The Italian speaking outside Italy is not only that of migrants and their descendants. It is a language of Swiss institutions, historical minorities in Slovenia and Croatia, people who study it to work or read books in the original version. They are different experiences, which for almost a year some governments are trying to gather in the Community of Italofonia: an international forum born to use this shared language as a starting point for collaborations between schools, universities, enterprises and cultural institutions.
Thursday, October 22, the project arrives at the New York Glass Palace with the first Italofonia Day at the United Nations, organized by the permanent representations of Italy, San Marino and Switzerland. The meeting will be held from 13.15 to 14.30 in the hall of the Economic and Social Council, the ECOSOC, and will also serve to encourage new accessions to the Community.
“Italofonia” means, first of all, the whole of the people and communities that speak Italian. The criterion is linguistic: it can understand who has never been in Italy and has no Italian ancestors, while having an Italian surname does not necessarily mean knowing the language. This distinction counts above all in countries of strong Italian emigration such as the United States, where interest in its origins and the use of Italian can follow very different paths.
The Community of Italofonia tries to give a structure to the relations that arise around the language. It was established on 18 November 2025 in Villa Madama, Rome, during a conference organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the Dante Alighieri Society and covered by Switzerland. As the Swiss government reports, the statement was adopted by 19 countries. The project also involves states in which Italian is not the language of the majority.
To understand what this Community should do, it is best to read its statement. Among the activities envisaged are exchanges of students and researchers, incentives for translations from and to Italian, common projects for radio and television and language teaching in vocational training courses. The document also proposes a network of Italian libraries and libraries in the world and an assembly of Italian writers and writers.
They are objectives that require agreements, resources and subjects willing to implement them. The statement points out that the initiatives are voluntary and does not introduce international financial or legal obligations. The Community therefore offers a place where to organize collaborations: its birth alone is not equivalent to the start of all the listed programs.
New York’s day has above all this task: to make the project known to the UN delegations and to enlarge the number of its interlocutors. Italian is not part of the six official languages of the United Nations, which are Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Russian and Spanish. The initiative does not change its status; to allow the participation of those who do not speak it, during the entire meeting will be available simultaneous interpretation in English.
Also the choice of guests allows to understand to which audience the appointment is addressed. The round table will be moderated by Loredana Polezzi, owner of the chair of Italian and Italian American Studies at Stony Brook University, and will include non native speakers. Among them will be Michael F. Moore, translator and teacher at the School of the Arts of Columbia University, who brought in English works of Moravia, Primo Levi and Manzoni. His translation of the Married Promits came out in 2022.
The program will link scientific research, arts and entrepreneurship to the translation. Michael J. Higley, professor of neuroscience, biomedical engineering and psychiatry at Yale, will dialogue with the visual and historical artist of art Serena Scapagnini. Gabriele Donati, jazz musician and co-founder of TimeRepublik will also be involved. A debate will be held with permanent representatives and the public, to whom students from schools and universities will participate.
The event is part of the Week of Italian Language in the World, taking place from 19 to 25 October and dedicated this year to the theme “Genial language: to design, to create with Italian”. The Italian permanent representative Giorgio Marrapodi and Diene Keita, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, will open the work. The conclusions will be entrusted to Christophe Z. El Kassis, permanent observer of the Holy See, and Angelica Jacome, director of the FAO office in New York.
The next step, for the Community, will be to translate the programme into activities to which one can actually participate: a university exchange, a collaboration between publishers, an Italian course for a profession. It is on this ground that the project can become useful to those who do not attend diplomatic conferences.
L’articolo Italian seeks more space at the United Nations proviene da IlNewyorkese.
