During the third edition of the General Assembly on the Italian language in the world, dedicated to ‘L’italiano nella rete, le reti per l’italiano‘ (Italian in the network, networks for Italian), that took place in Rome a few days ago, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Enzo Moavero Milanesi, disclosed data showing that Italian is currently “the fourth most studied language in the world.” The event was organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in collaboration with the Accademia della Crusca, the Dante Alighieri Society, the Swiss Confederation, and the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities.
The General Manager for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Vincenzo De Luca, underlines that during the 2016/17 academic year 2,145,093 students in 115 countries learned the language through the Italian Cultural Institutes. However, the aim is to further increase this number, and Moavero Milanesi reaffirmed the commitment of his Ministry “to relaunch the network of Italian schools abroad” and to meet the demand for Italian of the countries where there are “historic communities and third and fourth generations of Italians.”
The president of the Accademia della Crusca, Claudio Marazzini, is enthusiastic about the collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation that takes care of the schools abroad, and which “has been able to transform the promotion of Italian into a strategic instrument.” Indeed, Giampiero Finocchiaro, cultural anthropologist and head of the Education Office of the Italian Consulate in Buenos Aires, stressed how important it is for the Italian language not to be considered a learning objective or only as a communication tool, but rather as a learning tool that opens the doors of desirable cultural areas such as art, music, and dance.