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Show ITALIANS WHO DO NOT SPEAK i ITALIAN. A very odd circumstance in a country 4 so old as Italy is that there are in the i peninsula about 262.000 Italians, repre- 4 senting r2,20S families in seventy-eight different communes, who do not speak 2 Italian. In new countries, like, for in- '4 stance, Canada and the United States, I 4 this would cause no surprise, but in Italy it is considered so strange that i the statement has been contradicted. The idioms which they use mav be " divided roughly Into five French, German, Ger-man, Slavonic. Albanese. Greek and Catalonian. The French dialect is spoken in ninety-seven communes bv more than 80,000 people in and near the T Aosta valley. This language tends more E to increase than to decrease and h used officially in the schools, churches and public offices. German is snoken in parts of Piedmont and Venetia, in j the former by 5.700 persons, represent- ing 1.13S families, and in the latter bv I "..TOO in 1.170 families. This dialect is fast decreasing and will before long have completely disappeared. Slav is j spoken- in Friuli. on the eastern con-lines con-lines of the peninsula, by J4.710 persons, per-sons, and in the Abruzzi by r.,300 in 1.017 families that is. 30,000 persons altogether. al-together. In the center of Italy 21.r.fii families, composed of about 00,000 persons, per-sons, speak Albanese and seem to bo on the increase. In the south Greek is the language of 31.200 individuals, while Catalonian is limited to one city and its environs in Sardinia and to 7,063 people. j |