South Tyrol

Today, South Tyrol is a province in the north of Italy where German is an official language and spoken by a majority of the population.

Historically, South Tyrol was a part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, but during World War I was promised to the Kingdom Italy in exchange for joining the Entente (Allied Powers).

During World War II, the leaders of Italy and the Third Reich agreed to keep this arrangement, and had further planned to disperse the German-speaking population throughout Italy or remove them to Austria. These plans however were frustrated by the war. After the war, the Italian government conceded a large amount of autonomy to South Tyrol, including the continuation of their German ethnicity and use of German as the language of instruction in public schools and official documents.

Today, nearly two-thirds of the population continue to speak German as their first language. Due to its proximity with Austria (and German-speaking Switzerland) and the success of the pan-European movement, this trend looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future, Most of the population is effectively multi-lingual, and a local mixture dialect is sometimes spoken by the youth.