The Area's Ethnic and Linguistic Structure
Two major ethnic and linguistic clusters aimed to be forcibly unified in the region, the western parts inhabited predominantly by an Italian population, with Italian, Venetian and Friulian as the three major languages, and a small Istriot minority, on one hand, and the eastern and northern areas were inhabited by South Slavs, namely Slovenes and Croats, with small Montenegrian (Peroj) and Serb minorities, on the other hand.
Other ethnic groups included Istro-Romanians in eastern Istria, Carinthian Germans in the Canale Valley, as well as smaller German and Hungarian speaking communities in some larger urban centres, mostly members of former Austro-Hungarian élites.
According to the Austrian census of 1910/1911, the whole Austrian Littoral, annexed to Italy after 1920/1924, counted 978,385 people. 421,444 or 43,1% declared Italian as their language of daily conversation (Umgangsprache), while 327,230 or 33,4% spoke Slovene, and 152,500 or 15,6% and spoke Croatian. In addition, there were around 30,000 German speakers (3,1% of the overall population), around 3,000 Hungarian speakers (0,3%), and smaller clusters of Istro-Romanian and Czech speakers.
The Friulian, Venetian and Istriot languages were counted as Italian. According to estimates, at least 60,000 or around 14% of those listed as Italians were in fact Friulian speakers, frequently with a pronounced separate ethnic identity.
Read more about this topic: Julian March
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