Italian Argentina

Well this is my first thread so I hope I do it right.

The situation is to imagine a way where Argentina can become an Italian speaking nation, with more than 75% of the population being of Italian Ancestry, and more or less how the country might evolve.
It has to be after the 1853 Constitution.

I think one possibility is if the Italians which migrated to Brazil and some of those who migrated to the USA came instead to Argentina(Argentina and Brazilian ones tended to be from the North, while those of the USA where more from the South), so there would be between 3 and 4 times more Italians so the will be more than half the total population for sure.
 
No chance, I'm sorry to say, especially with a POD after 1853.

There has never been such a huge ethnic shift in modern history.
 
No chance, I'm sorry to say, especially with a POD after 1853.

There has never been such a huge ethnic shift in modern history.

It would'nt take that much of a shift, Argentina only reached 4 million people around 1895 and IIRC the population in the 1850's was only about half of that, so it's possible to have Italians immigrate to the point where they are the largest group, the real problems are why they would and after that assimilation.
 
It would'nt take that much of a shift, Argentina only reached 4 million people around 1895 and IIRC the population in the 1850's was only about half of that, so it's possible to have Italians immigrate to the point where they are the largest group, the real problems are why they would and after that assimilation.
I don't think the OP requires assimilation it asks about Argentina becoming Italian speaking. One of the main ways to assimilate is to adopt the native language of the country you've moved to - in this case Spanish. For the linguistic shift from Spanish to Italian to occur the Italians would obviously have to keep their language. The harder problem is how these Italian immigrants get enough power for Argentina to become an Italian, rather than Spanish speaking country.
 
It wouldn't matter. People of a certain ethnicity, emigrating at some country's invitation won't displace its official language and culture.

An Italian Argentina could only happen if it was colonized from the 1500's by the likes Venice or Genoa, but they simply didn't have the population base to compete with Spain and perhaps Portugal, plus the latter states were too geographically well-placed for colonising across the Atlantic on their own terms.
 
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Also, before 1860 (maybe even 1880) the notion of "italian speaking" is quite confused.
A lot of similar dialects existed, but not an official "italian language"
 
Making Italian ancestry a majority isn't the hard part, after all the US has German ancestry at somewhere in the 30s-40s depending on the polling.

Keeping Italian as the main language is the tough part. It isn't as though hostility to immigrants was unknown in Argentina.
 
And would be a possibility that they try to overthrow the government and install a new one with Italian as the official language or its just ASB?
 
Well this is my first thread so I hope I do it right.

The situation is to imagine a way where Argentina can become an Italian speaking nation, with more than 75% of the population being of Italian Ancestry, and more or less how the country might evolve.
It has to be after the 1853 Constitution.

.

I've always wondered why it didn't happened IOTL. Argentina recieved millins of Itlian immigrants. At one point, about half the population living in the city of Buenos aires was either Italian or of Italian ancestry. The same happened in Rosario and in many other districts or counties along the Pampean region (the most populated part of the country). So, why didn't it happen?

The answer I found was that these Italians didn't speak "Italian". There wasn't an "Italian" language. Each immigrant spoke its own dialect. An immigrant from Sicily and one from Veneto speaking in their own dialect cannot even understand each other. And, since many of them (at least those who came in the XIX century) were iliterate, they hadn't been educatad in "Italian" (which is based on the dialect spoken in Florence, IIRC).

Two years ago, when I was in a cue in the Italian consulate, I asked an Italian old lady who was also in my line to translate me a text. She told me she came from Sicily when she was a kid, and that her parents spoke to her in their dialect, but she had never learned "Italian".

The only way to do what you want is if public education in Argentina was much worse than it was IOTL (IOTL, public education was very good between 1870 and 1930). When Italians started comming, in the 1860ies, they created schools for they childrens, which taught them in the language of Dante (not in their dialects). But since those same years, the government started founding public schools in every district, in order to reduce the number of iliterates (which was about the 70%) and, as a secondary objective, to assimilate the immigrants. Education was in Spanish. Eventually, most parents prefered to send their kids to these public schools, as these would give them better tools for their integration in the country. But if these schools didn't existed, or were much worse in terms of quality, parents might prefer to send their kids to communal schools, which would educate them in Italian. Add 2 or 3 more millions of Italian immigrants and you might get and Italian-speaking Argentina instead of one which speaks Spanish with an Italian accent.
 
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Maybe, allowing earlier PoDs, we can have a sequence of divergences:

The various Italian dialects are somewhat organised and standardised back in Italy;
Many more Italian immigrants go to Argentina;
The public schooling in Argentina is not as good.

This could maybe see the Italians grab bits of Spanish here and there and form a large community, maybe later federating all these schools and unifying the Italian language in Argentina before it even is in Italy! Then, as part of later general reforms or revolutions, maybe, this Italo-Argentinian language can be included as an official language, perhaps alongside Spanish.
 
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