somali National University).
In 1972, the Somali language was officially declared the only national language of Somalia, though it now shares that distinction with Arabic. Due to its simplicity, the fact that it lent itself well to writing Somali since it could cope with all the sounds in the language, and the already widespread existence of machines and typewriters designed for its use, the government of Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre, following the recommendation of the Somali Language Committee that was instituted shortly after independence with the purpose of finding a common orthography for the Somali language, unilaterally elected to only use the Latin script for writing Somali instead of the long-established Arabic script and the upstart Osmanya script.
Until 1991, there was an Italian school in Mogadishu (with courses of Middle school and Liceum), later destroyed because of the civil war.
Read more about this topic: Italian Somalis, Italian Population in Somalia
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