Yes, it is true. Italians that do not speak fluently standard Italian can be grouped in three broad categories. One category is dying out, another is stationary, the last one has appeared recently and has increased rapidly, but now it is being controlled.
The first category of Italians who do not speak Italian are the native speakers of a dialect who have had no or very little contacts with speakers of Italian. They are typically illiterate, or have gone to school a long time ago and have completed at most the 5 years elementary cycle. They don’t use radio, TV, mobile phone or the internet. They live in small, isolated villages, often on the mountains, away from cities and tourism, and typically work as farmers, lumberjacks or sheperds. They are aware that Italian is spoken, sometimes they can speak a little of it andmaybe understand it fairly well, but it’s a foreign language for them which they don’t master well.
They are without exception old people, and that’s why I wrote that it’s a category that is dying out. Universal compulsory schooling has been raised from 5 to 8 years in 1962, so the youngest people in this category of non-speakers of Italian are 69 years old today. Most are however in their 80’s and 90’s. Considering the efforts made by the Italian state to guarantee to all citizens a basic education, and the diffusion of means of communication and information, you can assume that very few people will fall in this category today.
The second category live in the only Italian Province where you can complete the cycle of compulsory education in a language other than Italian: Alto Adige AKA Sud Tyrol. Also these people live in small villages and speak a dialect. It’s an Italian dialect in the sense that it’s a dialect spoken by native citizens of Italy, but it’s not a Romance dialect, rather a Tyrolean dialect of Bavarian German. They can speak standard German, sometimes well, sometimes so so, because it was the language in which they have received education, but their everyday business is carried out in their native dialect.
They are of all ages, are employed in businesses that relate to the territory such as farming, foresting, transport, woodwork, building, preparation of food, etc. Considering that Alto Adige is a very touristic region, and that the number of people who are involved in tourism is increasing, many of these people will deal with tourists and out of necessity will manage more languages than their native dialect. But much of the tourism in Alto Adige comes from Austria and Germany, so they will get along much better by speaking good high German than good standard italian.
The third category do not even all live in Italy. They are the descendants of emigrants who took advantage of a very convenient law that allowed them to receive the Italian nationality by just being able to prove that they have one ancestor that was an Italian citizen. In fact, the Italian citizenship is inherited by virtue of the “ius sanguinis”, the “right of blood”. If you have Italian blood flowing in your veins, then you are an Italian citizen and all you had to do is to get some papers signed to prove it, and collect your passport.
Mostly, these Italians live in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Australia, where the presence of Italian emigrants is huge (also the USA and Canada, but for some reason, fewer applications come from these two Countries). Many of these Italians have never set foot in Italy, and some have no intention to do so. For them, obtaining an Italian passport is a way to become an European Union citizen and gain right of free circulation in the EU. More often than not, their final destination is not Italy but Spain and Portugal (where they don’t have to learn a new language) or France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden. Needless to say, most of them don’t speak a word of Italian.
One well known such Italian citizen is this guy here:
The grand-grand-grand parents of Lionel Messi in fact were originally from Recanati and San Severino, in the Italian Region of Marche.
Lionel Messi has no interest in moving to Italy and certainly he will not emigrate to find a better and wealthier life here. But as an Italian citizen, he can play in EU football teams as an EU citizen and not as an extra-EU foreigner which are subject to many limitations (actually, Lionel Messi is also a Spanish citizen, so he doesn’t need his Italian citizenship even for this).
The famous Italian football player Lionel Messi
A recent law that entered in force just a few months ago (May 2025), limited the right to Italian citizenship to people who have a grand-parent who was an Italian citizen and further requires that they live in Italy continuously for 2 years. Previously, you could go back into generations as much as you wanted (until of course 1861, date before which Italy did not exist as a Nation) and you did not have to live in Italy. Still, many descendants of immigrants choose to exploit this advantage by acquiring Italian citizenship because you never know what the future may bring, and holding an Italian passport can make a difference when things go really bad.
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