Italian language in Brazil
The Italian language in Brazil has been widespread since the second half of the 19th century, particularly due to Italian emigration to Brazil. Today there are an estimated 26 million descendants of Italians residing in the country; among them, Italian is estimated to be spoken as a first language by about 50,000 people. On the other hand, there were 407,924 Italian citizens residing in Brazil in 2013. In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, a Venetian linguistic island is still active, whose language is called talian. Italian is also being learned as a foreign language in Brazil by tens of thousands of students a year, partly due to the descendants of immigrants gradually recovering their origins.
In Brazil, the Italian language is co-official in the municipalities of Encantado, José Boiteux, Santa Tereza, Santo Ângelo, São Bento do Sul and Venda Nova do Imigrante.
The language of Italian emigration
History
is the third-largest country in the Americas in terms of the number of Italian immigrants received in the period 1876-1990; the migratory flow peaked in the period 1886-1895, with 503,599 expatriates; the influx of Italians remained substantial in the period prior to World War I ; the period between the two wars saw a gradual reduction of Italian emigration to Brazil; after the interruption of the migratory flow during World War II, which saw Italy and Brazil on opposite sides, there was a new, rather substantial wave in the postwar period. The total number of Italians who emigrated to Brazil between 1876 and 1990 is 1,447,356.Italian immigration particularly affected the south of the country; even today, the population of Italian origin reaches 65 percent in the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Espirito Santo. The city of São Paulo is estimated to be the largest Italian urban hub in the world, with about 15 million inhabitants of Italian origin. In the northeastern part of Rio Grande do Sul an authentic Região Colonial Italiana was born. Alongside Italian immigration, the region attracted to itself numerous immigrants from Germany; in addition to Brazilian Portuguese, Italian was thus exposed to contact with German, itself a language of immigration. The different waves of migration were characterized by different regional origins: emigrants of northern origin were prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, while with the new century, arrivals from southern Italy prevailed.
The literacy rate of emigrants also varied greatly. Illiteracy was frequent in the first period of emigration, which was predominantly dialect-speaking. After World War II, on the other hand, the migratory flow was marked by a higher level of education, to which corresponded with a greater mastery of Italian. This condition was also brought about by the strong connection established between Italian emigration to Brazil and the presence in the country of large Italian industrial groups, particularly in the automotive and telecommunications sectors; this has led to seeing in the Italian language and culture a root capable of bringing an extra layer of value to entrepreneurial processes.
Characteristics of Italian communities
Italian emigration to Brazil was favored by the welcoming policies adopted by the South American country, which was willing to advance the ticket for the journey in order to receive labor for the colonization of its immense territory, still largely unexplored. It was therefore the most impoverished social strata that undertook the journey, thus becoming settlers who gradually replaced slaves in the fazendas. The rural context favored the creation of self-sufficient Italian communities that were relatively isolated from the linguistic context of the country of arrival. Colonization of territories entrusted by the Brazilian government, concentrated mainly in the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, was the main choice by the Venetians and northern Italians in general.The rural settlements thus tended to be linguistically conservative, in parallel with what is observed in the more conservative areas of Italian territory. Contributing to the preservation of the languages of origin was the isolation in enclaves, often characterized by endogamy and poor schooling, and also the establishment of much larger family groups than in the motherland, which reached as many as 170 members. As a result, numerous towns with Italian names were founded in the rural areas: in Rio Grande do Sul, Nova Bassano, Nova Pádua, Nova Treviso, Nova Vicenza and Nova Trento were founded; in the state of Espírito Santo, Nova Venécia was born; in the state of Santa Catarina one finds Nova Veneza and another Nova Trento, founded by immigrants of Trentino origin who still retain part of their native language.
More exposed to the pressure of Brazilian Portuguese were the urban contexts, which attracted Italian immigrants only later; rather than direct immigration, it was often the urbanization of settlers from the fazendas, attracted by the prospects of wealth offered by the modernization of large cities. São Paulo, which in 1920 had a population consisting of 50 percent immigrants of Italian origin, played a leading role in the phenomenon of language mixing, also by virtue of the stratification of different regional origins. These conditions favored the use of the Italian language in associations and assemblies. Political participation of Italian-Brazilians, long limited due to low literacy rates, also began in the city.
The other major hub of urban settlement of Italian immigrants was Porto Alegre, where there were 41 Italian families as early as 1850; The Italian presence in the city resulted in 1877 in the founding of the Vittorio Emanuele II Society, which remained in operation until its dissolution decreed by the Brazilian government at the time of World War II. Deeply rooted in the city was from the end of the nineteenth century the Calabrian presence, with the predominance of immigrants from the province of Cosenza and in particular from the town of Morano Calabro; the Morano community long maintained its own well-characterized identity, strengthened by endogamous marriages and catalyzed by the cult of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Morano's patron saint.
The education of immigrants
Brazil's school network suffered for a long time from a serious inefficiency, determined in part by the enormous size of the national territory, and in part by the tendency of disinterest shown since the origins of the Federal Republic for the education of the entire country. The education of Italian-Brazilians was therefore for a long time imparted by the immigrants themselves. The initiative of improvised institutors was soon associated with the foundation of Italian elementary schools, supported by associations, religious and private teachers as well as by irregular funding from the Italian government.Particularly relevant was the role of the numerous Italian associations that were formed with patriotic, religious, cultural, and above all charitable and mutual aid purposes ; These associations constantly maintained ties with the consular authorities, who were interested in maintaining the Italian language among the emigrants. Less linked to the preservation of national identity were the rural schools, on the other hand, whose purpose was more pragmatically to teach reading, writing and counting. It is uncertain whether Italian or a dialect prevailed in the teaching there; probably a mixture of the two languages was in use, not without some influence from Portuguese. The use of bilingual Italian-Portuguese texts, provided to emigrants by the Italian government, is also documented.
The success of the Italian schools depended essentially on being for a long time the only option available. In 1908 232 institutions were surveyed, rising to 396 in 1913; their number then fell to 329 in 1924 and 167 in 1930. This decrease was determined by the gradual strengthening of the network of public schools; the granting of funding to community schools was also tied to the teaching in Portuguese of history, geography and some other subjects. It was, moreover, the Italian settlers themselves, by then rooted in Portuguese soil, who were eager to learn the national language.
In the period of Getúlio Vargas's dictatorship, a campaign of forced nationalization began, hitting hard at ethnically based schools, kept alive only by the support of the respective European governments and religious bodies; with World War II, the study of Italian was banned. After World War II, with funding from the Italian government having largely disappeared compared to the fascist era, public or religious Portuguese-language schools replaced ethnically based ones, leading to numerous protests and a high rate of school evasion; it was only from 1985 onward that space was given in public schools to languages other than Portuguese and English, so that Italian-Brazilians and other immigrant groups could learn to read and write the language of use in their community.
The emigration press
Italian immigrant communities gave rise to a large number of periodical publications; between 1875 and 1960 more than 500 newspapers were surveyed, of which about 360 were concentrated in São Paulo State. These were either news sheets, abounding in news about the motherland and crime or society news, as well as humorous, literary, sports, and fashion newspapers, often with modest circulations and lasting less than a year. Their sustenance, rather than sales, relied on advertisements by compatriots. There were also a few newspapers with larger circulations, most notably the "Fanfulla" of São Paulo, which was born in 1893 and soon became the "unofficial mouthpiece of the Italian community in Brazil"; the paper was also read by Brazilians and with its 15,000 copies represented the city's second largest newspaper at the beginning of the 1910s. Today it survives as a bilingual weekly, the only significant exponent of the Italian press in the state of São Paulo.Also still in operation is the "Correio Riograndense," founded in 1909 in Caxias do Sul under the title "La Libertà"; the following year the paper was transferred to Garibaldi, where it took the name "Il Colono"; in 1917 it was purchased by the Capuchins and became the "Staffetta Riograndense," to assume its current title in 1941. Until that date, the newspaper was edited in Italian, with a section in Portuguese and a column in a Venetian "enriched with Lombard expressions." It was on the very columns of the "Staffetta Riograndense" that the successful Vita e stória de Nanetto Pipetta nassuo in Itália e vegnudo in Mérica per catare la cucagna by the Capuchin friar Aquiles Bernardi saw the light between January 23, 1924 and February 18, 1925; the text is written in Talian, a Venetian koiné with influences from the Lombard and Portuguese languages. Even today the newspaper still represents the "voice of the so-called Taliàn identity."
The juxtaposition between writing in Italian and writing in dialect was not without political significance; writing in Italian was often related to the propaganda of patriotic and nationalistic ideals, while the use of dialect did not arise as a spontaneous initiative of dialect speakers, but rather by the initiative of some members of the clergy, who often used their works to spread anti-socialist ideas. Nanetto Pipetta