WI: Make Italian the dominant language of a South American country/region

Italian or a dialect of Italian. How could it be Latin America's third major language? This can be a separate country, or a state in which that language remains so dominant that it is the language of business and government despite existing within an otherwise Spanish or Portuguese speaking country, much like French in Quebec.

If you find those more interesting or challenging, other options are German, French, English, or Dutch, or Catalan or other Iberian languages. It would be interesting to see something like Aragonese surviving in the Americas. (Besides any countries, regions, or linguistic communities which already exist)
 
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Hmmm, you might be able to mess with the Italian Wars, War of Spanish Succession, etc. enough so the right Hapsburg starts sending Italians over there instead of Spanish. The question is, can you get enough Milanese, Sicilians, or what have you to go over there instead of Spaniards?

Could one of the Spanish colonies be given as a dowry to the Austrians during one of their intermarriages? Then maybe have some war go worse for Spain and - fearing French influence over the colonies - the Austrian Hapsburgs send a bunch of settlers from the parts of Italy they control?

It's just a theory, but worth playing with.
 
The earliest (if ASB) possibility is that of the planned Tuscan colony in what is now French Guyana, today most of the population would speak a language not that dissimilar from Corsican (whose roots lie in medieval Tuscan); Genoa might end up trying as well, if Spain ends up owing obscene amounts of money to the Genoese bankers the crown kept coming back to in those days, and the bankers decide to bail them out in exchange for a piece of the Americas, maybe even Venezuela for the lulz. :p
 
Problem with Italian was, that it was not spoken by majority of Italian immigrants (at least as first language) when biggest waves of immigrants from Italy came to South America. They were speaking Venetian, Ligurian, Sicilian etc.
 
Problem with Italian was, that it was not spoken by majority of Italian immigrants (at least as first language) when biggest waves of immigrants from Italy came to South America. They were speaking Venetian, Ligurian, Sicilian etc.
Exactly. That was the big reason why Italian did not displace Spanish in Buenos Aires and Uruguay: All of the Italian immigrants spoke many different Italians, and Spanish was arguably better suited to being a neutral second language for these migrants than one of the different Italian dialects. (That Spanish was also very widely spoken by the non-Italian majorities was an added point in its favour, of course.)
 

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Isn't this kinda sorta Argentina and Uruguay OTL?
 
Isn't this kinda sorta Argentina and Uruguay OTL?
Not at all. While a healthy amount of the Argentinian population have a Italian ascendancy, it does not correlate with a use of italian like it is proposed by the WI, Spanish is the language used in daily activities by pretty much the entire population, even though, not unlike some cities in the Brazilian South, you may have the use of Italian in a household or even public matters.
 

Deleted member 109224

Not at all. While a healthy amount of the Argentinian population have a Italian ascendancy, it does not correlate with a use of italian like it is proposed by the WI, Spanish is the language used in daily activities by pretty much the entire population, even though, not unlike some cities in the Brazilian South, you may have the use of Italian in a household or even public matters.
Rioplatense is heavily influenced by Italian though, isn't it?
 
The Viscontis unite Italy north of Latium and ally themselves with the Castillians, in following centuries they end up colonising the parts of the Americas the Spanish did not show interest in at first (Texas, the Guyanas, the areas along the river Plate).
 
Problem with Italian was, that it was not spoken by majority of Italian immigrants (at least as first language) when biggest waves of immigrants from Italy came to South America. They were speaking Venetian, Ligurian, Sicilian etc.

So another 'Italian' could form in the Americas through koineization, just like Hunsrik formed from the variety of German languages present in Brazil and took a different direction than German did in Europe.
 
The Viscontis unite Italy north of Latium and ally themselves with the Castillians, in following centuries they end up colonising the parts of the Americas the Spanish did not show interest in at first (Texas, the Guyanas, the areas along the river Plate).
As you may already know, that is essentially what the Hospitallers actually did in OTL, although the project was soon abandoned.
 
There needs to be an actual Italian colony. Not a city with lots of Italians in it, but city founded by and for Italians, where that is the official language. Otherwise they will just assimilate to whatever the official language is, as IOTL.

This is also why we do not see enclaves of Catalan or Basque speakers in Latin America, or Welsh/Irish speakers in North America, despite many immigrants from those communities. Immigration is not enough. You need to create a legal status for the language.
 
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There needs to be an actual Italian colony. Not a city with lots of Italians in it, but city founded by and for Italians, where that is the official language. Otherwise they will just assimilate to whatever the official language is, as IOTL.

This is also why we do not see enclaves of Catalan or Basque speakers in Latin America, or Welsh/Irish speakers in North America, despite many immigrants from those communities. Immigration is not enough. You need to create a legal status for the language.
We don't see a Catalan/Occitan in Quebec and Louisiana due to that.
 
So another 'Italian' could form in the Americas through koineization, just like Hunsrik formed from the variety of German languages present in Brazil and took a different direction than German did in Europe.

The challenge for that kind of scenario is that you would need a settlement history for this region where speakers of a given set of non-Iberian dialects would predominate, enough to be able to set at least local norms. Even then, as the history of Hunsrik shows, this situation is deeply vulnerable to changes in the wider country.

There needs to be an actual Italian colony. Not a city with lots of Italians in it, but city founded by and for Italians, where that is the official language. Otherwise they will just assimilate to whatever the official language is, as IOTL.


More, it needs to be a substantial city, a metropolis capable of supporting a diverse economy. A relatively thinly-scattered rural population might keep a language going for quite a while, but if the language has no presence in urban areas it faces a from prospect. In the Maritimes, for instance, the Francophone Acadians have put great energy into developing Greater Moncton as a bilingual city.

This is also why we do not see enclaves of Catalan or Basque speakers in Latin America, or Welsh/Irish speakers in North America, despite many immigrants from those communities. Immigration is not enough. You need to create a legal status for the language.

I am not sure about that. In the case of Catalonia and Wales, for instance, their early success at industrialization meant that these regions had become regions of net immigration at a relatively early date. More, there were relatively few speakers of Welsh and Basque and Catalan, enough that they could easily be missed among the much larger masses of British and Spanish emigrants. That these populations were not necessarily that substantially distinct from their neighbours—Welsh Protestantism fit squarely into British traditions—aided the assimilation.

In the particular case of Irish, the speakers of the language really seem to have been disinterested in its survival by the 19th century. Apparently some speakers of Irish were surprised, when they encountered speakers of Scots Gaelic, to hear that language still being actively spoken. Language seems to have been deprioritized as an element of Irish identity; in the 19th century, religion took over.
 
Hmmm, you might be able to mess with the Italian Wars, War of Spanish Succession, etc. enough so the right Hapsburg starts sending Italians over there instead of Spanish. The question is, can you get enough Milanese, Sicilians, or what have you to go over there instead of Spaniards?

Could one of the Spanish colonies be given as a dowry to the Austrians during one of their intermarriages? Then maybe have some war go worse for Spain and - fearing French influence over the colonies - the Austrian Hapsburgs send a bunch of settlers from the parts of Italy they control?

It's just a theory, but worth playing with.
Perhaps an Austrian colony is a possibility.
 
Perhaps an Austrian colony is a possibility.

Certainly the Duchy of Milan oriented towards itself towards the Austrian Hapsburgs, and in the 19th century the Austro-Hungarian navy was dominated by ethnic Italians and the Italian language.

More, Italian migration towards the Southern Cone tended to be dominated by northern Italians, perhaps for reasons extending to the Spanish and Hapsburg domination of the entire peninsula.
 
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