💭 If I could buy ONE stock, it would be THIS... ➜

This is the kind of investment idea that got me invited to appear on 60 Minutes (twice), Fox Business, and CNBC – which once nicknamed me "The Prophet" for the accuracy of my predictions. [Unsubscribe]( [PDI logo]( Dear Reader, People ask me 𝖺𝗅𝗅 the time… “If you could put your 𝗆𝗈𝗇𝖾𝗒 in only one stock… what would it be? Well, I’m finally revealing the answer [𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞.]( I’m more certain of this stock 𝗈𝗉𝗉𝗈𝗋𝗍𝗎𝗇𝗂𝗍𝗒 than any other in my career… which included buying stocks like: - 𝖠𝗉𝗉𝗅𝖾 𝖺𝗍 $𝟢.𝟥𝟧 - 𝖠𝗆𝖺𝗓𝗈𝗇 𝖺𝗍 $𝟦𝟪 - 𝖭𝖾𝗍𝖿𝗅𝗂𝗑 𝖺𝗍 $𝟩.𝟩𝟪 - 𝖬𝖼𝖣𝗈𝗇𝖺𝗅𝖽'𝗌 𝖺𝗍 $𝟣𝟤.𝟩𝟫 This is the kind of 𝗂𝗇𝗏𝖾𝗌𝗍𝗆𝖾𝗇𝗍 idea that got me invited to appear on 60 Minutes (twice), Fox Business, and CNBC – which once nicknamed me "The Prophet" for the accuracy of my predictions. Don’t wait a moment longer… [𝐁𝐮𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲.]( I won’t charge you even a penny to learn the name (and you won't have to enter your e-mail address or phone number, either)... I reveal the name and ticker symbol completely 𝖿𝗋𝖾𝖾 of charge [𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞.]( Regards, Whitney Tilson Founder, Empire Financial Research [Divider] At times, our affiliate partners reach out to the Editors at Profit Daily Insights with special opportunities for our readers. The message below is one we think you should take a close, serious look at. [Divider] Profit Daily Insights, its managers, its employees, and assigns (collectively “The Company”) do not make any assurances about what is advertised above. You received this email as a result of your consent to receive 3rd party offers at our another website. Copyright © 2022 Profit Daily Insights. All Rights Reserved. To ensure you receive our email, be sure to [whitelist us](. [Privacy Policy]( | [Terms & Conditions]( | [Unsubscribe]( 232 Capitol St, Charleston, WV 25301, USA Pope Gregory XIII (Latin: Gregorius XIII; Italian: Gregorio XIII; 7 January 1502 – 10 April 1585), born Ugo Boncompagni, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 May 1572 to his death in April 1585. He is best known for commissioning and being the namesake for the Gregorian calendar, which remains the internationally accepted civil calendar to this day. Early biography Youth Ugo Boncompagni was born the son of Cristoforo Boncompagni (10 July 1470 – 1546) and of his wife Angela Marescalchi in Bologna,[1] where he studied law and graduated in 1530.[2] He later taught jurisprudence for some years, and his students included notable figures such as Cardinals Alexander Farnese, Reginald Pole and Charles Borromeo. He had an illegitimate son after an affair with Maddalena Fulchini, Giacomo Boncompagni, but before he took holy orders, making him the last Pope to have left issue.[3] Career before papacy At the age of 36 he was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul III (1534–1549), under whom he held successive appointments as first judge of the capital, abbreviator, and vice-chancellor of the Campagna e Marittima. Pope Paul IV (1555–1559) attached him as datarius to the suite of Cardinal Carlo Carafa. Pope Pius IV (1559–1565) made him Cardinal-Priest of San Sisto Vecchio and sent him to the Council of Trent. In the year 1552 Ugo Boncompagni confirmed the paternity of son Giacomo (or Jacopo). As stated in the online Archivio Digitale Boncompagni Ludovisi: "One of the most valuable items to emerge from the new archival finds from the Villa Aurora is an autograph declaration in Latin and Italian dated 22 December 1552 by Ugo Boncompagni (1502-1585, from 1572 Pope Gregory XIII). Here Ugo confirms his paternity of Giacomo (or Jacopo) Boncompagni (1548-1612) by Maddalena de’ Fucchinis, a servant in the employ of his sister-in-law Laura Ferro. The future Pope explains in detail the circumstances of the boy’s conception, which took place in 1547 in Bologna, after the Council of Trent had moved to that city; his motive was to assure his inheritance rights following the death (in 1546) of his father Cristoforo Boncompagni. " [4] He also served as a legate to Philip II of Spain (1556–1598), being sent by the Pope to investigate the Cardinal of Toledo. He formed a lasting and close relationship with the Spanish King, which aided his foreign policy aims as Pope.[citation needed] Election as pope Main article: 1572 papal conclave Upon the death of Pope Pius V (1566–1572), the conclave chose Cardinal Boncompagni, who assumed the name of Gregory XIII in homage to Gregory the Great, a 6th-century reforming pope. It was a very brief conclave, lasting less than 24 hours. Many historians have attributed this to the influence and backing of the Spanish king. Cardinal Borromeo and the cardinals wishing reform accepted Boncompagni's candidature and so supported him in the conclave while the Spanish faction also deemed him acceptable due to his success as a nuncio in Spain. Gregory XIII's character seemed to be perfect for the needs of the church at the time[clarification needed]. Additionally, his legal brilliance and management abilities meant that he was able to respond and deal with major problems quickly and decisively, although not always successfully.[clarification needed] Pontificate Reform of the Church Portrait of Gregory XIII by Lavinia Fontana (oil on canvas, private collection) Once in the chair of Saint Peter, Gregory XIII dedicated himself to reform of the Catholic Church. He implemented the recommendations of the Council of Trent. He mandated that cardinals reside in their sees without exception, and designated a committee to update the Index of Forbidden Books. Gregory XIII was also the patron of a new and greatly improved edition of the Corpus juris canonici. In a time of considerable centralisation of power, Gregory XIII abolished the Cardinals Consistories, replacing them with Colleges, and appointing specific tasks for these colleges to work on. He was renowned for fierce independence; some confidants noted that he neither welcomed interventions nor sought advice. The power of the papacy increased under him, whereas the influence and power of the cardinals substantially decreased.[citation needed] Gregory XIII also established the Discalced Carmelites, an offshoot of the Carmelite Order, as a distinct unit or "province" within the former by the decree "Pia consideratione" dated 22 June 1580,[5] ending a period of great difficulty between them and enabling the former to become a significant religious order in the Catholic Church. Formation of clergy and promotion of the arts and sciences Gregory XIII was a generous patron of the Jesuit colleges in Rome.[2] The Roman College of the Jesuits grew substantially under his patronage, and became the most important centre of learning in Europe for a time. It is now named the Pontifical Gregorian University. Pope Gregory XIII also founded numerous seminaries for training priests, beginning with the German College at Rome, and put them in the charge of the Jesuits. In 1575 he gave official status to the Congregation of the Oratory, a community of priests without vows, dedicated to prayer and preaching (founded by Saint Philip Neri). In 1580 he commissioned artists, including Ignazio Danti, to complete works to decorate the Vatican and commissioned The Gallery of Maps. Gregory also transformed the Dominican studium founded in the 13th century at Rome into the College of St. Thomas in 1580, as recommended by the Council of Trent. This college was the precursor of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum. The Gregorian calendar Main article: Gregorian calendar Detail of the tomb of Pope Gregory XIII celebrating the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. Pope Gregory XIII is best known for commissioning the Gregorian calendar, initially authored by the doctor/astronomer Aloysius Lilius[6][7] and aided by Jesuit priest/astronomer Christopher Clavius, who made the final modifications. This calendar is more accurate than the Julian calendar, which treats each year as 365 days and 6 hours in length, even though the actual length of a year is slightly less (365 days, 5 hours, and 49 minutes). As a result, the date of the vernal equinox had slowly, over the course of 13 centuries, slipped to 10 March, while the computus (calculation) of the date of Easter still followed the traditional date of 21 March. Clavius verified this phenomenon. Gregory subsequently decreed, by the papal bull Inter gravissimas of 24 February 1582, that the day after Thursday, 4 October 1582 would be the fifteenth, not the fifth, of October. The new calendar replaced the Julian calendar, which had been used since 45 BCE. Because of Gregory's involvement, the new calendar came to be known as the Gregorian calendar, and has been almost universally adopted. Much of the populace bitterly opposed this reform; they feared it was an attempt by landlords to cheat them out of a week and a half's rent. However, the Catholic countries of Spain, Portugal, Poland-Lithuania, and the Italian states complied. France, some states of the Dutch Republic and various Catholic states in Germany and Switzerland (both countries were religiously split) followed suit within a year or two. Austria and Hungary followed in 1587. However, more than a century passed before Protestant Europe accepted the new calendar. Denmark-Norway, the remaining states of the Dutch Republic, and the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire and Switzerland adopted the Gregorian reform in 1700–01. By that time, the calendar trailed the seasons by 11 days. Great Britain and its American colonies adopted the reformed calendar in 1752, where Wednesday 2 September 1752 was immediately followed by Thursday 14 September 1752; they were joined by the last Protestant holdout, Sweden, on 1 March 1753. The Gregorian calendar was not accepted in eastern Christendom for several hundred years, and then only as the civil calendar.[8] Foreign policy The Japanese ambassadors of Tennsho, Keisho, headed by Itō Mancio meet with Pope Gregory XIII in 1585. Though he feared invasion of Europe by the Turks, Gregory XIII's attentions were more consistently directed to the dangers from the Protestants. He encouraged the plans of Philip II to dethrone Elizabeth I of England (reigned from 1558 to 1603), resulting in English Protestants suspecting Catholics as potential traitors and subversives.[citation needed] In 1578, to further the plans of exiled English and Irish Catholics such as Nicholas Sanders, William Allen, and James Fitzmaurice FitzGerald, Gregory outfitted adventurer Thomas Stukeley with a ship and an army of 800 men to land in Ireland to aid the Catholics against the Protestant plantations.[9] To his dismay, Stukeley joined his forces with those of King Sebastian of Portugal against Emperor Abdul Malik of Morocco instead. Another papal expedition sailed to Ireland in 1579 with a mere 50 soldiers under the command of Fitzmaurice, accompanied by Sanders as papal legate.[citation needed] They took part in the Second Desmond Rebellion. All of the soldiers and sailors on board, as well as the women and children who accompanied them, were beheaded or hanged on landing in Kerry, in the Smerwick Massacre. In 1580, he was persuaded by English Jesuits to moderate or suspend the Bull Regnans in Excelsis (1570) which had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England. Catholics were advised to obey the queen outwardly in all civil matters, until such time as a suitable opportunity presented itself for her overthrow.[10] Ugonottorum Strages medal After the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacres of Huguenots in France in 1572, Pope Gregory signaled his approval and celebrated a Te Deum mass. Three frescoes in the Sala Regia hall of the Vatican depicting the events were commissioned and painted by Giorgio Vasari. A commemorative medal was issued with Gregory's portrait and on the obverse a chastising angel, sword in hand and the legend UGONOTTORUM STRAGES ("Overthrow of the Huguenots").[11] Gregory XIII was visited by the Tenshō embassy of Japan, becoming the first Pope to have received such an embassy. Cultural patronage In Rome Gregory XIII built the Gregorian chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter, and extended the Quirinal Palace in 1580. He also turned the Baths of Diocletian into a granary in 1575. He appointed his illegitimate son Giacomo,[a] born to his mistress at Bologna before his papacy, castellan of Sant'Angelo and Gonfalonier of the Church; Venice, anxious to please the Pope, enrolled his son among its nobles, and Philip II of Spain appointed him general in his army. Gregory also helped his son to become a powerful feudatary through the acquisition of the Duchy of Sora, on the border between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. In order to raise funds for his endeavors, Gregory confiscated a large proportion of the houses and properties throughout the states of the Church. This measure enriched his treasury for a time, but alienated a great body of the nobility and gentry, revived old factions, and created new ones, and caused economic and social chaos in the Papal States.[12] Canonizations and beatifications The pope canonized four saints during his pontificate and in 1584 beatified his predecessor Pope Gregory VII. Consistories Main article: Cardinals created by Gregory XIII During his pontificate, the pope created 34 cardinals in eight consistories; this included naming his nephew Filippo Boncompagni to the cardinalate in the pope's first consistory in 1572. Gregory XIII also named four of his successors as cardinals all in 1583: Giovanni Battista Castagna (Urban VII), Niccolò Sfondrati (Gregory XIV), Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti (Innocent IX), and Alessandro de' Medici (Leo XI). Death The pope suffered from a fever on 5 April 1585 and on 7 April said his usual private Mass, still in ill health. He seemed to recover enough that he was able to conduct meetings throughout 8 and 9 April, although it was observed he did not feel well. But a sudden change on 10 April saw him confined in his bed and it was observed that he had cold sweat and a weak pulse; he received the Extreme Unction moments before he died.[13] Italian (italiano [itaˈljaːno] (listen) or lingua italiana [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin.[7][8][9][10] Spoken by about 85 million people (2022), Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.[11] Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries.[6][12] Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and another regional language of Italy.[13] Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the second-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers (15% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%).[1][2] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million.[14] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide.[15] Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society.[16] Almost all native Italian words end with vowels and has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and Gemination (doubling) of consonants. Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Renaissance 1.3 Modern era 1.4 Contemporary times 2 Classification 3 Geographic distribution 3.1 Education 3.2 Influence and derived languages 3.3 Lingua franca 4 Languages and dialects 5 Phonology 5.1 Assimilation 6 Writing system 7 Grammar 8 Words 8.1 Conversation 8.2 Question words 8.3 Time 8.4 Numbers 8.5 Days of the week 8.6 Months of the year 9 See also 10 Notes 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 External links History "History of Italian" redirects here. For the history of the Italian people, see Italians. For the history of the Italian culture, see culture of Italy. Origins Dante Alighieri (top) and Petrarca (bottom) were influential in establishing their Tuscan dialect as the most prominent literary language in all of Italy in the Late Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin, though the great majority of people were illiterate, and only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian Peninsula, as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance languages of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, pragmatics) and are classified typologically as distinct languages.[17][18] The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the writings of Tuscan and Sicilian writers of the 12th century, and, even though the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century,[19] the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Italian Peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the Placiti Cassinesi from the Province of Benevento that date from 960 to 963, although the Veronese Riddle, probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy. The Commodilla catacomb inscription is also a similar case. The Italian language has progressed through a long and slow process, which started after the Western Roman Empire's fall in the 5th century.[20] The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia, to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina, were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects.[17]: 22  Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy. Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (like Spain in the Kingdom of Naples, or Austria in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia), even though the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states. Those dialects now have considerable variety. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are syntactic gemination of initial consonants in some contexts and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" between vowels in many words: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern.[21] In contrast to the Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of Northern Italy, the Italo-Dalmatian, Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages. The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages) gave its language weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Medici Bank, humanism, and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts. Renaissance The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of rebirth, which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian). Pietro Bembo was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language from the Tuscan dialect, as a literary medium, codifying the language for standard modern usage. During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists—individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves.[22] The continual advancements in technology play a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and as the dominant language, Italian, spread.[23] Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian Peninsula, as well as the prestige variety used on the island of Corsica[24] (but not in the neighboring Sardinia, which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century, under Savoyard sway: the island's linguistic composition, roofed by the prestige of Spanish among the Sardinians, would therein make for a rather slow process of assimilation to the Italian cultural sphere[25][26]). The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia, as well as a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i. e., the problem of the language), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving a united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions: The purists, headed by Venetian Pietro Bembo (who, in his Gli Asolani, claimed the language might be based only on the great literary classics, such as Petrarch and some part of Boccaccio). The purists thought the Divine Comedy was not dignified enough because it used elements from non-lyric registers of the language. Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentines preferred the version spoken by ordinary people in their own times. The courtiers, like Baldassare Castiglione and Gian Giorgio Trissino, insisted that each local vernacular contribute to the new standard. A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects.[27] Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to publication of Agnolo Monosini's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612. Modern era An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed the Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie. Contemporary times Alessandro Manzoni set the basis for the modern Italian language and helping create linguistic unity throughout Italy.[28] Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni, further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition. After unification, a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages—ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave", that is "your servant"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton, etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation was unified in 1861.[29] Classification Italian is a Romance language, a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, especially its Florentine dialect, and is therefore an Italo-Dalmatian language, a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian. According to many sources, Italian is the closest language to Latin in terms of vocabulary.[30] According to the Ethnologue, lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian.[11] Estimates may differ according to sources.[31][32] One study (analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation) estimated that distance between Italian and Latin is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin.[33] In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian.[34][35] As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.[36] Geographic distribution Main article: Geographical distribution of Italian speakers Use of the Italian language in Europe Spoken traditionally by the majority Spoken by the majority Spoken by a minority Italian is an official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French), though its use there has moderately declined since the 1970s.[37] It is official both on the national level and on regional level in two cantons: Ticino and the Grisons. In the latter canton, however, it is only spoken by a small minority, in the Italian Grisons.[b] Ticino, which includes Lugano, the largest Italian-speaking city outside Italy, is the only canton where Italian is predominant.[38] Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City.[39] Italian is also spoken by a minority in Monaco and France, especially in the southeastern part of the country.[40][41] Italian was the official language in Savoy and in Nice until 1860, when they were both annexed by France under the Treaty of Turin, a development that triggered the "Niçard exodus", the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy.[42] Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859.[43] Italian is generally understood in Corsica by the population resident therein who speak Corsican, which is an Italo-Romance idiom similar to Tuscan.[44] Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it was replaced by the French.[45] This was due to the annexation of the surrounding County of Nice to France following the Treaty of Turin (1860).[45] It formerly had official status in Montenegro (because of the Venetian Albania), parts of Slovenia and Croatia (because of the Venetian Istria and Venetian Dalmatia), parts of Greece (because of the Venetian rule in the Ionian Islands and by the Kingdom of Italy in the Dodecanese). Italian is widely spoken in Malta, where nearly two-thirds of the population can speak it fluently.[46] Italian served as Malta's official language until 1934, when it was abolished by the British colonial administration amid strong local opposition.[47] Italian language in Slovenia is an officially recognized minority language in the country.[48] The official census, carried out in 2002, reported 2,258 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians) in Slovenia (0.11% of the total population).[49] Italian language in Croatia is an official minority language in the country, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages.[48] The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) in the country (some 0.42% of the total population).[50] Their numbers dropped dramatically after World War II following the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which caused the emigration of between 230,000 and 350,000 Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians.[51][52] Italian was the official language of the Republic of Ragusa from 1492 to 1807.[53] Italy and its colonial possessions in 1940. It formerly had official status in Albania due to the annexation of the country to the Kingdom of Italy (1939–1943). Albania has a large population of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language.[54] The Albanian government has pushed to make Italian a compulsory second language in schools.[55] The Italian language is well-known and studied in Albania,[56] due to its historical ties and geographical proximity to Italy and to the diffusion of Italian television in the country.[57] Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period, Italian is still understood by some in former colonies.[11] Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule, Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of the country.[58] A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s. Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation. Italian is today used in commerce, and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara, still has several Italian schools, established during the colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II.[59] In Asmara there are two Italian schools, the Italian School of Asmara (Italian primary school with a Montessori department) and the Liceo Sperimentale "G. Marconi" (Italian international senior high school). Italian was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War. Italian language in the United States Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.[11] Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, only a little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.[60] Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country.[61] In Canada, Italian is the second most spoken non-official language when varieties of Chinese are not grouped together, with 375,645 claiming Italian as their mother tongue in 2016.[62] Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina[63] after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing. Italian bilingual speakers can be found in the Southeast of Brazil as well as in the South, corresponding to 2.07% of the total population of the country.[64] In Venezuela, Italian is the most spoken language after Spanish and Portuguese, with around 200,000 speakers.[65] In Uruguay, people that speak Italian as their home language is 1.1% of the total population of the country.[66] In Australia, Italian is the second most spoken foreign language after Chinese, with 1.4% of the population speaking it as their home language.[67] The main Italian-language newspapers published outside Italy are the L'Osservatore Romano (Vatican City), the L'Informazione di San Marino (San Marino), the Corriere del Ticino and the laRegione Ticino (Switzerland), the La Voce del Popolo (Croatia), the Corriere d'Italia (Germany), the L'italoeuropeo (United Kingdom), the Passaparola (Luxembourg), the America Oggi (United States), the Corriere Canadese and the Corriere Italiano (Canada), the Il punto d'incontro (Mexico), the L'Italia del Popolo (Argentina), the Fanfulla (Brazil), the Gente d'Italia (Uruguay), the La Voce d'Italia (Venezuela), the Il Globo (Australia) and the La gazzetta del Sud Africa (South Africa).[68][69][70] Education Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example, the free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language.[71] According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in the 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture.[72] Influence and derived languages See also: Italian diaspora Municipalities where Talian is co-official in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence. In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the nineteenth century. Another example is Cocoliche, an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, and Lunfardo. Lingua franca [Profit Daily Insights](