“Fatta l’Italia, bisogna fare gli Italiani,” famously said Massimo D’Azeglio shortly after the unification of Italy. And he was right: in those faithful last decades of the 19th century, when Risorgimento reached its apogee and political ideas of unity and romanticized nationalism were all the rage in the peninsula, not many considered how culturally and linguistically varied the people of Italy were.

The country was one, but what about its customs and, more than anything else, what about its language? Yes, Italian is ancient and beautiful, but it was then far from being the only language spoken: the north-west had French and its dialects, mostly Piedmontese and Ligurian (both possibly closer to French than Italian), the South had its many idioms, Sardinia had a language of its own. Of course, all Italians learnt Italian in school, but how many did actually spoke it then?