Italian Language
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, and Somalia conserve Italian as a colonial legacy; Somalia had Italian as its cultural language in universities up to 1991; however, the Italian language remains unknown to over 95% of the population. In Libya, Italians were forced to leave the country after its independence.
In all of these countries, the only one that most preserves Italian is Eritrea, that has only one Italian-language school remaining, with 470 pupils yearly. The name of the only Italian-language school in Eritrea is Scuola Italiana di Asmara. Other countries that also preserve Italian are Libya and Somalia; Italian remains an important language in the education and economic sectors in Libya, although Arabic becomes the sole official language of the country when dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi ruled; Italian remains spoken as a second language by the elderly and educated in Somalia and is also used as one of second languages in the new Federal Government of Somalia.
Read more about this topic: Romance-speaking Africa
Famous quotes containing the words italian and/or language:
“Master of Trinity: Is he an Italian?
Harold Abrahams: Of Italian extraction, yes.
Master of Trinity: I see.
Harold Abrahams: But not all Italian.
Master of Trinity: I’m relieved to hear it.
Harold Abrahams: He’s half-Arab.”
—Colin Welland (b. 1934)
“Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.”
—Dennis Altman (b. 1943)