1. The Italian National Anthemhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcI2IdHhEHE

2. A brief history of the anthem Il Canto degli Italiani (The Song of the Italians)is the Italian national anthem. It is best knownamong Italians as Inno di Mameli (MamelisHymn), after the author of the lyrics, orFratelli dItalia (Brothers of Italy), from itsopening line. 3. The words were written in the autumn of 1847in Genoa, by the then 20-year-old student andpatriot Goffredo Mameli, in a climate of popularstruggle for unification and independence ofItaly which foreshadowed the war againstAustria. 4. Two months later, theywere set to music in Turinby another Genoese,Michele Novaro. The hymnenjoyed widespreadpopularity throughout theperiod of the Risorgimentoand in the followingdecades. 5. After unification (1861) the official nationalanthem was the Marcia Reale, the Royal March(or Fanfara Reale), anthem of the royal house ofSavoy. Marcia Reale remained the Italiannational anthem until Italy became a republic in1946. 6. In 1946 Italy became a republic, and onOctober 12, 1946, Il Canto degli Italiani wasprovisionally chosen as the countrys newnational anthem. This choice was madeofficial only on November 17, 2005, almost 60years later. 7. Two anthems for one country? 5 years before Mameli wrote the words to hisCanzone deli Italiani, Giusepper Verdis Nabuccopremiered at the Scala theatre in Milano. Il Nabucco contained a chorus known as Va pensiero 8. In the opera the Jews,prisoners in Babylon,sing the chorus. The public interpretedit as a metaphor of thecondition of the Italianpopulation prisonerof the Austrians. 9. Giuseppe Verdi 10. The chorus became a revolutionary hymn. The Italians of Istria and Dalmazia which fellunder the Austrian control adopted it as theirnational Anthem. 11. Lega Nord an Italian political party wishing todivide Northern Italy from the South creatinga federation of states, supported the adoptionof the song as the Italian Anthem. They stated that Temistocle Solera, who wrotethe words, did not support the republicansolution. Documents show that Giuseppe Verdi was arepublican fighting for a united nation underone state. 12. Va pensiero is one the the songs representingthe Italian Risorgimento. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1JkhNOcXGo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bt9RTMDvX4 13. The Italian flag 14. Il Tricolore The Italian Tricolor was adopted in Reggio Emilia 7 January1797 as flag of the Cispadan Republic. Why these colors? The flag was clearly inspired by the French flag of 1790. 15. Red and white were ancient colors of the city ofMilano, and green was the color of its troops.The rebels of Lombardia and of the army knownas Italian Legion used the same colors duringtheir military campaigns.Many volunteers from Emilia and Romagnafought in that army against the Austrians.This is probably the reason why the CispadanRepublic chose the same colors for its flag. 16. 1796-1799 Napoleon between 1796 and1799 crushes theold monarchs. Jacobin Republics take theirplace: la Repubblica Ligure, la RepubblicaRomana, la Repubblica Partenopea, laRepubblica Anconitana. 17. Italia 1799 18. The republics represented the ideals ofindependence that where the spirit of theRisorgimento. During the wars for independence the flagbecomes the symbol of the people, of freedom,and of the NATION. 23 March 1848 Carlo Alberto announces thewar presenting a new flag with the royal armson the tricolore. 19. 17 March 1861 the Reign of Italy isproclaimed. Its flag: the Tricolore. Only in 1925 a new law officially defined thecolors and proportions of the Italian flag. 20. Italian or Italians? The standard Italianlanguagehasapoetic and literaryorigin starting in thetwelfth century, andthe modern standardof the language waslargely shaped byrelativelyrecentevents 21. However, Italian as a language used in theItalian Peninsula has a longer history. In factthe earliest surviving texts that can definitelybe called Italian (or more accurately,vernacular) is a riddle called IndovinelloVeronese dating back to IX 22. Other early written examples ofvernacular include liturgical writingssuch as commentaries, notes andinstructional guides for the Jewishfestivity of Pesach.This is an example of a mediaevalHaggadah coming from the Greekisland of Corfu where a strong Jewishcommunity coming from the southernpart of Apulia had settled.Although the alphabet is clearlyHebrew, the language of the text is asouthern dialect today called Leccese(from the name of the capital of theregion, Lecce). Its a vernacularlanguage vey similar to Sicilian, stillspoken today. 23. Italy has always had a distinctive dialect foreach city.Those dialects now have considerablevariety.As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be usedthroughout Italy, features of local speechwere naturally adopted, producing variousversions of Regional Italian. 24. The most characteristic differences, for instance,between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian arethe gemination of initial consonants and thepronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in somecases: e.g. va bene "all right": is pronounced [va ne] by a Roman (and by any standard- bspeaker, like a Florentine), [va bene] by aMilanese (and by any speaker whose nativedialect lies to the north of La Spezia-Rimini Line);a casa "at home" is [a kasa for Roman and]standard, [a kaza] for Milanese and generallynorthern. 25. Starting with the Renaissance Italian becamethe language used in the courts of every state inthe peninsula. The rediscovery of Dantes Devulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest inlinguistics in the sixteenth century, sparked adebate that raged throughout Italy concerningthe criteria that should govern theestablishment of a modern Italian literary andspoken language 26. Scholars divided into three factions:1. The purists, headed byVenetian Pietro Bembothought theDivineComedy not dignifiedenough, because it usedelements from non-lyricregisters of the language. 27. 2. Niccol Machiavelli and other Florentinespreferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times 28. 3. The courtiers, like Baldassare Castiglioneand Gian Giorgio Trissino, insisted that eachlocal vernacular contribute to the newstandard 29. Bembos ideas prevailed, and the foundationof the Accademia della Crusca in Florence(15821583), the official legislative body ofthe Italian language, led to publication of thefirst Italian dictionary in 1612 30. Napoleons conquest turned the Italian languageinto a lingua franca used not only among clerks,nobility and functionaries in the Italian courts butalso in the bourgeoisie. 31. Italian literatures first modern novel, I PromessiSposi, by Alessandro Manzoni further defined thestandard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the watersof the Arno, as he states in the Preface to his1840 edition. After unification a huge number of civil servantsand soldiers recruited from all over the countryintroduced many more words and idioms fromtheir home languages . Only 2.5% of Italys population could speak theItalian standardized language properly when thenation unified in 1861 32. Many Italian dialects may be consideredhistorical languages in their own right. Theseinclude recognized language groups such as,Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Ligurian,Piedmontese, Venetian, and others, andregional variants of these languages such asCalabrian. Some minorities in Italy still speak Albanian,Greek, German, Ladin, and Occitan.