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Italian, Italian-Neapolitan or Italian-Sicilian: UK questionnaire angers Italian embassy
School questionnaire distinguishes between linguistic varieties · Ambassador says distinction may amount to "discrimination"
The questionnaires ask about the ethnicity and the first language of the students applying for accession in some schools of England and Wales. The list of languages includes more than 100, among which state languages and minoritised languages too. In the case of Italy, for instance, Sardinian is one one of the listed languages.
But what has outraged the Italian embassy is the fact that the Italian language includes two linguistic varieties (also labelled as “Italian”) for Neapolitans and Sicilians. According to the embassy, this amounts to discrimination against southern Italian citizens.
The Foreign Office, as quoted by La Repubblica, has denied any "discriminatory intention" and recalled that the aim was just only to facilitate the "detection of linguistic difficulties of children in the English and Welsh school systems."
In fact, such labels have also been applied to other languages. It is the case for Portuguese, which has a specific label for its Brazilian variety, or Arabic, under which up to five different varieties are listed.
But the Italian ambassador to the UK, Pasquale Terracciano, does not see any logic in that. Speaking to ANSA, the diplomat said that "particular language needs" for Neapolitan and Sicilian students are "nonexistent." Terraciano added that these labels could be "offensive to [Italian] southerners." The ambassador further recalled that his country “has been united since 1861”.
Some linguists, however, consider that linguistic varieties such as Neapolitan, Sicilian or those spoken in the north of Italy, are different enough from standard Italian -which is based on the Tuscan dialect- to be considered as independence languages. Despite that fact, the Italian State does not officially consider either Sicilian or Neapolitan as different languages.